Fancy Twills

four shaft Wall of Troy (M. P. Davison)

Wall of Troy extended to 8 shafts

For the past few years I have played with 'fancy' twills.  Someone asked me what I meant by 'fancy' and I had to think about that term for a bit.  While I knew what I meant, I had to think about how to define it.  There are many examples of 'fancy' twills in many resources e.g. the little booklet called The Fanciest Twills, which is likely where I first heard about fancy twill.

Beginning with the four shaft Wall of Troy, it is not a straight draw but reverses in a /\/ progression and repeats.  Technically one might refer to this as an extended point progression.  In the drawdown area of the draft, there are connected diamonds and a clear straight diagonal running through the cloth.

Extending this over eight shafts enlarges the design and makes it more dramatic.  The tie up can change from a 2:2 twill to a 1:3:3:1.

When you have more shafts, the combinations can become much larger, more complex and the tie up can also become more complex.  One of my favourites is 1:3:2:2:3:1:2:2   This keeps floats to 5 (usually) and in the finer yarns I tend to use, a five end float does not adversely affect the cloth.

The key to unlocking how fancy twills worked was from S. A. Zielinski's publications.  Robert Leclerc collected Mr. Zielinski's works, edited them into topics and published them in the late 1980s early 1990s (if I remember correctly).  One of them took twills and played with them on four shafts creating very complex patterning.  His premise was that you didn't need to have more than four to make cloth with complexity.  Since I had 16, I began to play with twill progressions to make quite large repeats.  Having a loom with a dobby meant that I could then enter the tie up and treadling into the computer, and at a flick of a switch change from one tie up/treadling to another making scarves and shawls that were related but different.  Working in a series like this made my inventory more diverse and gave customers a choice over which options they liked best.

Last night I thumbed through Ars Textrina - the information translated from the Old German by Patricia Hilts - about a class of weaves called Gebrochene.  I'm looking for inspiration for my next warp and being entranced once again by 'fancy' twills.  I think I could just weave these kinds of drafts for the rest of my life and still find fascination in them!  

The test warp currently on the Megado is one of these fancy type of twills.  Each shawl is being woven with a different weft colour, but also a different tie up/treadling.  As I mix and match the threading with different treadlings, the resulting cloth is similar but different.  

At the end of my thumbing, however, I reflected on the colours I was going to use for the next warp and instead of a fancy twill, I will do something with twill blocks.  My inspiration will be the colours of the south west and my pattern will reflect something of my feeling of the desert when I visited New Mexico and Arizona.  

At least, that's the plan.  For now.

8 shaft Swedish Snowflake.  Another example of a 'fancy' twill.  Areas of straight and point progression, advancing and satin.