Tricky Twills

Most weavers have experienced the phenomenon of having the outside ends of their warp 'fall out' of the cloth when they reverse the direction of a twill.  It is the reason so many weavers recommend that a floating selvedge be used for twills.

Since I don't like using floating selvedges, I try to find work arounds.  For example, instead of using a large 'goose eye' draft, I will break the twill sequence and use what is sometimes called a herringbone or Dornick twill.

On the current warp, I designed a towel that has a twill diagonal going one direction at one selvedge and the other direction at the other.  The central motif is bracketed with \ and / at the selvedge.   For the majority of the towel, all is well - both selvedges weave as they are meant to.  But I also changed the twill direction in the hems, so when I get to the end of the towel, the change in the twill direction causes the two selvedge ends to drop out.  This is at pick 1140 of the treadling (I generate the entire treadling for one towel).  When I get to pick 1140, I stop, cut the weft off and then enter the shuttle from the other direction, which then brings the selvedge ends back into the cloth.

When that towel is done, I have programmed a lag that is empty and when that lag comes along, it is a visual/physical cue to stop, add a cut line in a different colour so that when the web comes off the loom it is an easy task to separate each towel and serge the raw edges for wet finishing.

The one pick of cut line automagically brings the shuttle back to the other side of the cloth and the towel weaves as it is meant to do with the shuttle catching the outside ends - until I hit pick 1140 when I cut off and insert from the other side of the cloth.  (Yes, I tuck the ends back into the selvedge of both ends.)

The treadling sequence is too long to 'capture' or I would share it here.

However, here is the threading draft showing 1.5 treadling repeats.  I ended on the half repeat to balance the motif.

Yes, there are areas in the treadling where the outside ends are not captured.  They equal 5 picks.  With a textile being woven at 32 ppi, I do not consider this 5 pick float to be detrimental to the textile and it's intended function.  YMMV.  If it was truly an issue, I'd change the tie up to add more plain weave to the mix and shorten the floats/skips.

This is a 16 shaft 'fancy' twill, the motif was taken from an Ars Textrina article about 17th century 'gebrochene' twills, modified to fit my towel format.  Thank you to Pat Hilts for providing the article to the publication.