All Things Being Equal

 

huck lace boxes, not wet finished (loom state)

This morning I am about to go do a Zoom presentation on lace weaves.

Coming to understand how lace weaves work, the challenges involved in weaving them, the dynamics of how the threads move and shift, were a watershed time for me.  I spent hours and hours doing drawdowns - by hand on graph paper because there was no weaving software at the time and if you wanted to have a graphic representation of how the threads would move through the cloth, that was how you did it.

I learned a lot.  Like a *lot*. Way more than I expected when I set out to do the drawdowns.  The more I did, the more I learned.  

The photo shows something that people frequently don't understand - how the number of interlacements will affect the beat.  The areas of plain weave do not beat in the same as the areas being woven in lacy fashion.

Another thing that people don't seem to understand at first is where the 'holes' actually form.  It was only after doing countless drawdowns, then weaving the cloth and comparing the two that I really understood the dynamic of threads moving to areas of least resistance and having those holes form.  

While I can explain these things, I do believe that each person needs to do some drawdowns, then weave the draft and then after wet finishing compare the two.

Lace weaves are one of the categories that really depends on the wet finishing to bring the cloth to it's final state.  While I advocate that weavers wet finish all of their webs, some just have to be wet finished because they depend on the threads deflecting from their rigid straight lines.  They need to deflect from the grid.  Like waffle weave, honeycomb, deflected double weave, and so many more.

Lace weaves will beat in unequally - unless the weaver exercises care in how they place the weft in the web.  I will sometimes ensure that there are areas of cloth that will weave only plain weave and then use those areas to monitor my beat, to make sure it is as consistent as possible.  

I won't claim that my lace weave fabrics are always 'perfect' - ie equal epi/ppi.  But if you can't be perfect, be consistent.