Tracking Treadling

I don't know if this chart is going to show up in its entirety - I only did half of the repeat in hopes that the numbers would be legible.  But let's give it a go...

So I'm weaving a set of samples and one of them is an advancing twill progression.  It's fairly simple, but since it backtracks on itself, I had to put on my dancer hat to work out the choreography of it.

In an effort to explain what I do, I came up with this little chart.

The numbers are the numbers of the treadles from left to right as we are used to seeing numbers written out.  I did this for visual simplicity, so that people could refer to what I'm about to describe.

If we take the column of numbers vertically as representing the treadles themselves, then each column is the treadle number from left to right.

Each row of numbers is one pick.

In this chart, I began upper right with treadle number 8 with the weft traveling from right to left.  Each pick then followed:  8, 7, 6, 5.

After the pick on treadle 5, the sequence backtracks to 6 and then becomes: 6, 5, 4, 3

After the pick on treadle 3, the sequence backtracks to 4 and proceeds: 4, 3, 2

These 11 picks are exactly half the treadling.  From here, the sequence reverses and becomes:

1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 6, 7

This is the complete 22 pick treadling repeat.

To weave this, I begin with treadle #8, and call that pick one.  I count through to 22 and by that number I should be back ready to begin the treadling repeat all over again.

Depending on the weave structure, I may approach it differently - for example Summer and Winter and overshot have two shuttles, one carrying the pattern weft, the other carrying the tabby weft, and the pattern end gets repeated.  In those cases, I might just record the pattern pick and indicate how many times the pattern block gets repeated, knowing I must insert tabby.

There are many ways to set up a tracking system.  Post It notes, file cards, metal sheets and magnets, and now apps.  I use iWeaveit, but it works best when the tracking is consistent.  In this particular treadling, the runs are not consistent, so I prefer to visualize the 'lines' or 'runs'.

If someone can't visualize, then a pick by pick method of tracking is the most accurate way and you can set iWeaveit up to do a line by line tracking in the liftplan mode.

Whatever you do, you do have to pay attention, stay in the moment, don't let yourself be distracted.  For me, counting to 22 lets me stay literally on track, and if I do get interrupted, I can usually find my way back to a starting point so I can go forward again.

Begin Agin

....and here I go again.  The first few ends in a warp that will be 764 ends.  You might just be able to see that it's mostly blue with a little 'sea green'.  The threading is another variation on point twill that will likely be woven in an advancing progression.  It's not quite what I had envisioned, so I may play with the treadling and tie up some more once the loom is up and running and I can see how it actually looks in the cloth rather than on the computer screen.  In the flesh, so to speak.

Yes I do use weaving software - Fiberworks by choice.  I have played around some with Pixeloom which in many ways is similar but I know Fiberworks so very well I have never felt like wallowing at the bottom of the learning curve to learn a new program.  What I've seen and done looks great, though, so if you are in the market for weaving software, either of these programs is pretty intuitive for most people to use.

If you want to know way more about Fiberworks than I do, Margaret Coe has pretty much written the books you need.

For the iPad I use iWeaveit.  I began this threading by messing about on the iPad, then when I had a threading I thought I liked, emailed it to myself so I could open it on the desktop in Fiberworks.  From there I derived a tie up (my standard 1:3:1:3:2:2:3:1) and played with woven as drawn in, advancing, variations on advancing.  When I knew I could do something close to what I wanted, I generated the threading only to follow as I thread.  I keep a pencil or pen handy and as I do each handful, mark off where I am in the sequence.

When dealing with a very long repeat (5 repeats in this warp plus borders) it's all too easy to get 'lost' if the phone rings or something causes my concentration to fail.  Something that happens more and more often these days.  And something that I hope will improve after the surgery.  Or not.  I am 64.5 years old now.  I've been told memory gets a little funky as we age!

The small loom is still nekkid so perhaps I'll get that dressed too.  I would sure like to finish off those last two painted warps so I can cross that task off my job list.

And then I can begin agin with something completely different...

Blue Towels

blue/grey towels on loom


close up showing Wall of Troy and straight twill threadings

A few posts ago Sharon commented on weaving being a whole body experience. This is something that new weavers don't understand at first, especially if they have only woven on narrow warps.

The wider the warp you have on the loom, the more you need to use your whole body. Perfecting throwing and catching technique will allow a weaver to weave quite wide warps. How wide depends on the individual's body - how long their arms are for one thing. :)

The motion for throwing the shuttle is such that the weaver needs to shift their body weight onto the right hip when throwing the shuttle from right to left then onto the left hip for when throwing the shuttle from left to right.

The torso pivots around the centre of the body leaning slightly to the right to throw with the right hand, leaning forward slightly as the shuttle traverses from right to left and leaning slightly to the left to catch the shuttle and grab the beater. As the beater comes forward, the body rocks slightly backwards as the feet change position on the treadles.

And so the cycle begins again.

It is a very good idea to learn how to sit up on the hip bones and not rotated back on the coccyx so that this range of motions can happen with the least amount of stress on the body.

It is a good idea to tone the abdominal muscles - the core muscles as they are sometimes called - as having good strong core muscles will help protect the lower back muscles from strain.

Review the video clips (click on the Video Clip tag to the right or the label below) showing weaving to help see what I mean.

Wall of Troy

Draft for tea towel warp

One of the twill weaves I like a lot is Wall of Troy. The draft shown here combines a straight twill draw on the edges with Wall of Troy in the centre.

The towels (I'll post a photo tomorrow perhaps) are turning out really nicely. The two colours were threaded with the light grey stripes straight, the blue stripes WofT.

The treadling is only Wall of Troy although I included a run of straight at the beginning and end in the above draft just to show how it looks.

Each time I change treadling I have to learn (or re-learn) the choreography for that weave structure. One of the ways I do that is to count how many picks in a pattern repeat.

My 'standard' tie up is as shown in the draft, with plain weave on either side of the four twill treadles in the middle. Although many people like to 'walk' their treadles, I find keeping them in the standard twill tie up allows me to easily change treadling sequences from warp to warp, sometimes from item to item.

This is a fairly simple treadling sequence with just 10 picks in the repeat.

If we number the treadles left to right 1, 2, 3, 4 the treadling sequence is
Pick 1 - treadle 4
2 - 3
3 - 2
4 - 1
5 - 4
6 - 3
7 - 2
8 - 1
9 - 2
10 - 3

I start with my right foot and the shuttle in my right hand. If I run out of weft or the phone rings, etc., all I have to do is keep the pick number in my head and I know exactly where in the treadling sequence I am.

If I decide to change the weave structure, say to point twill, that is a 6 pick repeat and the count would be:
pick 1 - 4
2 - 3
3 - 2
4 - 1
5 - 2
6 - 3

A straight twill is pretty straight forward and I don't have to count that as where my foot is will tell me where in the repeat I am.

I suppose that having a background in dance I am familiar with learning new choreography, and this is how I have come to think of treadling sequences as steps in a dance.

Currently reading Snake Dreams by James D. Doss

Place Mats Again

On Monday Karena got the next warp for place mats beamed, threaded and sleyed - and still had time left over to trim fringes, and vacuum. I think she was pleased that she's getting faster with practice. :D She used the warping valet and only needed a few suggestions to do it all by herself, including tranferring the cross.

Karena dressed the loom from start to finish - all 11 meters, 15 inches wide at 12 epi - in under two hours.

For this warp I chose a twill I learned about my first year of weaving. It's called Wall of Troy in M. P. Davison's green book. I like it because it's a very simple 10 thread repeat. Generally I thread it as shown above (two repeats shown in warp and weft) by threading the first 4 ends beginning from the right, then the 6 ends that make up the point.

Karena threaded it four ends, four ends, then two ends.

For treadling I count to 10. If I have to stop to replace a bobbin, I just hold whatever number I was on in my head. By knowing the number from 1-10 that I've just done, I know which treadle is next in my treadling sequence. If the phone rings, it doesn't usually take more than a few seconds to complete the 10 picks so that I can stop at the end of the repeat.

Part of the challenge with this warp is that the last was so recent that muscle memory is remembering the broken twill treadling. So I've had a few 'senior' moments when my feet were doing something other than what the brain intended. :) However, it won't take long for the new choreography to take hold.