FINDING DRAFTING ERRORS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

SKIPPING THREADING BLOCKS

I have been fiddling around trying a different threading, a threading in which I skip threading blocks.  More specifically, I have been doing threadings which move from threading blocks A to C, to E to G, and then back to B then to D, F, and H.  These threadings would result in blocks half the size of the blocks in the current draft.  My ultimate goal was to be able to combine these two threadings into a single draft.  But I have decided it won’t work.  Better, if I want this kind of effect, to use the same threadings but just halve or quarter the threading block length.

ERRORS

To facilitate these experiments, I had printed out the threading and labeled the blocks.  And that is when I discovered two threading errors.  In one block I was missing a warp end;  I had not finished with the beginning threading of the block.  In the other, I had added one unnecessary warp end. 

These changes seem to make no visible alterations to the drafts I have saved as JPEG’s (some of which have appeared on this blog) and so I have not changed the JPEG’s.  But I have gone back through each of the actual WIF drafts and made the changes because I know doing this will make a difference in the appearance of the fabric.  I can tell because the draft at those two points looks better.

So again, a secret to spotting errors, at least for me, is to look at the draft from a different perspective, or in a different environment.  In the recent case, the error had shown itself when I saw the draft in a draft of my blog post.  In this case, the error showed itself when I printed out the threading.

Of course there is then the problem of making errors when actually threading the heddles.  At least it helps to start with a correct threading draft!

“Finding Drafting Errors” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on August 24, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.