I’VE BEEN DOING THINGS BACKWARDS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

After working out the crackle threading for the Blooming Leaf overshot draft, I decided it was time to do a profile draft of the threading.  Had I done this to begin with, I would have saved myself some grief.
A profile threading draft indicates what and where the threading blocks are going to be.  Here is the profile threading for the original draft of this version of Blooming Leaf.

This is a profile threading draft for an 8-shaft overshot draft.  There are only four horizontal spaces instead of 8 because there are only four blocks.  The blocks are labeled A-D.  Each separate block unit consists of one threading unit.
The next thing I did was to transpose this to an eight block sequence, since I will be weaving 8-block crackle, even though only four shafts.  Here is what I came up with.

The draft is read  from right to left, beginning at the top and ending at the left on the bottom.  Since there are 8 blocks, the letters go from A to H and there are eight horizontal spaces.
There were a couple of ways I could have gone with this transposition.  The way I chose to go this time was move from 2 to 5 repetitions of a block unit every other block. 
But I did something different with the two point twills sections.  I wasn’t sure how 1 crackle unit would stand up on its own, so I used 2 crackle units for each of those blocks. 
The problems with the earlier threading had to do with the fact that I had not always gotten the number of block repetitions correct.  Had I worked out the blocks first, I would have probably gotten the threading right the first time around.
Here is the corrected draft, treadled as overshot.

I have large spaces between each large group of blocks and I have left one space between each individual block group.  I did this simply because it made it much easier for me to get the threading right.  It is kind of like pulling out the heddles for one block group on the loom, threading those, and then double-checking them.
Now what I need to do is to try some different (non-overshot) treadlings.
Related Post:  Overshot and Crackle

“I’ve Been Doing Things Backwards” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on August 26, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.