DIAGONALS IN THE DRAWDOWN: AN EXERCISE IN THINKING TOO MUCH

OR MAYBE I’M JUST PROCRASTINATING 


Posted by Peg in South Carolina

A while back, I figured out the basic treadling scheme I want to follow.  And I plan on working more with that scheme before I actually start weaving.  Moreover, I know that I may well make changes on the fly as I weave.

In the process, I tried to find treadlings that yielded clearer weft-wise diagonals. And I did find some.

Note that I am working, not with the full 1300+ ends of the whole drawdown, but with the small versions.  Also, I am including only the middle and the right side.  The left side simply mirrors the right side.

Of these three treadlings, I liked the second and the third (which is the reverse of the second) the best. But I needed to compare them with the original treadlings.

I pulled out the treadlings from my original treadling scheme and wrote them up in a way comparable to these new treadlings.  That is,  I repeated the units of each treadling block three times. These treadlings appear to the right.

When I compared the treadlings on the right (the original treadlings) with thos I had just worked up,  the three I had just worked up seemed definitely superior.  They were superior because they showed the weft diagonals more clearly.  Not perfectly, but more clearly.

In judging these drawdowns I had been focusing primarily on the right panels.  But then I started paying more attention to the center panels.  That is when I began to lose faith in those first treadlings above.  I stared.  I stared some more.  I squinted.  I stared. 

 Finally I took a look at the whole drawdown page in miniature.  
That drawdown appears just below to the left.

The top two groups are the original treadlings.  The next three little groups are the new treadlings.  And the last group, the big group, is the original overall treadling plan.

I’m sticking with the original overall treadling plan. Even though the diagonals formed by the weft-faced blocks are not as clear as I would like, the combination of weft- and warp-faced blocks together create a very clear diagonal that I like.

Any treadling changes I make on the fly will contribute to this overall scheme.

Related Posts:  
A Problem with Crackle Draft
Changing My Mind at the Warping Board

 
“Diagonals in the Drawdown: An Exercise in Thinking Too Much“ was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 14, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.