ON DESIGNING A CRACKLE DRAFT IN PARALLEL SHADOW WEAVE

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

After analyzing the parallel shadow weave crackle weave designed by Dorothy N. Smith, I decided it was time that I try my hand at designing a draft from scratch.  I did figure out how she got her tie-up. But I didn’t understand how she derived the threading she had.  The only way I was going to understand that was to try to design my own draft.

So I took my standard 4-shaft crackle draft, a draft where the theading is laid out in a straight twill, with two threadings units for each block.  I entered the threading in a new draft. I entered it on only the first four shafts.  But I entered the threads only in every other threading space. 
I then went back to the beginning and entered the parallel threads on shafts 5 to 8 in the empty threading spaces.  Here is the resulting threading:



Reading from right to left, thread 1 is followed by the thread 5.  5 can be thought of as the first shaft of the second set of four shafts.  Thread 2 is followed by thread 6 and so on.  This is quite different from the threading which Smith designed:



Here are the key differences:

1.  If you read shafts 1-4 and shafts 5-8 as separate threadings, in my draft the crackle mini-point-twill units are clear.  In Smith’s drafts, they are unclear.

2. There is doubling and tripling of threads in Smith’s drafts, but not in mine.  I find this doubling and tripling quite curious.  Later, I will investigate that.

The treadling used by each of us is different in the same way.  This is because each of us in essence treadled the threading. I did use the same tie-up she used. And here is what happened.
First, Smith’s draft; then, to the right, my draft at about the same resolution:






The results are clearly different. Smith’s draft results in a series of circles and ovals.  Mine results in a maze. 

My draft, moreover, has some technical problems.  Although each treadling unit is repeated twice, the second treadling unit of each block is not always identical to the first treadling unit.  I had thought that this problem occurred only in one place, and I changed the treadling to correct it.  What you see here is that corrected treadling. 

But it became obvious that there are more problems like this.  The two threading units at the right (i.e., the first block) come out fine.  But the the remaining three blocks do not.  Does this mean there is a problem with the threading?  It looks like I am going to have to investigate
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Related Post:  Crackle in Parallel Shadow Weave



“On Designing a Draft in Parallel Shadow Weave”  was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 8, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina