TREADLING PATTERN DECIDED

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

This draft represents only a very small part of the threading.  And the colors are not those I will be using.  I chose them in order to see clearly what is going on. The treadling is based on overshot treadling.  That is, for each given block, I simply repeat that particular treadle x times. 

Overshot requires a tabby between shots or the floats will be excessively long.  But that is not possible in this crackle draft because there is no plain weave possible.  No plain weave; no tabby.  So the threads that will be used to prevent excessively long floats will be called binder shots here.

What I would then ordinarily do is one of two things:

1. Find a treadle for the binder shot which would give me something close to the opposite of the pattern shot.
2. For each pattern shot in a given block, treadle one of the remaining treadles, a different one for each pattern shot.

I have done something only slightly different here. For each block I have picked two different treadles for the binders and alternated them for the duration of the block.

But I have done something else a bit different as well.  Not only are the binder shots a different color from the pattern weft;  the shot on one treadle is one color, and the shot on the other treadle is a different color.

The pattern shots will be use 60/2 silk;  the binder shots will use 120/2 silk. This difference will obscure a bit the pattern colors, which is exactly what I want. 

The trick to all this, is going to be choosing colors.  My overall idea is start with everything pretty much the same color—the browns and browned greens of the warp—and then slowly to bring in brighter colors, first in the binder shots, then in the pattern shots.

The photo on the left is from the original sampling, together with the as-of-then uncorrected threading errors.  The place to look at is the last 4 blocks.  Again, these are not the colors I will be using in the actual piece, but it does give an idea of the kind of effect I am after as well as the possibilities for manipulation of colors for lesser or greater clarity of blocks. In short, the binder shots wil serve much more than to provide a stable fabric;  they will be an essential part of the color plan.

 

 

 

 

“Treadling Pattern Decided” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on January 25, 2011. ©2011 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina