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

THREADING PROBLEMS YET AGAIN

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Before I started winding bobbins I decided I needed to do just a bit more testing of this warp.  I wove two blocks.  Whoops.

PROBLEM ONE
I learned that I cannot do the kind of treadling with six blocks that I had intended. When I get to using treadles five and six as the pattern treadles, I cannot use the same pattern of treadles for the binders that I used on the first four pattern treadles. What I will do is keep the original treadling for the first four blocks and when I start blocks five and six, figure out which treadles will work as the binder treadles.
Why didn’t this show up in the software?  Probably I didn’t know what I was looking for.

PROBLEM TWO
There are, yes there are, threading errors!  I fussed and fumed for a bit.  Well, actually, for quite a bit.  Then I began to wonder if there was a way I could correct these errors by either removing heddles or adding repair heddles, depending on what I found when I started investigating.
These threading problems all occur when, and only when, I change blocks.  This means that I do not quite understand the process of changing blocks in terms of the threading.  It also means that when I check the drawdown for errors in the future on this kind of crackle, I need to watch especially carefully those places between blocks.

THREE THREADING ERRORS
I was glad there were only three!

1. In the case of the first error, the last thread of one block was not on the correct shaft.  I added a repair heddle to that shaft, removed the errant warp end and rethreaded it into the repair heddle, sleyed it and pinned it to the woven fabric.
2. The second error involved simply removing a heddle and removing the warp end.  That solution will cause me to have to resley everything from there to the right side of the loom.  And I will have to tie on the whole warp. Still, that is not as bad as rethreading!
3. And the third error, like the first, involved adding a repair heddle to another shaft, remove the warp end from the incorrect heddle and thread it through the correct one.

Before I made these corrections, by the way, I checked VERY CAREFULLY the drawdown
So now I can cut off a small bit of warp on the left side of the loom and a larger bit on the right side and prepare for some re-sleying.  Again.

Related Posts:  

Re-Threading
Re-threading: Good News and Bad News

“Threading Problems Yet Again” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on October 26, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

TEST WEAVING THE WARP

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I finally got the warp lashed on successfully.  The next step was to treadle tabbies to discover problems.  And there was a problem.

CROSSED WARP ENDS

A bad spot where warp ends were crossed at the reed.  It took me three attempts before I finally got it right.  I always have problems trying to figure out how to fix this kind of a problem.  It always involves experimenting.  But I’m much calmer about it that I was.  Especially when it occurs in only one place.

CLEARING SHEDS

The orange you see consists of shots of tabbies in some 60/2 silk I had leftover from another project.  Throwing these involved dealing with sheds that did not want to clear big time.  Each time I treadled I had to clear the sheds manually before I threw the shuttle. I used a long pickup stick and my hands to clear the sheds.  Gradually there were fewer and fewer threads blocking the sheds.

MIRROR

I have a cosmetics mirror standing on a table next to the loom, positioned so that I can see through the sheds from one end to the other. I used to use two mirrors, one on each side of the loom.  I broke one of the mirrors.  And now I’m finding that one mirror is sufficient.

STARTING TO TEST-WEAVE CRACKLE

When things started settling down a bit, I started weaving crackle.  It’s not very visible here but I was throwing shots of blue 60/2 silk pattern weft alternating with shots of orange 120/2 silk for the tabby wefts.  Again, lots of clearing of sheds.  But slowly in got to the point where strumming the top of warp would clear the sheds and I would need need only a few ends to clear.

I still have two more sheds to work on till they start clearing more easily.

It is typical for my silk warps to take a bit of weaving before the clearing of sheds really settles out.  Maybe five or six inches.  In any case, right now I am going to use this test weaving, so to speak, for trying out part of the treadling design I have worked out, and trying different ways of using colors in the treadling.  I will continue to use leftover yarn, partly because I still have to wind the bobbins for this warp.  But also, I think it will be kind of fun to try using wildly different and unplanned colors just to see what happens.

I had been worried about how such a wide warp would handle in 60/2 silk.  Up till now I have only woven narrow things, generally 10” to 12” wide.  I am pleased that this warp is behaving so very well.  It is nice to be weaving again!

“Test Weaving the Warp” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on August 4, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

THE HARD WORK OF DRAFT DESIGNING CORRECTED

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I pressed the publish button on the last post too soon.  I went back to the draft to work out some other things and found……………one more treadling error.  I do trust that this is the last one my eye will pick out!

So, here is the—hopefully—final version of my first parallel shadow weave crackle draft.

Related Post:   The Hard Work of Draft Designing

“The Hard Work of Draft Designing Corrected”  was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 12, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

THE HARD WORK OF DRAFT DESIGNING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I am finding that designing drafts is hard work.   Tedious work.  A part of me does not want to continue with the current project.  It is just too tedious.  Add to that the fact that right now I cannot spend a lot of time at the computer; although they are significantly better, I still need to protect my right hand, arm, and shoulder.  I am virtually symptom-free, but I do not want the pain to return.

Of course, that is a good excuse for avoiding work.  And I am very good at avoiding this kind of work.

But I did get to work, and, much too my astonishment, the correction came quite easily.

The problem lay not in the threading, as I was beginning to think, but in the treadling.  That was where the first problem lay.  But this time it lay in the treadling of the third block. The third block (which consists of two treadling units) is indicated between the two arrows.  The upper arrow points to the beginning of the third block on treadle 4;  the lower arrow points to the end of the third block on treadle 1.  I am referring only to the treadles on the first four shafts.  To the right of each of those treadles is the shadowing treadle on the second four shafts.

Related Post:  On Designing a Crackle Draft in Parallel Shadow Weave

NOTE:  Go here to read corrected post.

“The Hard Work of Draft Designing”  was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on April 8\12, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina

8-SHAFT CRACKLE TREADLED ON OPPOSITES

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Note that these treadles are not truly opposite sheds.  In every case, there is overlapping of shafts.  This means that there are some excessive warp floats.  And that means that tabbies need to be used.

Here is a better image of the reduced-size drawdown. 

That image shows with greater clarity the interrupted diagaonal in the bottom half of the image.  Some investigation is in order.

"8-Shaft Crackle Treadled on Opposites”  was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 16, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

S&W: ANOTHER WAY TO USE COLOR

Posted by Peg in South Carolina





To the right is a better image of the reduced sized draft.  Even so, this is not as good as others I have used.  I think that the highly contrasting red must create color rendition problems? 

Microsoft Publisher is clearly fine if I want to include a full-scale draft.  But the more I reduce the image, the more problematic the image becomes.  Even the actual colors are not the same.

I am looking into other publishing software programs……..

Related Post:    S&W Treadling and Color

"S&W: Another Way to Use ColorS&W: Another Way to Use Color was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 16, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

MORE SUMMER AND WINTER TREADLING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina 

 

Here, with all the blocks treadled, the twill diagonal is once again visible.

“More Summer and Winter Treadling” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 12, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

8-SHAFT CRACKLE TREADLED SUMMER AND WINTER

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

The image in the lower left-hand corner is simply a reduced version of the drawdown.  I included it because it gives a better idea of what it might look like woven as fabric.

Keep in mind that black is warp and white is weft.

Related Post:  Summer and Winter…and Crackle (of Course!)

“8-Shaft Crackle Treadled Summer and Winter” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 11, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

TROMP AS WRIT ALTERNATING COLORS

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Related Post:  8-Shaft Crackle Treadled Tromp as Writ

 

“Tromp as Writ Alternating Colors” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 10, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

8-SHAFT CRACKLE TREADLED TROMP AS WRIT

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

Related Posts:  
6-Shaft Crackle Tromp as Writ 
Tromp as Writ

“8-Shaft Crackle Treadled Tromp as Writ” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on March 9, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

OVERSHOT TREADLING EXTENDED

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

“Overshot Treadling Extended” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on February 26, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

8-SHAFT OVERSHOT TREADLING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

This is only one tie-up of several possibilities.  For now, this is the tie-up I will be using.

Related Posts: 
6-Shaft Crackle Threading Treadled Overshot
4-Shaft Crackle 01.05.10

“8-Shaft Overshot Treadling” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on February 24, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

TREADLE ENVY

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I have not bothered to include a tie-up because the tie-up is so simple.  Just attach one treadle to each shaft.

Here is the link to Tim’s Rudimentary Treadle Reducer.

Related Post: Combining Tie-Ups in 6-Shaft Crackle

“Treadle Envy” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on February 18, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

FOURTH TREADLING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

“Fourth Treadling” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on February 17, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

THIRD TREADLING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

“Third Treadling” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on February 16, 2010. ©2010 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

A NEW TREADLING

Posted by Peg in South Carolina


This is still the reversed tie-up from Thursday’s blog post.

“A New Treadling” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on February 15, 2010. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

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.

ME AND ZIELINSKI: THE TWO DRAFTS COMPARED—PART TWO

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I still wasn’t satisfied with my decision to go with Zielinski.  So I did some more working and thinking. I needed to work things out using two colors of weft, since that is what I will be eventually weaving.   First, my blocks with alternating treadles using two colors.


Next, Zielinski’s blocks, but my tie up, also with alternating treadles using two colors.

I am so glad I did this.  My threading blocks win.

I learned something very important.  In designing the treadling, I have to watch very carefully from block to block.  In the original version of both blocks, there appeared to be treadled blocks much too long.  They were.  I had not checked to make sure that the first treadle of each consecutive block, on which I throw the green weft, was a different treadle from the preceding block.

To correct this I need to make the following changes.  The second treadling sequences reads 5,6 repeat;  the third reads 5,4 repeat. The result is that both treadling sequences result in the same block appearing in the drawdown. So I must changed the third from 5,4 to 4,5.  And the next treadling must be 3, 5. With these changes there will appear 3 different treadled blocks in the drawdown. 

I need to make similar changes in the remaining treadled blocks.  Making those changes results in the drawdown appearing on the right above.

I could change the order of the colors.  Doing that would also solve the problem.  But that would result in an unpleasant doubling of colors.  The easiest is to change the order of the blocks.

Related Post:   Me and Zielinski: The Two Drafts Compared—Part One

“Me and Zielinski: The Two Drafts Compared—Part Two“was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on September 25, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.

THE WORKING DRAFT REVISED

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I have given up looking for the original WIF file………… But here is the working draft revised and I like it much better than the original anyway, so there! First the profile threading draft.

Next, the draft itself with three different overshot treadling. And next to it the draft with alternating treadles, both treadles weaving the same pattern color.


I have purposefully kept the drafts small because keeping them small shows better what is happening. Even using only one color I like the alternating treadles much better than the overshot treadling. Less clarity, yet the overall pattern is still visible.
And finally the draft with alternating treadles, one treadle carrying green thread and one carrying brown. The treadling still follows the same pattern as the overshot treadlings, but for every overshot treadle a second treadle for a separate shot of yarn to be thrown.
The two weft colors very much obscure the pattern, though the pattern can be made out. One reason for the great obscuring is the contrast between the two colors. With less contrast, the pattern would start to emerge a little more clearly.
The effect that colors have on the visibility of the pattern is something I intend to consider in the overall design. It might be interesting to move from highly contrasting weft colors, gradually through less and less contrasting weft colors, ending with two weft colors that are almost identical. At least from what I see on the computer screen, this looks possible. But what about with the actual threads?
Related Post: Alternating Treadles for Blooming Leaf

“The Working Draft Revised” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on September 3, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.