I'm a big fan of using a different tie up to alter the look of a design on my current warp.  I'm locked into my threading because I don't ever rethread for another design, but what I can do is change the tie up and the treadling to create a whole new look.   I started my experiments with two block twills after watching an episode of JST's School of weaving.  I suspect this episode was all about changing a profile draft into a two block twill and then weaving it on 8 shafts.  I used some of Jane's tie up suggestions and then looked for more.  I came up with many possibi ..read more

Using mathematics to design weaving profiles or sequences is a theme that I return to over and over.  I have relied on writings about this subject because my mathematical knowledge is relatively rudimentary.  I was very lucky to have found this document in the Ralph Griswold collection of weaving documents stored at the University of Arizona website.  "Algebraic Expression in Handwoven Textiles" by Ada K. Dietz   This is my journey into designing a profile and weaving drafts based on the mathematical expression of the cube of a binomial  (a + b) ³  My interpr ..read more

 Quite a few years ago, I read a paper called "Designing with Farey Fractions" by Ralph Griswold.  Ralph was a computer scientist with a penchant for weaving drafts and weaving design.   I did some designing using a Farey sequence as the threading for an 8 shaft draft and wrote about the process here in this blog. https://bannermountaintextiles.blogspot.com/2013/07/farey-fraction-towels.html    The results were interesting (to me) but recently I began to think about other things that might be done with this Farey sequence used as a profile draft.  I digress a bit ..read more

 I've been fascinated with amalgamation drafts since I first read Alice Schlein's Network Drafting: An Introduction.  Recently, Alice published a new monograph  called Amalgamation: Double your Dobby and I eagerly purchased a copy directly from her. As I read the monograph, it appeared that only some weaving software programs were capable of copying the drawdown portion of the draft and pasting it into the threading.  I use WeavePoint for most of my design work, so I went to AVL to see if the programmer of WeavePoint, Bjorn Myhre could help.   At the same time, Bo ..read more

I have been wanting to learn how to warp with a paddle using multiple yarn sources for a very long time.  Recently, I found a Victorian Video from 1997 with Sallie Guy called "Warping and Loom Preparation with Sallie Guy". She has a very good visual instruction of the process using a stationary paddle.   I followed Sallie's instructions to a "T" or so I thought.  My first warp had terribly twisted warp threads and it was a real struggle to weave off.  So, I tried another and had the same result.  I went back to the video and listened to Sallie say sever ..read more

It seems you can put something on a back burner and not get to it for years.  And then, all of a sudden something kicks in and you decide to give it a whirl.  That's what happened to me recently when I revisited some turned Atwater-Bronson drafts in Strickler's book, #613-#628 contributed by Mary Smith. One of the problems is that you have to deal with a profile treadling.  The threading and tie up is given, but you do have to dig in a bit and figure out the treadling sequence.  Mary Smith spells it out in her explanation, but I had to talk to ..read more

I was browsing through my yarn stash in early April and stopped to admire the large quantity of Malibrigo wool sock yarns that had been collecting over the past few years.  Each time my local Ben Franklin had a sale, I picked up a new skein.  They are wonderful yarns with so much color it makes my heart sing when I look at them.  (Which is exactly why I bought them in the first place).  I started laying the yarns out  to see how the colors meshed and then added some more sock yarns from my stash that I had dyed and others that a friend had dyed (Wooly Daisy).  Sha ..read more

I've been a big fan of basket weave selvedges ever since I was introduced to them by fellow weaver and friend, Sandra Rude.  They work most easily with multishaft looms and liftplans.  However, they can be added to other weaving drafts and this post is to let you know how that can be done. The reason for using a basket weave selvedge is to keep your edges neat and even and to avoid having to use floating selvedge threads.  Their beauty is that as you throw the shuttle back and forth, your weft catches the edge thread of your woven piece on eac ..read more

Recently I dyed some beige rayon chenille with magenta, reds and blues.  The dyeing process is something I learned in a Kathrin Weber class about a year ago and she calls it "cupcake" dyeing.  Simply put, I dyed the yarn while it was still in center pull balls, thus giving me a variegated yarn.   Chenille is lovely stuff, but can be troublesome once woven.  It tends to "worm" in weave structures that have longer floats and many weavers just end up using plain weave rather than risk the piece turning into a bumpy mess after wet finishing.  I decided to experiment with m ..read more

When mathematicians become interested in weaving, the first thing they turn to are ways to express weaving design using the tools they already know so well.  It works in reverse too.  Weavers start using numerical sequences, algebraic equations and more to make their weaving more interesting and give it a new dimension.  The first mathematical sequence I learned to use in weaving (well, in knitting too) was a stripe generator called the Fibonacci Sequence.  For years, I used the first numbers in the sequence, not even thinking that maybe I only needed to use ..read more