I'm curious about converting a 4-shaft twill pattern to 8 shafts, and haven't been successful with web (or JST forum) searches. In the absence of weaving software, I'm wondering how difficult it would be to manually (ie, with graph paper) convert a draft from a project in the March/April 2019 issue of Handwoven? Thanks in advance for any advice. Here is a closeup of the tieup: https://ibb.co/dbf6yNT
converting a twilldraft from 4 shafts to 8 shafts?
General topics on handweaving
· 5 replies
· 3303 views
· 5 followers
Can I ask you, Patricia, why you don't want to weave it on the first 4 of your shafts on your 8 shaft loom? I have an 8-shaft and a 12-shaft loom and often just thread and weave on 4 shafts on both looms. It's a simple twill draft and a pleasure to weave the way it's been designed.
Sorry about the stupid question of a newbie, but what are the benefits of doing this?
Thanks for the reply, Sandra. Certainly moving heddles (currently 100 on each shaft) is not all that difficult with the Louet David. However, I always like to find a challenge (learn something new) with each project - hence, my curiosity about extending the threading/treadling from 4 to 8 shafts, something I haven't attempted before.
Interestingly, just a few moments ago I found this wonderful blog post which got me thinking about the author's premise of regarding the first 4 shafts as a "front loom" and the back 4 shafts as a "back loom." Now, I'm thinking it may be as simple as alternating the 24-end "block" of the pattern between the first 4 and last 4 shafts. Then, "stacking" the tie-ups to: 1256, 2367, 3478, 1458 and treadling as written for the 4-shaft project. Here's the article:
https://www.marcypetrini.com/marcy-s-blogs/286-blog-72-from-four-shaft-to-eight-shaft
Catherine, I'm a newbie as well (ie, an advanced beginner). There have been occasions in the past where I have not wanted to fiddle around with moving heddles, and this seemed like a good project to learn about weaving a 4-shaft pattern on all 8 shafts. (And there are definitely no stupid questions - at least I tell myself that when I ask them!)
You are right about no “stupid” questions, Patricia! I dug out my old Handwoven and found the pattern you are referring to. It’s 4 shaft Rosepath - you can certainly increase it to 8 shafts 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,1,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 - but that will make your stripes wider. I was chatting with a very talented friend of mine - and she suggested that you could also alternate the Rosepath draft to 1,2,3,4,1,4,3,2,1 and then 8,7,6,5,8,5,6,7,8 and alternate the two across your warp. Hopefully, this helps and gives you something to draw out on your graph paper.
Sandra, thanks for looking into my dilemma, and consulting with your talented friend on my behalf!
In the interim, I emailed the blogger (Marcy Petrini) in the link I posted above. She very kindly responded, and noted there are TONS of ways to extend from 4 to 8 shafts (and she had a couple of ideas herself).
As I mentioned above, I started with her advice in the blog post to view shafts 1-4 as a "front loom" and 5-8 as a "back loom." In her email she strongly suggested investing in drawdown software (as opposed to graph paper) to speed up my thought process. As she uses WeavePoint, I started there - and discovered they have a 60-day trial/demo version.
And in short order I was able solve my problem and confirm that my idea above (alternating the 24 ends of the pattern repeat between the "front" and "back" looms) would work. Here's a screenshot from my WeavePoint session: https://ibb.co/rx0ZQwS
Thanks again for all the help!