Expand your Possibilities: A 4-shaft draft on your 8-shaft, 16-shaft or even 24-shaft loom! Blog Post
Since weaving the original Tubular Spectrum™ Color Gamps, Michele has been exploring the advantages of using more shafts to make weaving easier. She has found that she can expand her options with her warp, simplify the threading and treadling, or give the warp threads room to spread out when she expands a draft to more shafts. As we embark on a new year of learning, we want to share what Michele’s learned with you.
By Michele B.
Turn Your 8-Shaft (Or 16 or 24-Shaft) Loom Into A 4-Shaft Loom!
Huh?? Why would I do that? Madelyn van der Hoogt would be horrified! She tells her students to consider the shaft-poor weavers, starved for more patterning options. Kind of like cleaning your plate!
Because more shafts equal more options!
Why would I want to start with a 4-shaft draft and put it on more shafts? Lots of reasons. The first I encountered was to give the threads more space to move around, as in tightly sett Repp Weave. Sometimes I don’t have enough heddles on Shafts 1-4 to do the threading. We all know musical heddles isn’t anyone’s favorite! Or sometimes the threading is complicated and hard to follow. Sometimes I’d like to be able to weave something different from the threading. Robyn Spady’s Extreme Warp Makeover workshop takes this to, well, the extreme. Check it out! Sometimes I want to weave a 4-shaft pattern from a book or magazine article (like the Big Wrap Beach Blanket) or in a class (like Jennifer Moore’s amazing Double Rainbow Online Class) but I’d like more options. What if I don’t like the structure, or weaving it is a pain or one of a dozen other complaints. I use more shafts and have more options. It will probably simplify threading and/or treadling.
If you want to expand your 4-shaft pattern onto more shafts there are a few simple rules. First, if I thread what was on Shaft 1 on Shaft 1 and Shaft 5, I need to do the same thing with Shaft 5 that I do with Shaft 1. Every time. Second, the number of shafts I need is either the full threading repeat or a multiple of the repeat.
This All Becomes Clearer When We Do It.
I think the simplest version of this is a 4-shaft straight twill expanded to 8-shafts. The original draft is threaded on Shafts 1,2,3,4 and then repeated. I know I can expand this to any multiple of the threading repeat of 4 threads. In the expanded 8-shaft draft, the second set of threads, originally repeated on Shafts 1,2,3,4 is now threaded on Shafts 5,6,7,8.
To make this easier to visualize I’ve put this into a color-coded chart:
Visualize The Expanded Draft With The Drawdowns:
Let’s Do This Again. Practice Makes Perfect!
Expanding a 4-shaft Point Twill to More Shafts.
A 4-shaft point twill threading has 6 ends in each threading repeat. This means I can expand it to 6 shafts. Or 12 or 18 or 24, etc.
A 4-shaft point twill can be rewritten onto 6 shafts:
Just like before, I’ve color coded the ends in the threading to help make it clearer visually.
Now Make The Treadling Easy:
Now that I have simplified (maybe say expanded instead of simplified…) the threading, I can also change the treadling to a straight treadling, like the threading and make the fabric both simpler to thread and to weave. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on Treadle 3 in a point twill and not remembered which way I was going!!! This fixes that.
I can convert any threading into a draft using more shafts if the number of ends in the threading repeat is equal to the number of shafts I have to work with. This technique can go so far beyond what I have been doing here with 4-shafts. That is the explosion of infinite possibilities I can’t wait to continue to explore!