Drafted!

Day 116: I've been throwing the word "draft" around quite a bit without going into detail as to its meaning in the context of weaving other than to call it the "pattern" the weaver follows. Depending on the type of loom being used, a draft can be relatively simple like those used in tablet-weaving, or it may contain several layers of information when applied to weaving on a standard loom. Let's talk about tablet-weaving drafts first, because they're the easiest to explain.

On the left, you can see where I've drawn Xs on a piece of graph paper and have made a few marginal notes. The marginal notes are not included in a draft ordinarily; they are only there for my reference, telling me how many threads I need to rotate to begin the pattern, and which direction the first card is turned. You may also have noticed that there is a substantial difference between the short, wide, inked design and the weaving itself. That is due to the fact that the actual lengthwise span of the threads is tall and thin rather than being square like the spaces on the graph paper. Many weavers choose to use two squares to represent a single thread rather than one, but even that is usually less than proportional. I've taught myself to make the mental adjustment, although I will say that I picked back my first trial maple leaves at least half a dozen times before settling on this final design. That said, another piece of information is missing from my draft, something I've done so many times that I don't need to note it: the layout for drawing the variously-coloured threads through the cards. Because of the way I am weaving, I have holes A and B threaded with yellow and holes C and D threaded with rust throughout. Other card-weaving designs require different threadings, and their drafts will note that. Card-weaving drafts also include the direction each card is threaded, and whether it is to be turned backward or forward.

When weaving on a standard loom, other notations must be included as well. The draft tells the weaver which heddles to thread with each warp, how many repeats there are in the pattern, what the treadling sequence is, and most importantly, what the tie-up sequence is. Each treadle is connected to a harness (remember, the harnesses hold the heddles), and when the treadle is depressed, the harness is raised to form the shed. The standard tie-up is 1-2-3-4, i.e., treadle 1 is connected to harness 1 and so on. In a tabby (plain) weave, the treadling sequence is 1-3, 2-4. This raises alternate threads with each change. But let's say you attached treadle 2 to harness 3 and vice versa. If you depressed the treadle, a different set of threads would be raised, and the weave would no longer be tabby. Many four-shaft looms actually have six treadles. Treadles 5 and 6 can be tied to harnesses 1-3 and 2-4 respectively as a shortcut (two harnesses to a treadle). Likewise, one treadle might even be attached to three harnesses if the weaver was going to have a recurrent pattern of long floats.

Oftentimes, multiple patterns can be woven using a single threading sequence and tie-up. The secret is in the order of treadling. This allows the weaver to change horses in mid-stream as it were, weaving a diamond, following it with a tabby section, throwing in a line of dots, all within the scope of the same draft. Some very interesting patterns have emerged in the history of weaving when a weaver forgot to change the tie-up or treadled out of order.