Weave Structure

Day 115: Now that you have some idea how a loom works, let's examine some of the weave structures you can create. Then I want you to look at the fabrics in your home. I think you'll gain a greater appreciation of what can be done simply by laying one set of threads acoss another.

The upper left photo shows plain weave, also known as tabby. It's your basic over-and-under weave, one over one, similar to weaving a basket. However, the term "basket weave" is usually used by weavers to signify multiple threads in the same ratio, i.e., two over two, three over three and so on. Did you make potholders on a Looper Loom when you were in grade school? That was tabby weave. The piece in the upper right corner is also tabby weave, although if you zoom in, you will see slight gaps separating groups of three threads. The threads came through the heddles as "one up, one down," but because the linen asked for a finer sett (45 ends per inch) and my smallest reed is 15 dents per inch, I had to pull them through in groups. This separation would be less obvious once the piece was washed and "fulled" to plump up the fibers. The sample came from my weaving files; the finished pieces were given as a gift to some fortunate soul whose name I did not record (bad me).

Center top is a piece of krokbragd woven on a rigid heddle. As mentioned in an earlier post, this is a weft-faced weave. The warp used in this piece was 8/4 cotton, aka "rug warp." The 8 denotes the weight of each strand and the 4 indicates that four strands were plied together to make the final product. You will see numbers like this on any yarn designed for weaving. Most of my weaving is done with 8/2 cotton with a softer twist. The tablecloth (center left) is an example of 8/2. Note the diagonal structure of the weave. This is known as a four-shaft twill.

The center image showcases a bedspread woven in overshot. To many weavers, overshot is the ultimate test of a weaver's skill. The heavier fiber (here, a green wool) floats above a background of cotton tabby. The weaver makes one pass with the background material, then one with the pattern thread, then another background pass to bind the pattern thread in place, then another pattern thread throw. Meticulous attention must be paid to the sequence, and also to the firmness with which each thread is beaten into place. The goal is to achieve perfectly square repeats. Below it (center bottom, blue on white) is a related structure, called simply "A German Pattern" of block weave in the Handweaver's Pattern Book (the bible of weaving). Again, the pattern should form a perfect square.

Right center is "Summer and Winter," woven in heavy cotton. Summer and Winter weaves are reversible, the back showing the exact opposite of the front.

The curious weave in the lower left corner was executed by my mother on a rigid-heddle loom. It was something of a puzzle to me until recently when I discovered one of her books in my library, a book I didn't realize I had. There, to my surprise, was the draft for what she called "little guys." I haven't woven it yet, but it's on my agenda. As a sidebar here, I should mention that my mother did not teach me to weave. We each took it up at roughly the same time. She elected to work on rigid-heddle, and I bought my four-shaft Schacht table loom. Her preference was for heavier fibers and quick results, while I usually settled in for the long term with longer warps and finer threads.

The image in the lower right shows an unusual boundweave technique in which two layers of cloth are woven together to form a double-thick fabric, reversible with the pattern being exactly opposite on the back. It is tedious to weave, to say the least, and not particularly interesting in the end.