Weaverly

Alice Schlein

recent posts

Category: Network Drafting

  • Freezing

    It’s not as cold as in other parts of the country, just enough to get my attention. I’m in between warps, but to keep my circulation going, I played around with some 8-shaft drafts on the computer this morning. This one I entitled freezing.wif. It actually looks like icicles to me. There are a lot…

  • The Woven Pixel – 20 Years

    It’s been 20 years since the publication of The Woven Pixel: Designing for Jacquard And Dobby Looms Using Photoshop® (see sidebar). Bhakti Ziek and I, at opposite sides of the country, thought it was important to document our individual explorations in digital weaving and make our joint efforts available to the weaving community. We worked…

  • Eight and Sixteen

    Further explorations of network drafting with initials greater tnan straight 4-end. In this first example, for 8 shafts, I have used a point twill as the initial: 1-2-3-4-3-2.The resulting threading is tromped as writ, and the tieup has no floats longer than 2. Maximum float length in the resulting draft is 5. The same process…

  • Playing With Point Twill

    I spend hours playing with point twill threadings, mostly because I find them easy to thread on an 8 shaft loom. In the following illustration I show three stages in one of my experiments. Read these diagrams from right to left. First is a point twill threading with a treadling developed on a point twill…

  • Four Leaf Clovers

    I’ll bet you didn’t know that four leaf clovers can be blue. Insert smiley face. This draft for eight shafts was created using the principles of network drafting and amalgamation. To learn more about these topics, check out the online class I’ve created in partnership with LoftyFiber. The class is self-paced and contains many hours…

  • Conundrum

    Here’s the puzzle: whether to buy more yarn and weave/stitch/sew to make more stuff which then has to find a place, or to remake/reuse what I already have stored. And here’s the other part of the puzzle. There are still only 24 hours in each day (at last count). What takes priority? Time at the…

  • On the Fringe

    I am fascinated by weather maps and find unexpected beauty in wind patterns especially. How can anyone resist this morning’s map off the Carolina coast (as long as you are warm and dry, as I hope you are)? Yesterday I cut off a finished warp, and machine washed & dried it after separating the individual…

  • Working With a Rosepath Initial

    You’ll need some distance to make those dinnerplate-sized circles appear. Or just squint a little. 8/4 cotton warp & weft at 15 epi and ppi.

  • Trying New Initials for Network Drafting

    When plotting your pattern lines on a network, whether for warp or weft, you needn’t be limited to straight lines, such as 1-2-3-4. Why not try initials such as point twills, rosepath, etc. In fact, any combinations that work together as warp/weft combinations on a given number of shafts will work as initials in a…