After playing Chocolatier for way too long this morning, I got to messing around with something I’ve wanted to understand for awhile, network drafted huck lace. Out came my trusty copy of Network Drafting: An Introduction, and off I went!
I actually wanted to play around with tie-up and treadling, rather than using the ribbon method. I was curious what would happen with different tie-ups – how they would affect the shapes, etc.
So I started with a very simple design line, a set of arcs which ought to produce circles and X’s with a diagonal tie-up. When the line in the tie up goes from SW to NE corners of the diagram, it should produce an X, and when it goes from the NW to SE corners of the diagram, it should produce an “O”.
And this is in fact what happened:
And here is the SW-NE version:
They look quite similar, but the X’s and O’s are inverted, as you’d expect.
This is more obvious if you use both diagonal lines together:
Now the lines are superimposed on each other. I rather like this effect.
Then I tried it with a semirandom tie-up (still compatible with huck lace structure) and all hell broke loose:
It’s pretty, but I’m still trying to understand how it relates to the threading/treadling and what I had come to think of as the “base” pattern. I think to understand it more I’ll have to take simpler geometric variations from the basic designs I started with, and morph them gradually to see what changes.
Neat stuff, though! Huck lace is different from twill and satin (the structures I’d played with before) because the network isn’t a simple repeat. Instead, the initial is 6 ends long and with height 24 – threads 1,3,4,6 are entirely deterministic and 2,5 are the pattern threads, which can be threaded on any of the 24 shafts that fit huck lace structure. In practice it comes out on shafts 1,O,1, 2, E, 2 where O is an odd-numbered shaft and E is an even-numbered shaft.
This makes the network more complex to set up – I wound up having to specify each individual thread by hand, using WeaveIt Pro because it has better hand-drafted network drafting tools than Fiberworks PCW (which is what I use most of the time). But it is a lot of fun and quite gratifying to see what happens with a more unusual network.
No plans to weave this up anytime soon; already hip deep in queued projects! But as a gedanken experiment (thought experiment), still fun.
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For huck designs in FiberworksPCW you can go with profile drafting and block substitution. Or make the design in the available pattern shafts (3 through 24 in your case) and then interleave that with the required threads on the first 2.
I would start with a freehand design in the threading using a draft for 22 shafts. Then use Warp/ Redraw on Network/ Initial 2 and it will become an odd/even sequence. You can always fix up that line if you see places it is not perfect, just keep it odd/even. Save that. Then give yourself a bit of the sequence for the first 2 shafts and copy it. Make the draft for 24 shafts and move the odd/even part up by 2. Interleave Paste.
One nice thing about working this way is that you can test designs with the pattern part and see how it looks with various options. An odd/even sequence on 22 shafts is useful for other structures as well as huck.
Woven huck lace depends on deflections for effect. I prefer the look when there are areas of plain weave and areas (not small pieces) of the huck lace interlacement with the spots. Look at photos in some articles. I think there is a Best of Weaver’s book on lace with good photos.
Bonnie Inouye
Tien–
I think your explorations in networked huck are interesting and innovative. You and Marg Coe both have very analytical approaches to weaving, and it’s a pleasure for seat-of-the-pants weavers like me to have a peek into your brains. Keep us posted on any further explorations. It’s fascinating when someone breaks out of the traditional boxes with structures, as you’re doing here with huck.
Ruth