Designing doubleweave

I spent this morning playing with doubleweave design, and rapidly discovered that Fiberworks’ limitation of “only” 64 treadles was a serious limiting factor in what I wanted to do.  So I moved into Photoshop, and spent about an hour generating presets for doubleweave (thanks to Pat Stewart for showing me how!).  Then I started fiddling around with Photoshop.

(Warning: this is a long and fairly technical post.  If you aren’t into Photoshop design in weaving, feel free to skip it.)

Here’s what I did:

First, I took my profile draft and separated it into two layers, one for the white and one for the black.  I colored the white layer green for easier visibility:

Then I made layer 2 (the green layer) invisible, and selected a section in the black layer (figure 1).  I filled that section with the chosen preset (figure 2).  Then I made the green layer visible and the formerly-black layer invisible, and filled the green parts with the second preset (figures 3, 4).  Finally, I made both layers visible again (figure 5) to produce the finished liftplan.

I did it this way because I wanted control over each section of the liftplan.  I wanted to be able to fill one section with 1/3 twills on top, one section with 2/2 twills on top, and one section with 3/1 twills on top.  Using layers rather than the magic wand enabled me to select each section separately, without a whole lot of fiddling.  Here’s a photo of the final result, which has three different patterns done up in sections:

The first section has 1/3 twill, warp A and weft C on top, alternating with warp B and weft D on top.  The second section is the same, but with 2/2 twills, and the third section is the same, but with 3/1 twills.  Totally different effects, same threading, same warp/weft combination.

I don’t think I’ll use this particular drawdown for my shawls since the changes are so dramatic (I was hoping for a subtler effect), but I think the method is interesting, which is why I’ve shared it here.

We have now received all the RSVPs for the wedding – it’s looking like it will be smaller than expected, about 57 people rather than 75.  We’re a bit disappointed that so many people can’t make it, especially the older relatives suffering from health problems, but on the plus side, we’ll get to spend more time with the people who are coming!  (And I have fewer bookmarks to make!)