I made my first essay into the world of designing diversified plain weave with Photoshop today. It was surprisingly easy to figure out. I looked up the basic tie-up/treadling in Carol Strickler’s A Weaver’s Book of Eight Shaft Patterns, converted it to a liftplan, saw the basic pattern, and adapted Marg Coe’s method from her book Fit 2 Be Tied to use that pattern overlaid with an image. (OK, that sounded pretty complicated. But it wasn’t hard…one thing flowed from another, and the whole process only took about fifteen minutes to work out. If you’re familiar with Marg’s techniques, it was a piece of cake.)
At any rate, I chose the traditional software engineer’s mantra for setting up something new, and lo and behold:
This was quite simple to work up, and I’m really looking forward to designing the pattern for the robe. (I am sternly resisting the temptation to use the words “Sleep in!” as the robe pattern. A little too cutesie for me, though pretty funny.)
I’ve also realized that I miscalculated the amount of cotton chenille required; I hadn’t realized that there are twice as many fine threads as thick threads! It looks like it will only take about six pounds, which seems a lot more reasonable. Of course, I ordered a total of 12 pounds, so perhaps I need two bathrobes? Maybe I could make Mike one, for “his and hers” versions. (Strongly resisting the temptation to make one say “Get up!” and the other “Sleep in!”, to reflect our different approaches to morning.)
