network drafting | Tien Chiu's Blog

April 2, 2011 by Tien Chiu

Drafting and redrafting

I’m getting closer to a draft I like. I’ve been playing with network drafting, setting up a basic line in warp and weft and then redrawing it on various networks to see how that affects the line.

Here is my basic line:

Basic threading and treadling line, establishing the basic pattern

And here it is, redrawn on three different networks:

Same pattern, warp and weft redrawn on a straight draw six-end initial

Same line, redrawn on a straight draw four-end initial

The same line, redrawn on a four-shaft, six-end rosepath initial

This is instructive. The shape of the line, not the chosen network, determines the overall shape of the result. The network chosen affects the smoothness of the edges and the texture of the overall piece, and the tie-up determines how it is shaded in. (I think.)

I’m not 100% happy with my results yet – the parallel snaky lines are too similar/parallel, I’m looking for something much more organic. I think I will either have to change the shape of the line a little more radically or else introduce some reversals into the line…more fiddling is needed.

I was really hoping to get the threading completed this weekend, but given where I am and the rest of my weekend to-do list, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen. Well, take things one step at a time. Hopefully I can get my draft finished and the loom threaded by the end of next week.

August 8, 2010 by Tien Chiu

Waffling

By dint of hard labor (4 hours on Friday and another 6 hours on Saturday), I got the warp threaded, sleyed, tied on, debugged, and (ta-daa!) wove the first two yards of samples yesterday, all in variants of waffle weave. I cut the sample in half and wet-finished half of it, though I didn’t press it since I was after a collapse effect.

Here’s what I got:

Plain weave with white 60/2 silk weft, beaten firmly. Warp is black 60/2 silk sett at 40 epi.

You can see that there is (as expected) close to no collapse here. I think the sample looks darker because the warp and weft collapse into one another a bit, “averaging out” the color. It’s a pity, as I really loved the silvery look of the freshly woven fabric. Pressing might also help; I need to try that later.

Next up, waffle weave, both as an allover pattern and as a networked pattern, also with firmly beaten 60/2 silk as weft:

Waffle weave, networked and allover pattern, with white 60/2 silk weft, beaten firmly. Warp is black 60/2 silk sett at 40 epi.

Here you can see more collapse, but not as much as I had hoped; I was hoping for a really puffy look, but what I got was a bit of unevenness. I suppose that’s to be expected as the waffle cells were not huge and there is still quite a bit of plain weave. Notice that the sample is getting narrower, too, because of the collapse. Especially in the “pure” waffle weave section.

Next, I tried weaving it with an overtwist wool yarn that I got from Laura Fry. First, I beat it firmly:

Plain weave and waffle weave, networked and allover pattern, with white overtwisted wool weft, beaten firmly. Warp is black 60/2 silk sett at 40 epi.

The collapse is fairly dramatic and even the plain weave sections are collapsing substantially, suggesting that the 40 epi sett is still a little wide to produce a balanced weave with the overtwist yarn – thus giving it room to collapse in on itself.

The collapse in the waffle section is even more dramatic, but – zoom in to look at the closeup – most of the definition is gone from the waffle cells. A pity; I thought they were attractive.

And, finally, the overtwist yarn, beaten very softly to produce a very open cloth:

Plain weave and waffle weave, networked and allover pattern, with white overtwisted wool weft, beaten loosely. Warp is black 60/2 silk sett at 40 epi.

Here the collapse (as expected) is super dramatic – over 50% – but, alas, you can barely make out any pattern.

I am guessing that using a felting wool weft would probably result in similar results. Today, if I am sufficiently motivated, I may try weaving up a sample with a 1/22 mohair yarn (a trifle larger than the 60/2 silk warp) and wet-finishing it in the washing machine. But today is dye day, so I’m not sure I will get to it!

Plan for today: dye the first batch of Lanaset samples in “pure” colors. This means mixing up stock solutions for each of the pure colors (colors that are not mixes of other colors), then dyeing skeins of yarn at various depths of shade. Per Karen’s assignment, each color should be dyed at 0.1%, 0.5%, 1.0%, and 2.5%, with navy and black at 0.5%, 1.0%, 2.5%, and 5%. That comes out to 4 samples for each color.

Now, I am dyeing the 5 gram sample skeins in pint mason jars, and I can fit 17 of them into the electric frying pan that I use for samples. So I can basically do four colors at once, assuming I can keep up with all the stirring that needs to be done. (I think I can, but have to experiment to find out!) So that is one set of dyeing work.

I also want to dye some 12,000 ypp tencel/silk yarn in jewel tones to use as weft with this warp. This means using a different dye, since tencel is a cellulose fiber. I will dye this using Cibacron F. Since I am not especially concerned about reproducible color here, I can use a looser methodology than with the Lanasets. But it still means using winding (and tying!) more skeins, a different type of dye, mixing up different dyestocks, and somehow trying to keep track of all of this while dyeing the other stuff. Maybe not such a good idea! But I really do want to get it dyed as well.

And, finally, ten pounds of cherries are still staring at me reproachfully from the fridge. Today is cherry pie day, I think, and maybe a batch of brandied sour cherries, or some more candied sour cherries.

All in all, makes for a busy day. Better get started!

August 6, 2010 by Tien Chiu

Designing the liftplans

I’m now about 2/3 done with the threading, and expect to finish threading and sleying on Saturday (I still have lots more cherries to pit!). Then, of course, I will have to debug the warp (I already know that I missed one thread somewhere), so I don’t expect to get down to serious weaving on Sunday morning.

However, I am already designing drafts. I have decided to use the same basic pattern in the liftplan, but different weave structures. This is pretty easy to do using the techniques outlined in The Woven Pixel and The Liftplan Connection (the former by Alice Schlein and Bhakti Ziek, the latter by Alice Schlein).

Here is my base pattern:

base pattern for the network drafted liftplan

And here it is, filled in with the weave structures:

(This is waffle weave against a plain weave background, by the way.)

And, finally, this is what happens after you cut and paste into the liftplan, and combine it with the threading:

basic sampler liftplan waffle vs plainweave — network drafted draft, waffle vs plainweave

The nice thing about doing this using a Photoshop file is that you can use the same basic pattern and just change the pattern fills, thus making it very quick to create more files. Here, for example, is the same pattern in honeycomb vs. a 3/1 twill:

network drafted sampler, honeycomb vs. 3-1 twill

This took me about 10 minutes to generate, including creating the pattern for the honeycomb (which I think is right, but need to check later this morning). Detailed instructions on how to do this are in The Liftplan Connection and The Woven Pixel. (Both of which are well worth buying – and I own both – but if you are designing for a dobby loom (as opposed to a jacquard loom), The Liftplan Connection is a LOT cheaper than The Woven Pixel and is written primarily for dobby loom weavers, so I’d start there.)

This also shows pretty clearly that if you start with the same basic template, you wind up with essentially the same (large-scale) pattern; only the weave structures that fill in the pattern are different. This is important to me because I want to weave up a sampler; using identical patterns will tell me how each weave structure behaves in that pattern.

I have now looked into a couple of structures. Waffle weave works on an 8-end repeat. Honeycomb sort of works, but the cells are so small that I’m dubious whether it will show clearly, especially at 40 epi. M’s and O’s don’t work – too many ends. I’m pretty sure that spider weave will work, so I’ll try that next. Huck works (although it requires some adaptation, since the threading units are 3 or 5 ends), and technically I could manage some overshot, but it really requires more threads to look good, I think. All fodder for experimentation!

Also I think I am starting to understand the power and limits of network drafting. It allows you to create an uber-pattern of one weave structure contrasting with one or more other weave structures, BUT you must use a number of shafts that is substantially less than your “regular” number of shafts, and all the weave structures must be weavable on the same threading. The end result is that each individual pattern is less complex than it might otherwise be, but since you have a larger pattern going, this is probably not such a bad thing.

August 4, 2010 by Tien Chiu

Network drafted threading

I decided to play around with network drafting this morning, creating some threading/treadling patterns to see what combinations of threading/treadling result in which patterns. The three main threading types I tried were the ones that Alice has in her book (Network Drafting, available on her website): turtles (a pattern that starts and ends on the same line when repeated), snails (a pattern that starts and ends on opposite sides (vertically) when repeated), and fleas (disconnected lines). I combined these with a couple of patterns in the liftplan to see what would happen. The one I liked best (for my current purposes, anyway) was this one:

"Turtles" network drafted pattern with various liftplans

The reason I like it is that it is blocky. Network drafting can have all sorts of interesting “echoes”, which work fine in a simple pattern (like twills) where what you’re showing off is the network drafted pattern. But I want to try some patterns with more visual interest, and what I’m after is really large patches of a single weave structure. I also want smoother curves/lines than I would get by using a block threading.

The second reason why I’m looking for big patches of a single weave structure is that I want to play with collapse effects, and those will be diluted if I’m dealing with thin lines and dots. One of the things I want to try is combining, say, polka dots of waffle weave with a plain weave background. If I’m correct, the waffle weave polka dots should collapse inwards, giving an interesting texture. (I could conceivably enhance this by using a shrinking yarn as weft: the plain weave sections wouldn’t have room to shrink, but the waffle weave would!)

The final advantage of this particular threading (or, indeed, any networked threading on an 8-end initial) is that I can weave any 8-shaft, straight-draw pattern on it. So if I want to weave “just” honeycomb, or “just” plainweave, or a huck lace pattern that fits on 8 threads, etc. I can do it across the entire width of the cloth. So I can play around with a LOT of different patterns.

Next on the agenda: figure out what structures I want to play with in conjunction with which liftplan patterns (circles, lines, etc.), and what yarns I want to try with each combination. Fortunately this is not nearly as laborious as it sounds; I think what I will wind up doing is creating a single file, similar to the one I posted above, and changing around the “black” and “white” sections to different weave structures. So I would get polka dots, angular lines, curves, etc. in waffle weave or whatever weave structure I’m after.

And, of course, I’ll need to start threading. I plan to tackle that this weekend. I still have 16 lbs of cherries to prep and cook! I made a big batch of sour-cherry jam yesterday, and will start work on a cherry pie tonight – anything left over from that will go to make brandied sour cherries and candied sour cherries. Once the sour cherries finish candying (probably around mid-August), it will be time to make fruitcake!!

Dyeing is on hold until I get the latest batch of yarn back from the skeiner. Probably won’t start up again until early next week, at which point I will begin dyeing solid colors from the “pure” (unmixed) colors of Lanaset/Sabraset dyes.

This new set of weaving experiments is really exciting. I can’t wait to get started!

Finally, one unfortunate note: I accidentally deleted my Subscribe2 plugin in upgrading the system. This means that if you were subscribed to my blog, you aren’t anymore. I’m trying to get it working again, but meanwhile, please check the site periodically (or subscribe to the RSS feed) for updates.

September 2, 2009 by Tien Chiu

Ocean Sunset II

This was a variation on the Ocean Sunset shawl, except that I made it with a knitted blank!

Knitted blanks are an interesting concept taught to me by Nancy Roberts of Machine Knitting to Dye For. You knit up a rectangular piece of fabric, dye it, and then unravel it and reuse the yarn. Using this technique you can get gradual color changes WITHOUT having to dye a zillion skeins, and you can get other effects as well (see the “Crazy Colors” shawl for an example). In this case, I dyed a single blank a gradual change from yellow to red and back again to see what would happen when I wove it up!

I am of mixed minds about this shawl. I don’t like the boldness of the lines near the bottom of the shawl, but I like the idea of the gradual color change. I think I may try this idea again, but with a simpler pattern.

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