Let's start with just one draft, because -- while these principles can apply to many designs -- let's just look at a point-twill design, which happens to be one of my favorite weaving patterns.
It's a historic 14-shaft draft, fondly known as "The Earl," derived from a tablecloth that was used as the canvas for a 1626 painting of the Earl of Mar in Scotland. (To read the original 2020 post about "The Earl," click here.)
Above is the original Gebrochene pattern (in German that means "broken," while in English we call is Ms and Ws). Marjie Thompson, master weaver and lover of historical patterns, shared the WIF with me some time ago. Thank you, Marjie!
But not everyone has 14 shafts on their loom, right?
"Shaft envy" is what weavers call it. What can you do if you love this design but you have just 8 shafts? The answer is to "downsize" the threading, tieup, and treadling, following the lines of the original 14-shaft threading but systematically reducing the peaks and valleys as best we can by using a ratio for each twill line (or block, depending on how you want to define your terms). And that ratio may have to vary across the threading. It gets complicated.
In keeping with that explanation, here's what the Earl might look like on 8 shafts.
Not bad, eh? Not quite as ornate as the original design, of course, which is what happens when you're weaving with fewer shafts. But it's a pretty good adaptation, in my view.
So how to do this? Since the design is tromp as writ (treadled as threaded), all one has to do is reduce the ups and downs of the threading to fit into 8 shafts, then repeat the threading in the treadling and create a tieup that mimics the original.
Let's start with the first twill line. For the 14-shaft version, you have a descending twill line, from upper right to lower left, which can easily be reduced from 14 to 8 shafts.
Original twill line on 14 shafts
Same twill line reduced to 8 shafts. This is the easy part ;o)
For the second motif, forming a "V," the original threading has a descent and an ascent of 6 shafts each, beginning at shaft 14, descending to shaft 9, and then ascending back to shaft 14. To keep the draft within 8 shafts, I began the "V" at shaft 8 and then descended to shaft 5 and back up to 8. That means the "ratio" is now 6 shafts reduced to 4 shafts -- not quite following the ratio of 14 shafts to 8 shafts, but creating a "V" in twill that looks like the original pattern.
The Earl on 14 "V" threading (second motif from the right in original threading).
6 ends going down, then going back up
The "V" motif (aka descending point twill block) reduced to 8 shafts
When I downsize a pattern -- this may not be true for all weavers -- I'm not looking to maintain an exact ratio for every block in the threading, as if 14 to 8 would be the rule throughout. (Besides, it just won't work out mathematically, wbecause sometimes you would have to round up or down accordingly in your numbers.) More important, in my view, is to try to follow the original silhouette of the draft. So, for this portion of the threading, a 6-shaft descent in the original 14-shaft threading becomes a 4-shaft descent in the 8-shaft version.
Moving on to the next descending and then ascending twill motif: the next twill line in the original descends 10 shafts beginning on shaft 14. I "translated" that for 8 shafts so that the line twill began at shaft 8, which is the top (as with the original design) and descended 6 shafts. Again, the ratio differs from the original 14 to 8 -- in this case, the ratio is 10 to 6. So I'm adhering to the form of the design rather than exactly to the numbers.
On 14 shafts, the third twill block descends from shaft 14 to shaft 5
On 8 shafts, the third twill block descends from shaft 8 to shaft 3
The next twill line, ascending from the right to the left: the design rises 5 shafts in the original and 3 shafts in the 8-shaft adaptation. And so on...
Are you beginning to see a method to the madness here? Basically, you want to preserve the overall form of the threading. This means you don't have to be precise as much as you have to be painterly, you might say, creating a simpler line that follows a similar shape of the original, but with shallower ascents and descents.
I could continue describing the pattern adaptations, but I think that you get the idea.
The bigger challenge is when you want to reduce a complex design on 14 shafts to just 4 shafts. It can be done, certainly, but you lose a lot of detail.
Here's how one could design The Earl on 4 shafts.
It's not recognizable, you might say. Others might tell you that it's an argument for buying an 8-shaft loom!
And yet... it is an Ms and Ws pattern, with interesting motifs throughout, worth weaving into a scarf or a tea towel. If you look back at the threading for the original, you'll see that this 4-shaft version does follow the hills and valleys of the original threading, even though much is lost in the fine details of the pattern.
I invite other weavers to comment on their own methods of adapting a draft to fewer shafts. Someone else might have a more exacting approach, for certain. (Perhaps someone really savvy could use AI.) And certainly some designs may lend themselves better or worse to a reduction in shafts. In any event, the approach I've outlined works well for me.
Thanks for reading!
Here's to John Erskine, 2nd Earl of Mar, painted by Adam de Colone, 1626.
(Still, we're more interested in the canvas.)
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