What We Wove at Convergence: Echo, Jin, Shadow Weave, Rep, Double Weave, and Even Collapse Fabric

Echo Weave on 8 shafts on a warp of light blue and dark blue 10/2 cotton. 

The weft is 20/2 cotton in golden orange. Woven by Virginia Lee.

You've heard about Echo, which is based on an extended parallel threading that weaves a warp-emphasis fabric with lots of color and strong patterns. But do you know about all the different structures you can weave on the same parallel threading? In addition to Echo, you can weave Jin, Shadow Weave, Rep Weave, Double Weave and even collapse cloth, simply by changing your tieups and treadlings.

I taught a workshop on this subject last week at Convergence, the biennial conference for the Handweavers Guild of America, held this year in Reno, Nevada. "One Warp, Many Structures: An Exploration of Extended Parallel Threading" looked at all the possibilities I mentioned above. To teach this, I designed 9 different patterns -- 3 for 4 shaft looms, 3 for 8 shafts, and 3 for 12 shafts -- and invited students to choose a pattern and wind a warp using two colors of 10/2 pearl cotton. (I also named all of these patterns, using simple descriptions as a mnemonic device -- otherwise I couldn't remember them all!)

Below is a photo essay showing some of the beautiful samples the folks in my workshop created, with brief descriptions for each. It was a visual feast!

Above on left: Echo Weave sample using 8-shaft pattern, "Many Rivers," in light blue and off-white warp yarns. On right: the same pattern, this time in Double Weave, with top layer woven in off-white 10/2 cotton and bottom layer woven in 18/2 merino. The bottom layer fulls with hot water, soap, and agitation, making the top layer collapse and pucker. Woven by Roberta McKinney.

 Echo in the 8-shaft pattern, "Falling Stars," using different colors of weft yarns in 20/2 cotton. 

Note how the the weft color completely changes the color of the fabric. Woven by Teresa Edmisten.

Left to right: Double Weave and Shadow Weave samples woven on 8 shafts in the "Fun House" pattern. 
Woven by Judith Rees.

 Clockwise, starting from top left: Echo,

Double Weave, and Rep Weave on a 4-shaft pattern called "Op Art."  Woven by Diana Abrell.

Rep Weave in the "Fun House" pattern on 8 shafts. Woven by Virginia Lee. 

Shadow Weave on 8 shafts in the "Falling Stars" pattern. I think this was woven 
by Rachelle Weiss -- my apologies for not knowing for certain.

 Above, the 8-shaft "Fun House" pattern on a warp in two shades of blue for warp yarns. 

The red weft creates the impression of 4 different colors in the fabric. Woven by Judith Rees.

The two photos above: front and back of the "Falling Stars" pattern on 8 shafts in Double Weave. 
The warps alternate between a golden yellow and a hand-painted yarn in shades of green and blue. Woven by Sharlet Elms.

The two photos above: front and back of collapse cloth in the 8-shaft "Falling Stars" pattern, woven as Double Weave. The weft alternates between 10/2 cotton in gold (front) and 18/2 merino in purple (back). With washing, soap, and a lot of agitation, the merino fulls on the back, making the layer on the top collapse into pleats. Woven by Sharlet Elms.

"Many Rivers" design woven on 8 shafts. Pictured from top to bottom: 
Echo, Shadow Weave, and Jin. Woven by Virginia Glenn.

Pictured above, clockwise from top left: 8-shaft "Falling Stars" pattern in Shadow Weave, 
Double Weave, Rep Weave, and again in Double Weave. Woven by Ruth Ronan.

Blooming Leaf pattern on 4 shafts woven as Jin. Woven by Sharolene Brunston.

Above, top to bottom: "Fun House" pattern for 8 shafts. The top two samples are woven using a different Echo tieup and treadling from the bottom 4 samples. The bottom 4 samples are all the same tieup and treadling for Echo, but using different colored wefts. The warp yarns are light blue and turquoise. Woven by Carie Kramer.

Thanks for reading! And many thanks to the staff of HGA for putting together another wonderful gathering of the clan!

Sample, Sample, Sample: Echo on 4 Shafts in 10/2 Cotton

The above sample is Echo on 4 shafts in 10/2 cotton, sett at 30 ends per inch. So much to say about the drafts I've been weaving up! If you're a handweaver -- and if you use weaving software -- you know all too well that there can be a world of difference between the drawdown on the screen and the actual handwoven fabric. Which is why we follow the mantra, "Sample, sample, sample."

I started this post with my favorite sample out of some 10 I have woven this month, all in preparation for my workshop this summer at Convergence in Reno. "One Warp, Many Structures" will explore extended parallel threadings and how they allow you to weave a wealth of structures, from Echo to Jin to Rep, Double Weave, and even Shadow Weave and collapse fabric, all on one warp. (Some structures require re-sleying for a denser sett, but all are on the same threading.)

The sample above began with a simple design line which I used as the basis for a twill threading -- which I then turned into a parallel threading with an interval of 2. Red and black warp ends were on an extended parallel threading (that is, every other thread, so that they weave in opposing sheds). I wove it with a 2-2 twill tieup using a 20/2 cotton weft in black.

No drawdowns to show because they are part of the workshop. (I don't want to give everything away beforehand.) But here are a few more samples to give you an idea of what we'll cover.

Another treading in Echo, same warp.

And here are the above two samples treadled as Jin, simply by adding tabby (shown in their respective order).

I really love knowing that this is done on 4 shafts. So many possibilities. The point of the workshop is to broaden your depth and breadth of understanding of how to maximize a warp threaded for Echo (or extended parallel threadings, choose your terminology, as Echo itself is a very big umbrella).

Here is the same structure as Double Weave, re-sleyed at 48 epi and woven on a networked treadling. Because it's a two-shuttle weave, the front and back are quite different.

Then there's Shadow Weave, (which I'm not showing because I haven't yet woven a sample). And finally Rep, which I don't find as appealing, but perhaps it's just because I needed to do a bigger sample:

I have another set of samples, these based on Blooming Leaf. Here's the first of the set:

I have many more samples to do -- at least one more on 4 shafts, 3 more on 8 shafts, and hopefully one or two on 12. Until next post, thanks for reading!

Looking Ahead to Convergence 2018: Blooming Leaf on 4 Shafts Using an Extended Parallel Threading

Let's start with the Blooming Leaf pattern -- a classic Overshot pattern we all know and love. I hope to use this structure in an Echo Weave workshop I'll teach next summer. 

It's a 2 1/2-day workshop called "One Warp, Many Structures: An Exploration of Extended Parallel Threading," taking place at Convergence July 6-12 in Reno, Nevada. (Some background: Every two years, the Handweavers' Guild of America sponsors Convergence, a week-long conference that draws weavers and fiber artists from North America and beyond. Go if you can!)

We'll be working on 4 and 8 shafts -- and more, if people wish. For this blog post, I'm focusing on a 4-shaft extended parallel threading, just to give you a taste of what the workshop involves. (Extended Parallel Threading is the key to Echo Weave.)

Here's the basic drawdown we're starting with, based on the Blooming Leaf pattern from Marguerite Porter Davison.

I left out the tabby because we are not weaving Overshot -- but otherwise the 2/2 twill treadling remains the same.

To create an extended parallel threading, you have to double the number of warp ends. (In Fiberworks Silver, which is the program I use, you click on the heading that says "Warp" and then "Parallel Repeat" in the drop-down menu. Then you click on "Extended Parallel," shafts shift by 2, and "Apply.") This way, the threading for 4, 3, 2, 1 becomes 4, 2, 3, 1, 2, 4, 1, 3 -- that is, every thread has its "parallel" in a pattern that is 2 shafts above it. (The secret is that, on just 4 shafts, the parallel for shaft 3 is shaft 1 -- because there is no shaft 5. Because there is no shaft 5, the next shaft "up" after shaft 4 is shaft 1, and so on.)

This is what you get with a parallel threading for Blooming Leaf, with the shafts shifting by 2.

You can still see the Blooming Leaf -- but there are long warp floats and the pattern looks squished vertically. That's because we are using the original treadling from Davison. To design a treadling, I look at the original treadling as a design line -- really, as a profile for the treadling we want to use in our weaving. For each pick, I substituted a 4-pick Crackle block. So the first pick -- treadle 4 on our drawdown -- becomes 4 picks: 4, 3, 2, 3. The next pick -- treadle 3 on the drawdown -- becomes 3, 2, 1, 2. Treadle 2 becomes 2, 1, 4, 1. And so on. Here's the result, which I describe as the Blooming Leaf pattern in Echo Weave treadled as Crackle.

Really, this is where the workshop begins! I just wanted to show you how you get there. (Please rest assured that, at least for me, these designs do not come easily. I spend way too much time, it seems, clicking and changing and correcting errors in Fiberworks before I can begin to wrap my head around what is going on and how to come up with a good design.)

There is lots more to the workshop, because everyone will start with a drawdown using an extended parallel threading and then weave Turned Taquete, rep, Shadow Weave and Double Weave -- all on the same threading. That's the beauty of extended parallel threadings: you can use two colors (or more) in the warp for a stunning interplay of color and form and structure.

So here's what the Blooming Leaf pattern looks like in Turned Taquete. There are no floats longer than 3 ends (while there are 4-end-long floats in the Echo Weave) and you get a very tidy, drapey fabric, which is why I like this structure.

And here it is in Shadow Weave. Pretty subtle, but you see the leaf as kind of embossed pattern.

There will be lots more designs to come, as I begin sampling what we will weave in the workshop. Thanks for reading, and see you in Reno!

Designing with Echo: An Advancing Point Twill Makes It Easy

Pictured above: a drawdown for Echo on 8 shafts. While the design appears to have four colors, there are just two colors in the warp and one in the weft. The design is based on a draft of mine that I call "Fun House" because the swirls and swoops remind me of images in a fun-house mirror.

How do you design something like this? Let's start at the very beginning -- which, with computer drafting, means a design line. Here's the one I started with.

Simple enough, right? Concave and convex curves and then curving lines. Based on this, I created an advancing point twill threading, substituting a point-twill block of four or five ends for each square on the design line. Here's what that looked like when finished.

If you look at the first square in the upper-right-hand corner of the design line, this corresponds to the first five ends of the point-twill in the threading (threaded on shafts 8, 7, 6, 5, and 6). The second square in the upper-right-hand corner of the design line becomes the next five ends on the threading (shafts 7, 6, 5, 4, and 5). So every square in the design line represents a block of point twill threading.

Next, I created a parallel threading, so that I could weave Echo. (A parallel threading on eight shafts usually means that every thread in the original single threading will now have a parallel thread -- usually 4 ends above it.) Here's what the advancing point twill threading above looks like.

You see the parallel lines? That's part of the technique known as Echo. And here's what the entire draft looks like when woven using the pattern of the original point-twill threading, with a twill tie-up of 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2.

There is a long threading pattern, which is hard to see, so here's a detail.

I like it -- and you may too, if you're still reading this! How did I create a parallel threading so that there are now two lines of point twill? This is easily done on Fiberworks by going to the drop-down menu under "Warp," clicking "Parallel Repeat," and then clicking "Extended Parallel," shafts shift by 4, and "Apply."

The original point-twill draft looks great on its own, tromp as writ. So why go to all this computer-drafting trouble? 

If you're interested in learning more about Echo threading and color interaction, Marian Stubenitsky's book, Weaving with Echo and Iris, is an invaluable resource. Many of her designs use four parallel threadings in four different colors to achieve what she calls "iridescence." (Add the additional color of the weft and the results are truly beautiful.) Although my design uses just two colors in the warp and one in the weft, the result is a four-color fabric -- and it's just a one-shuttle weave!

Echo and extended parallel threadings are the subject of my 2 1/2-day workshop at Convergence 2018 in Reno. The official title is "One Warp, Many Structures: An Exploration of Extended Parallel Threadings." The workshop begins on July 10.

Here's another variation of this drawdown, just to pique your interest.

And here is the same draft, this time treadled as Jin (aka Turned Taqueté).

If you've read this far, you need to sign up for the workshop ;o) General registration begins December 6. Thanks for reading.