Name Drafts Aren't Just for Overshot....

 

Above is a name draft using -- why not? -- the name Michelangelo, employing an Echo threading and a twill tieup and treading. A name draft is a fun and fairly easy way to design a weaving pattern, working with the name of a friend or loved one or, in the case of Michelangelo, an icon, as a sort of coded message in your weaving. You can achieve this either by hand using graph paper or using weaving software.

(A bit of self-promotion here: I will be teaching a one-day workshop on this subject, called "Name Drafts, 8 Shafts, and Parallel Threadings," at Convergence 2026 at the Sheraton New Orleans in New Orleans, LA, next August 12-16. Registration will begin soon, but the schedule hasn't come out yet, so keep checking back on the link above for updated information. The subject of this post is NOT how to create name drafts with Echo threadings because I wouldn't want to give away the gist of the workshop. However, if you keep reading, I will walk you step-by-step in creating a name draft using deflected-double-weave techniques.)

As for name drafting itself, let's define our terms. We'll start with an impeccable source, Madelyn van der Hoogt, who wrote in Handwoven magazine on January 22, 2018, "A name draft is an arbitrary way to create a threading draft (usually threading, though it can be used for blocks or for treadling orders, too). There are many ways to do name drafting, but one is to assign a letter to each shaft: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, E = 1, F = 2, etc., for four shafts, for example. Then you just thread the number corresponding to the letters from words or phrases. Naturally, this doesn't necessarily give you a threading that can be used, so then you adjust. Most often name drafting is used for overshot."

But not just for overshot, as you can see from my Echo example above. As Marg Coe points out in the introduction to her online course, "What's in a NameDraft?", "Traveling outside name-drafting with traditional overshot we will design shadow weave, deflected double weave, double weave, rep, Corris effects...." All these designs are possible using name-draft techniques.

Sneak preview: In the upcoming issue of Handwoven magazine, I have used a name draft to create a deflected-double-weave design based on the name of my beloved grandfather, George Relyea. (I won't give away any more of the story, which is the "Yarn Lab" project in the next issue -- and it brings some exciting news! 'Nuf said.)

Here's how George Relyea weaves up in deflected double weave on 8 shafts. I really like the design!

So how do you do this? I work with Fiberworks (the Mac version, which varies slightly from the PC version, but these instructions should get you there on either system).

Step 1) Pick a name. (Please note that some names do work better than others, so, as Madelyn writes, you have to make adjustments.)

Step 2) In the "Tools" drop-down menu, (found at the top right side of the drawdown page as you begin), click on "Namedraft" and then type the name in the box provided. No spaces, no initial caps. The name-draft window gives you all sorts of choices, but for the purposes of this tutorial, just leave it as is. (You can experiment to your heart's content after you've learned the basics.)

Step 3) Click on "Accept" (making sure you have one color in the warp and another in the weft), and there you have it! An overshot-looking design (more like turned overshot, but anyway) that's built on the name you chose. 

Here's what the beginning of my name draft looks like on my computer screen.

Step 4) On the "Tools" menu, click on "Block Substitution." Then click on "Classic Weaves," and  "Overshot, Multishaft." Then click "Accept." My draft now looks like this.

Step 5) Using the shaft-shuffling tool at the top of the Fiberworks window (the one that has a single arrow pointing both up and down with a horizontal line going through it), use the cursor to change shaft 3 to become 5 and shaft 4 (which is now on shaft 3) to become shaft 6. This means that your threading blocks always alternate between shafts 1 or 2 and shafts 3 or 4. This is based on the Stubenitsky method of drafting deflected double weave.

Step 6) On the "Tieup" dropdown menu, click on "Shafts and Treadles," change the number of treadles to 8, and then click "Set."

Step 7) Again on the "Treadling" drop-down menu, click on "Weave as drawn in," making sure that you unclick the box for "colors." Then click "Copy Exactly as Drawn." 

Step 8) At this point, your draft will look like a mess, but that's because you need to change the tieup to a deflected-double-weave tieup. These tieups are always boxes of 2 shafts and 2 treadles that are either 1) all black, meaning two adjacent shafts will be lifted together twice in the treadling, 2) all white, meaning that two adjacent shafts will stay down together twice in the treadling, or 3) weaving plain weave.

My tieup looks like this: (Note: To repeat, I'm following the Stubenitsky method in the tieup, in which -- for an 8-shaft draft -- the four shafts and treadles on the bottom left and the four shafts and treadles on the top right are tied up to weave plain weave, while the four shafts and treadles on the top left and the four shafts and treadles on the bottom right weave the pattern, comprising four-unit squares of two shafts and two treadles which are either all black to lift the warp or all white to lower the warp. The plain-weave portions of the tieup are always stationary, while the blocks of 4 black or 4 white can be moved about to alter the pattern.) Here's what my tieup looks like.

Step 9) To see your design as deflected double weave, you need to change the warp colors so that every other block of four warp ends is one color and the adjacent blocks are another color.  And you need once again to click on the "Treadling" dropdown menu, click on "Weave as drawn in," and click on "Copy Exactly as Drawn" so that the colors in your weft alternate block by block as well.

And this is what you get with my name draft.

Not bad for an hour's work, don't you think? And this technique allows you to encode something special, unique, and meaningful to you. Again, if you're interested in learning the full spectrum of possibilities for name drafting, I urge you to check out Marg Coe's free, live course (click here).

Thanks for reading!

My "George Relyea" name draft again, this time with a different tieup.

How to Warp from Back to Front

As I teach workshops here and there, I'm learning that many weavers dress their looms from front to back -- happily so -- or using a hybrid method rather than beaming back to front.

To my way of thinking, because I like to use fine yarns, back to front is the only way to go. Mainly, you avoid that extra pass through the heddles and the raddle, which can abrade the warp and invite knotting and other problems.

So I thought I would blog about a method that I hope most weavers will try at least once, just to see whether it works for them.

BASIC STEPS IN WARPING BACK TO FRONT

(For more information, see Madelyn van der Hoogt’s notes on the Weaving Today website: https://www.interweave.com/article/weaving/warping-back-to-front/)

1) Place a sturdy rod in the uncut end loops near the cross. Attach the rod to the back (warp) beam.

2) Lay two slats length-wise across your loom, inside the shafts (with the heddles moved away to either side), spanning from the breast beam to the warp beam, one on each side of the castle. These slats – I use 1-yard rulers on my table loom – will support the raddle and the lease sticks so that they don’t sag or wobble as you dress the loom.

3) Laying the raddle on top of your slats, affix it to the side arms or base of the loom, wherever you can attach it (I use small bungee cords). Place the lease sticks through the threading cross in your warp, laying the lease sticks on top of the slats. Secure the lease sticks to the sides of the loom between the back beam and the shafts (I run shoelaces through the holes in the lease sticks and then bring the shoelaces around the sides of the loom, tying the ends of the laces together so that the lease sticks are secured). Once the lease sticks are secured so that the warp ends can’t fall off, remove the yarn that secured the cross in the warp.

4) Spread the warp in the raddle.

5) Once the warp is spread in the raddle (with the heddles pushed to the sides and the reed removed), drape the rest of the warp chain through the castle, over the breast beam, and down to the floor in front of the loom.

4) Keeping the lease sticks tied in place behind the castle, begin winding the warp onto the warp beam. If threads tangle at the lease sticks or anywhere else, go to the front of the loom and pull the warp firmly in sections, combing the warp when necessary to smooth out the threads.

For proper beaming, your warp should look like 

the top photo – NOT the bottom photo.

5) As you wind the warp onto the warp beam, begin inserting heavy paper at least 2" wider or warping sticks 2" longer than the warp width to separate the layers of the warp. Continue, winding a complete turn and then tightening each section of the warp, pulling from the front of the loom. Beaming becomes kind of a dance, where you wind on at the back and then move to the front of the loom to tension the warp – back again to wind on and to the front again to tighten the warp. (Unless you’re winding on with a friend, that is!)

6) Thread the loom.

7) Remove the lease sticks (unless you prefer to weave with them in).

8) Sley the reed.

9) Tie the warp onto the front apron rod. 

And then -- weave away! Thanks for reading.

Understanding Turned Taqueté

I think it's Elvis Costello who said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." 

You could say the same about weaving. Writing about weaving is like... painting about cooking. He's making two contradictory points at once, to my thinking: first, that it makes no sense to try to verbalize what is going on -- and second, on the other hand, you may be doing something interesting in the attempt!

Hence, this blog post. 

I'll start with Madelyn van der Hoogt, who defines Taqueté (the unturned structure) as a "weft-faced compound tabby." 

"A weft-faced pattern weave with two or more sets of complementary wefts. Even warp ends separate the weft sets so that one set (color) is on the surface of the cloth and the other(s) on the back. Odd warp ends bind the complementary wefts in alternate (tabby) order, thus the name weft-faced compound tabby, also called taqueté and summer and winter polychrome...."

from A Pocket Dictionary of Weaving Terms for Today's Weavers, by Madelyn van der Hoogt, copyright 1989

In grappling with definitions and drawdowns and actual fabric, I decided to go back to basics, which would be a simple 4-harness threading. It gets clearer and clearer the closer you look. Here's a drawdown for Turned Taqueté, below, threaded on a straight draw with two pattern blocks in the treadling.

Treadles 1 and 2 are the plain weave or tie-down picks, while 3 and 4 are the pattern picks. If you look at the tie-down picks (just by looking at the first treadling block on the upper right-hand corner of the draft), you'll see that the weft is tied down alternately by brown warps on harnesses 2 and 4. That's the tabby in this compound structure. At the same time, warps on harnesses 3 and 1 -- the pattern warps -- are lifted over 3 picks. Back and forth and back and forth, which is pretty much what we weavers do ;o)

So, as Madelyn says, one warp thread floats over 3 picks and the warp thread next to it floats under 3 picks. (This happens alternately, with picks in between, of course, so that the warp floats are not parallel with each other.) But this basic fact is, really, the beauty of Turned Taqueté: you have a pattern on both sides of the cloth, because the structure is warp-emphasis on both sides of the cloth.

Here's another way of looking at it. Since Taqueté (this time, not turned Taqueté, but the original structure, which is weft-emphasis) resembles Summer and Winter, let's compare the two at their simplest level, on 4 shafts.

Above, a simple Summer and Winter pattern using two colors in the weft. You will see that there are weft floats (in blue, floating over 3 warps) and warp floats (in white, floating over 3 picks), with the weft colors defining the pattern. Treadles 1 and 2 weave tabby (so that warp threads on harnesses 1 and 2 are on opposite sheds). Threads on harnesses 3 and 4 are the pattern warps, with two blocks in the treadling to alternate the pattern. If you turn the piece over, you would see the pattern in reverse.

Now let's look at a Taqueté drawdown, using the same threading and the same weft colors. Unlike the Summer and Winter drawdown above, there are only weft floats (floating over 3 warps) and no warp floats of more than 2. But, just like Summer and Winter, if you turn the draft over, you would see a mirror image of what we see here. (That is, where there are white weft floats you will see blue weft floats, and vice versa.) This is a weft-emphasis fabric, while Summer and Winter has both a warp and a weft emphasis.

Now, below, we turn the draft: Threading becomes treadling and vice versa. The tieup changes and the tie-down picks are now on treadles 1 and 2. The structure is the same -- except that we have turned the fabric 90 degrees and weft floats are now warp floats.

This is only a beginning -- and a wordy one at that! Still, it helps me immensely to understand what is going on. My aim is to design more complex patterns that maximize the potential of this structure, because it allows for showing off colors and patterns.

Thanks for reading, and thanks so much to Betz Frederick in Phoenix, Arizona, who has asked all the right questions and contributed so much to my own understanding! Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a photo of a scarf she recently completed, a network-drafted Turned Taqueté pattern using two painted warps in an extended parallel threading.