How to Design Double Weave Using Fiberworks

The photo above shows you what inspired this post: an extraordinary scarf using a collapse technique, created by British weaver Sally Weatherill. Her deflected double weave scarves are to die for -- but it's this silk double-weave scarf that I keep coming back to.

A few years ago, I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to draft this. Finally, I gave up and sent her an email -- to which she replied quickly and generously, sharing her draft and eventually some samples with me.

And guess what? All my analysis was in vain! The scarf was woven HORIZONTALLY on the loom while I had spent hours looking at it vertically. Beginning with a warp of green and blue silk, she wove a band maybe 10 inches deep, using inactive wefts in green and blue silk alternating with active wefts (elastic, I'm thinking, in the fuchsia and purple areas) and then cut it horizontally and serged the sides. This approach, assuming you have a very wide loom, would allow you to weave many scarves on just one warp.

So much for my thinking out of the box....

Here's the draft, thanks to Sally:

Look closely at the tieup:

The threading and the treadling are both straight draws, so the key to this beautiful design lies in this double-weave tieup. Does it look strange to you? Many weavers (myself included) find double weave hard to fathom.

So, for my benefit and hopefully for yours, let's break it down, looking at designing double weave on just 4 shafts with weaving software -- Fiberworks, in my case.

We'll weave the top layer on shafts 1 and 3 and the bottom layer on shafts 2 and 4. And we will use two different colors to represent each layer: in this case, purple and green. 

Note: It's hard to see how double weave really looks in Fiberworks because you really can’t look at both layers simultaneously. So, in part, you have to use your imagination. Keeping that in mind, here’s the first step. 

This is how the draft would look if you were to weave JUST the top layer (green in the threading and treadling). It’s a straight-draw threading and we're weaving plain weave on shafts 1 and 3. Notice that, with this tieup, the warp ends on shafts 2 and 4 (bottom layer, in blue in the threading) go unwoven. 

So how do you create a tieup for weaving the bottom layer? Here's my approach: I like to say that, to tie up the bottom layer of double weave, "up is down and down is up." You could also say that, instead of a rising shed in the tieup, you're tying up a sinking shed for the bottom layer. And yet another way to look at it is like a photo negative: what is black in the original tieup becomes white, and vice versa. 

(And yet ANOTHER way to look at it is to literally get under the loom and see that you have a mirror image for the bottom layer: a "lifted" warp thread on the bottom layer is really a warp thread that is down and a "lowered" warp thread is really a warp thread that is lifted.)

So, the tieup for the bottom layer looks like this, where your weft will be tied down (you might say “tied up,” remembering that this is double weave) with shafts 4 and 2:

Next you combine the two tieups for the two layers, because for traditional double weave you will weave the layers alternately, using two shuttles, to keep an even fell line. This treadling weaves on opposite sheds to achieve a two-layer structure.

Another way to draft it is with a straight draw in the treadling:

That's it. Of course, once you get into more than 4 shafts, there are many variations, including the 16-shaft tieup for Sally Weatherill's scarf. Browsing the internet, I have found compilations of suggested tieups for double weave. Marian Stubenitsky's book, Echo and Iris, is a good reference. And if you really want to dig deep into computer drafting, you might want to purchase Marg Coe's book, 4-8… Weave!

Thanks for reading. Hope you're not seeing double!

How Do You Weave This Collapse Scarf? There's a Surprise at the End....

Sometimes when you see something beautiful, you can't get it out of your mind. Which is the case for me with this silk scarf woven by British weaver Sally Weatherill (shown above in detail). I came upon it maybe 3 years ago when I took a workshop with Ann Richards at the Handweavers Studio and Gallery in London.

Here's what I gathered from the photo. Simple fact: It's silk, probably 60/2 silk, in double weave. With two different blocks -- one threading for the blue/green horizontal stripes and one threading for the red/purple. A twill threading, probably a 3/1 tieup.

Too many shafts for my loom, as I have only 12 (a large Macomber and a Leclerc Voyageur table loom). So, for starters, I can't weave a sample in 3/1 twill blocks. Fine with me; I will weave plain weave instead.

Second problem: There is no way I can achieve that small blue/green block in the center of the fabric without adding another block of threading. (That's because the wefts in the red/purple block are discontinuous, right? That weft would have to go in between the middle blue/green block.)

So here's what I came up with.

I used 20/2 cotton on shafts 1 through 4 and 9 through 12 and then 18/2 merino on shafts 5 through 8. I did not like the sample at all (so I won't even post a photo). The weft was 20/2 cotton. The sett was too loose -- so loose that, even after fulling in soap and hot water, the cotton looked like cheesecloth underneath the section where the wool shrank.

Next sample. I decided to tighten up the sett and eliminate the middle block of the warp -- thereby reducing the sample to 8 shafts.

Getting there! Here's how the sample looked.

Still not working well, however. Too messy where the wool warp floats over the merino weft. So I tried weaving the wool block in plain weave right along with the blocks of cotton. Here's the altered draft.

Here are the results. Much better.

I still didn't like the way the cotton plain weave cloth looked after finishing. Maybe it was the matte finish (even though it's pearl cotton). I decided to try superwash wool along with the 18/2 merino, so that the merino would shrink while the superwash wouldn't. I looked at my JaggerSpun color samples and found a red that looked the same in both superwash and merino. The blacks in both yarns matched fine, as you might expect. Here's what the sample looked like before and after finishing.

I like this, but some tweaking is still in order. In any event, I promised a surprise at the end of this post. So, going back to the source of inspiration: the gorgeous silk scarf in blue/green and red/purple double weave stripes.

Remember how I set out to figure out the structure? And it took me three different samples to find something even remotely pleasing -- not to mention the fact that I didn't really figure out the original structure?

Well, through the Complex Weavers Collapse Weave Study Group I have been in touch with Wendy Morris -- a gifted weaver who, at the time I visited the Handweavers Studio and Gallery in London, owned and managed the place. I wrote an article for our study group newsletter discussing the scarf and my efforts to copy it and she wrote me back with this surprise: The scarf was woven SIDEWAYS. Those beautiful red/purple layers are woven horizontally. THAT'S how the weaver achieved the gap in the middle.

Thinking out of the box. I will try always to remember to look at something from a different angle! Thank you, Wendy -- and thanks to Sally Weatherill for designing and weaving the gorgeous piece that got me started on this quest. Here's the draft, for your weaving wonderment.