Interested in an Upcoming Workshop in Bucks County, PA?

This shawl, pictured above, is a tribute to Harriet Tubman, who guided some 70 slaves to freedom, through wilderness in the dark of night, chased by bounty hunters, guided only her instincts, her visions, and the North Star. She reportedly made 19 trips back to the South and notably never lost anyone.

I called it "Harriet's Shawl" because in her later years she was often pictured weaving a large wrap around her shoulders. (By the way, she spent her later years in Auburn, NY, near my hometown of Rochester. It never ceases to amaze me to feel so close to greatness.)

Why did I dedicate it to Tubman? Because the motifs remind me of the forest, of darkness, of the stars she followed. And I did my best to make it beautiful, because her courage and strength are worthy of the best work I can create. (Not-so-humble brag: The scarf did win first prize at the faculty show at NEWS a few years ago, which makes me very proud.)

So what does this have to do with a weaving workshop? A dear friend, Hedy Lyles of Willow Grove, PA, passed away a short time ago and she had planned this workshop. We're doing it for the love of Hedy. Here she is at the loom she sold me, a 16-shaft Toika that I really like. (Except when it's hot and humid and the shafts stick, but that's another story.) Here, she's painstakingly showing me how to put the loom together.

She was also a terrific weaver, as you can see by this photo of her work:

So the workshop must go on, honoring both Tubman and Hedy. Here are the details:

GUILD: Handweavers of Bucks County

DATES: April 8-10, 2026

VENUE: Trinity Buckingham Church, 231 Durham Road, Buckingham, PA

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION: For anyone who can read a draft and warp a loom. For looms from 4 shafts to 16 shafts. Each weaver will first, with guidance from the instructor (on Zoom), paint her warp using alternating black and beige yarns in 16/2 cotton. (The trick is you'll automatically have two differently colored yarns for an Echo threading, as the beige yarn will dye colorfully and the black yarn won't take the dye.) You will come to the workshop with your warp dressed and ready to weave. For your "Harriet Shawl," you will weave a series of structures on your Echo threading, using different tieups and treadlings to weave Echo, Jin, Decorated Jin, and double weave. You'll also experiment with different weft yarns and colors, including active yarns such as wool/stainless steel, which will be provided by the instructor. You'll come away with a colorful, textured scarf with a multitude of patterns, colors, and textures that will be unlike any scarf you've woven to date, I boldly venture to say.

To give you a taste of what you're you'll be weaving, here's the double-weave design for the 8-shaft version: 

That's just one of the varied designs you'll be weaving in different colors and textures.

We're looking for a few more weavers to sign up for this workshop. If you're interested you may contact me at kovnatdenise[at]gmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you!

By the way, I want you to know that I do try faithfully to write one blog post a month. December got away from me (not surprising, right?) so (fingers crossed) you'll be getting another blog post toward the end of January. Gotta meet those deadlines, right, even though they're self-imposed....

Thanks for reading!

 

This Pattern Is More than 400 Years Old... with a Few Changes

 It all starts with a 1626 portrait of John Erskine, 2nd Earl of Mar and Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, painted by Adam de Colone. 

The painting hangs in the National Galleries of Scotland, where researchers have found that the canvas is in fact a linen tablecloth, a practice that was common at the time. The tablecloth was woven on 14 shafts in this Gebrochene pattern.

If you're a frequent reader of this blog, you may recall that I've written about this before -- most recently, on September 18, 2022, in a post that gives you more details on how I altered the pattern but kept the original design line. I learned of it maybe 20 years ago from Marjie Thompson, who calls it "The Earl". 

It was not a stretch to take the threading and create a parallel threading 14 shafts above it, which I did just to see what would happen. I figured it could be woven as Echo or, by adding tabby to the treadling, as Jin (aka Turned Taqueté). The Jin drawdown I designed looks like this.

Here's a detail to give you a better idea of the design.

I really liked the varied geometry of the pattern, so this is what I used for the motifs in the center of the scarf, using two different weft colors, violet and gold. (The gold is in the central section, where the fabric scrunches up into pleats, seen around the neck on the mannikin. That's because the yarn is a combination of silk tram and stainless steel, which has memory.)

The mountain-like motifs at the beginning and end of the scarf -- in purple and orange -- are woven in a doubleweave pattern using what I call a "carved" tieup. (The idea is outlined in Marian Stubenitsky's definitive work, Weaving with Echo and Iris, which provides all number of tieup options for Echo woven as doubleweave.)

When you're weaving four-color doubleweave on an Echo threading, these "carved" variations in the tieup make for lots of color shifts, so that a color first appears on top of the cloth and then shifts to the bottom. This maximizes the potential for color blending.

Adding to the potential for color play: I used a painted warp combined with a black warp for the parallel threading. The technique is quite simple: You wind a two-color warp of natural and black and then paint the entire warp. The natural-colored yarn absorbs the dye and the black does not. 

I love the yarn that I used for the warp, and I doubt I will ever find it again, because I got it at one of those wonderful guild sales. It's a 24/3 unmercerized cotton, so I really didn't have to worry about threads breaking and selvages fraying. For the doubleweave weft, I used 16/2 bamboo in blue, orange, and burgundy, and for the Jin wefts, I used 60/2 silk in deep violet and, as I mentioned, tram-silk/stainless-steel in gold, purchased from Lunatic Fringe, which pleats and bends in the center section.

To me, the motifs look like mountains and the colors remind me of a western sunset. So I've named the piece "Colorado", which means "ruddy" in Spanish. It reminds me of the sunsets over the Sangre de Cristo range, near where my daughter and her family live. The Earl is well traveled indeed.

Thanks for reading!

What's on the Loom?

More accurately, what's going on the loom? At this writing, I'm in the process of winding on a painted warp for a Jin design on 28 shafts (one of the versions of the pattern is shown above). Here's where I am at the moment, looking at the back of the loom.

It's kind of an unusual warp: Has anybody heard of 24/3 unmercerized cotton -- with about 1% of black rayon thrown in? Who knew? It was a big cone in natural that I picked up at a guild sale. Figuring that the grist of 24/3 cotton was equivalent or close to that of 16/2 cotton, I wound a warp two ends at a time, alternating between the 24/3 unmercerized cotton in natural and a 16/2 unmercerized cotton in black. 

When I went to paint the warp, I painted the entire warp at once, natural and black together. The dye colors don't affect the black at all, so you get a two-color painted warp, effectively, that you can thread for Echo. I appreciate efficiencies like that.

Back to the design. I love broken twills (most of us do, right?), a category that includes the old German designs known as Gebrochene. I've posted on this subject before, looking at a 16th-century pattern affectionately named "The Earl." Margie Thompson, an expert on historic textiles, shared it with our guild in a talk some time ago, and she was kind enough to send me the original draft, which is for 14 shafts. (For more on "The Earl" and Gebrochene twills, see my blog post of November 17, 2020.)

How did I get from the elegant, almost filigreed 14-shaft design above to the more primitive, tribal-looking 28-shaft design at the beginning of this post? It's a technique that I teach in my parallel-threading classes, using an Ms and Ws twill as a design line for Echo. I start designing by uploading the original Earl drawdown for 14 shafts in Fiberworks. (You need Fiberworks Silver for these functions.) Then, you click on the "Warp" dropdown menu and next you click on "Parallel Repeat" to Echo the original design line with a second threading 14 shafts above it.

Step 2: You see that the original Earl treadling is tromp as writ, for 14 treadles. This would work for a 28-shaft design, but it would give you squashed motifs, not very appealing. All I did (again, to achieve the design at the beginning of this post) was double the number of treadles for the entire treadling (so that treadle one becomes one and two, treadle two becomes three and four, treadle three becomes five and six, and so on). In other words, if the original treadling went from treadle 1 to 14 and down again in a point-twill pattern, I doubled the length of the pattern, so the treadles go from 1 to 28 and down again. 

Step 3: Here's where it gets a bit more complicated. I started by designing Echo using a twill tieup for 28 shafts. This is what I got. Just a detail shot. I really don't like it at all.

What to do? As I like to say, "Keep Calm and Add Tabby."

Of course, Echo has its charms -- but Jin also has a lot going for it: nice drape, one-shuttle weave, floats never longer than 3 in warp or weft, clear pattern definition, the ability to stretch out "squashed" designs, and the potential to play with the tieup to add a bit more color and interest, without risking long floats. That's what you see in the drawdown at the top of this post -- and also in the design below which uses another treadling but a similar tieup. 

I like both designs, the one above and the one at the beginning of this post. What they share are tieups for what Bonnie Inouye calls "Decorated Jin." Below is what a classic Jin tieup looks like, with half the shafts raised and half down in an ascending-twill pattern, with tabby tiedowns in between:

You'll see that the motifs above are simple and distinct, basically two colors, light and dark. This drawdown shows only a detail so that you can see the tieup more easily. Now let's look at a tieup for Decorated Jin.

Here, there are different colors and the motifs have more interest. The difference is that I've broken up the 14 up/14 down ascending-twill tieup, adding a bit of plain weave. Now, I see four different shades: pale blue, medium blue, dark rust/blue, and royal blue. It's all in the details! 

I'm going to sample at least two Decorated Jin designs and, fingers crossed, find at least one I really like. But first, of course, I have to finish dressing my loom....

Thanks for reading!

 

More Explorations in Extended Parallel Threadings

Pictured here: a 12-shaft design woven on an Echo threading in 20/2 silk. I call this design "Burano" because it has a lacy look, reminding me of the lace-makers on the island off of Venice. 

So let's walk through the steps in creating this design and weaving the different samples in Echo, Jin, Shadow Weave, Rep and Double Weave. (This is exactly what we do in my workshop, "One Warp, Many Structures: An Exploration of Extended Parallel Threading." I must really like the process, because I keep repeating the format on my own, at home....)

First, how to create the design itself? I think I found the original pattern, a twill pattern with elements of a Crackle threading, on Handweaving.net. Can't remember, exactly, because it could also have been on Pinterest. Both are great places to scan weaving drafts for ideas. Here's what the original draft looks like.

Intricate, symmetrical, appealing -- reminds me of a butterfly! I starting playing on Fiberworks, expanding the design to 12 shafts using an extended parallel threading. And this is one of the designs I came up with: an Echo tieup on an advancing and descending twill treadling.

Following one of my other workshops -- "Paint Two, Beam One" -- I hand-painted two warps of 20/2 silk. The first was in a range of blues and the second in purples and rose colors, but I decided I needed more color, so I added two more painted warps in complementary colors, creating four stripes bordered on both sides by two ends of black. And here's how it wove up. 

This sample is the same pattern as in the first photo of this blog post. I used a bronze-colored weft in 20/2 cotton, because the gold tones really warm up the overall tones of the warp. And then I proceeded to weave up samples in Echo, Jin, Shadow Weave, Rep and Double Weave, varying my tieups, treadlings and weft yarns, all on the same extended parallel threading.

I am so grateful to my weaving teachers, particularly Bonnie Inouye and Marian Stubenitsky. I first learned about the potential of extended parallel threadings through a workshop taught by Bonnie, "Opposites Attract," in which she explores the potential of Echo threadings to achieve a broad range of structures. And I also continue to learn from Marian Stubenitsky's definitive work, Weaving with Echo and Iris, in which she took Echo designs and ran with them, showing countless possibilities for variations on 4 to 32 shafts.

Here's how my Jin sample wove up, offering yet another example of why I love Jin so much:

And here's how the threading works with Shadow Weave, shown here in a detail:

As for Rep (below): Well, not so great, but I think it was partly owing to my choice of wefts, where I alternated 20/2 cotton (thin weft) and black rayon chenille (thick weft). I think this sample would have been better if I changed my sett, making it much denser, and chose something thicker and less textured than the chenille for the thicker weft. Nevertheless, I see some potential here!

And then I wove up a double-weave sample, which I also like very much:

Just one more, this one in another variation of Echo:

Subtle, yes, but still I like it -- particularly the way the diamond shapes change in both size and color throughout the stripes.

Weaving at home and teaching weaving on Zoom have both given me great comfort this past year. And we all need comfort, even as we are painfully aware of how others lack food, shelter, health care and health itself. This year has given us hardship and hope in equal doses. Friends and loved ones are farther away and closer in our hearts. May you and yours enjoy the blessings of this season of light, however you may celebrate, and may you take comfort in every way you can in the year to come!

 

The Warp that Keeps on Giving: Echo, Jin, Double Weave, Shadow Weave, and Warp Rep All on One Threading

How do you weave a countless number of structures on one warp? With an extended parallel threading, of course! This particular technique offers a lot of "bang for the buck" for weavers. All you have to do is modify your treadling and, in some cases, change the tie-up. If you're REALLY ambitious, you can change the tie-up and re-sley as well to achieve Double Weave or Shadow Weave.

What is an extended parallel threading? For those who follow the work of Marian Stubenitsky and/or Bonnie Inouye, it needs no introduction. For the rest of us, all it means is that, for starters, you use two colors in your warp, so that you can thread them A-B-A-B, etc. (A being your first color and B being your second). Then, instead of threading a straight draw of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 (just as an example), you thread your two colors using the same line, but separately, at a set interval. 

For example, if you decide you're going to thread at an interval of 4, for an extended parallel threading on a straight draw, you will thread it this way: 1, 5, 2, 6, 3, 7, 4, 8, 5, 1, 6, 2, 7, 3, 8, 4, alternating between color A and color B. Here's a drawdown, by way of example. (I've posted it before, but it bears repeating.)

So your tie-up allows you to lift every other thread in an ascending twill order. This is the basic idea behind the structures I have been weaving. Because I like to paint warps -- and because I like to paint two separate warps in complementary but different palettes and beam them together and then thread them A-B-A-B in an extended parallel threading -- I decided to create an advancing point-twill using this technique. 

Here are some drafts and photos of what I've weaving. 

Variation #1: Echo

Here is the the drawdown, with a tie-up and treadling for Echo. Note that this is simply an advancing twill treadling.

And here is a photo of the sample I wove. You'll see that I didn't weave the entire treadling, because I was just trying to get an idea of how it would look.

Variation #2: Echo

Next treadling for Echo, same tie-up. This treadling is for an advancing-point twill.

My woven sample, below. I love the way the pattern seems to sparkle, which enhances the color shifts.

Next, I crawled under the treadles to do another tie-up. (Truth be told, I usually make an error when I'm tying up and have to start all over again. Which causes a lot of sweating and cursing, which is not to be written about in a blog post.) 

Variation #3: Doubleweave 

Here is the drawdown for treadling as doubleweave. I will not show you my sample, as I really messed up! I had to re-sley the reed to make the warp ends much denser -- and somewhere along the way my shed got really boggled up. I do have a sample, but again, not for public consumption ;o)

Yes, this would work well with a collapse-cloth technique, with one layer shrinking and pulling in while the other layer would "pouf" and add texture. Even with the poor shed I had -- owing mostly to the fact that I was using two different devices (Texsolv and metal hooks) to tie up my treadles and their lengths varied -- I could tell from my sample that this design has promise.

Variations #4 and #5: Jin

Then I got down under the loom and re-did my tie-up to weave Jin -- one of my favorite structures because it is so versatile. Here's the first treadling I used. If you look at the treadling, you'll see that, if you remove the tabby, it's the same advancing-twill sequence as in variation #1 above.

And here is the second treadling, an advancing point-twill. Again, if you take away the tabby, it's exactly like variation #2 for Echo.

Here is how the two samples wove up. (The first treadling appears at the bottom of the photo and the second is at the top.)

Variation #6: Jin

Here's yet another treadling, the results of which I love!

The sample:

Variation #7: Rep

There are a countless variations for an extended-parallel threading like this. One additional structure I did not mention was shadow weave. Here's a drawdown I came up with.

However, this post is getting way too long and it's taking way too much time! Suffice it to say that I'm hoping to create a workshop out of this. And as for all the samples I have been weaving: I beamed a 12-yard warp, 46" wide, using 20/2 silk sett at 40 ends per inch. The weft is, for the most part, 60/2 silk.  

I'm weaving yardage for a garment. Most likely, I will use four or five different treadlings for Jin -- I might even add a networked treadling in there somewhere -- and alternate them randomly throughout the fabric. I can't choose just one, so I have to weave them all.

And here's the photo that inspired this project to begin with. I can't attribute it to any source, because I found it on the internet long ago. The combination of pinks and greens is irresistible!

20/2 Silk, Painted Warps, 12 Harnesses, Echo and Jin (this headline has no verb)

Actually, this headline is a list of my favorite things. I love weaving with two painted silk warps: When you beam them together and then thread them A-B-A-B, you can weave fabrics with subtle and beautiful color shifts -- an effect I like to call "color play."

And then there's Jin: a structure that produces excellent drape in your fabric and allows for expressive patterns as well. AND when you use an extended parallel threading, all you have to do is alter your tieup and treadling to get Echo -- a design technique that works beautifully when you want to combine two painted warps on your loom.

In the photo above, the Jin appears in the lower half and the Echo appears in the upper half. To me, they flow together nicely, in part because I used the same treadling as I shifted into Echo. All I did was eliminate the tabby treadling that's needed for Jin and change the tieup. (Easy to do on a table loom, much harder to do on my floor loom, another argument to get a computer dobby loom...)

Here's the Echo drawdown.

Here's the drawdown for the Jin pattern. Basically, I designed an advancing point twill on an extended parallel threading. (It's easy to do with weaving software. In Fiberworks, for instance, all you do is click on "parallel repeat" in the "Warp" menu and choose how many shafts you want between the two different lines of threading.)

On the loom, it played out like this (keeping in mind that I changed my 60/2 silk weft from olive to orange about halfway up in the photo):

I even like the plain-weave treadling (which weaves as a faux basket weave, as you can't achieve true plain weave with these structures).

See the floating warp thread on the right? That error made me think that I should adjust the tieup to give the fabric some serious warp floats, so that I can create an "eyelash" effect in the fabric. My plan is to mix it up when I weave the final yardage, going from Jin to Echo to faux basket weave with eyelash accents.

The takeaway from this blog post is really that old cliche: Sample, sample, sample! By the way, let me know if you want me to send you copies of the drawdowns. Happy Thanksgiving!