How to 'Downsize' a 14-Shaft Pattern for 8 Shafts... and even 4 Shafts

Let's start with just one draft, because -- while these principles can apply to many designs -- I recently had to downsize 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 it 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, 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 shapes 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" threading 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

This might not be true for all weavers, but when I downsize a pattern, 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, because 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 the above 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 twill motif: the line in the original descends 10 shafts beginning on shaft 14. For 8 shafts, the line begins at shaft 8, the topmost shaft (as with the original design) and descends 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. I could continue describing the pattern adaptations, but I think that you get the idea....

As you can see, there's 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.

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 you might design The Earl on 4 shafts.

It's not recognizable, you might say. Or you might think it's an argument for buying an 8-shaft loom! 

And yet... this is still an Ms and Ws pattern, with interesting motifs throughout, worth weaving into a scarf or a tea towel. (It also might work as a great threading for overshot. But that would be another post.) If you look back at the threading of the original draft, you'll see that this 4-shaft version does follow the hills and valleys of that threading, even though much is lost in the details of the pattern. 

I invite you, dear reader, to share in the comments your own method of adapting a draft to fewer shafts. Someone else might have a more exacting approach, for certain. (Perhaps someone really savvy could use AI, come to think of it.) And certainly some patterns (other than twill) 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.)

How to Paint One Warp and Get Two Colors

 Last month's blog post promoted a workshop I'm teaching in April in Bucks County, PA, on how to weave a "Harriet Tubman Shawl."

Here, once again, is a photo of the scarf (as seen in last month's post). It honors the heroism of Harriet Tubman, who spent her last years in Auburn, NY,  near where I live. She was photographed at least a couple of times during those years wearing a shawl over her shoulders. I admire her greatly, as so many of us do.

If you look very closely, you'll see that the warp is painted -- but, because it's Echo, you need at least two colors in the warp. Again, looking closely, you'll see that one warp thread is painted and the next one is black. Painted/black/painted/black -- that's how the colors of the warp are arranged for my parallel threading.

Another clue about the two warp colors: Just look at the two colors 

in the twisted fringe, with a painted thread alternating with a black thread.

That's the secret to achieving two colors in your warp while painting one warp: wind a warp of natural and black threads together. Black yarn does not show the dye, so you can paint right over it.

In this case, I've wound the warp in 24/3 cotton, which is the same grist as 16/2 cotton, but I find it's a bit sturdier thread. The drawdown for this warp is 8 shafts and, while the warp count in this case was about 840 ends, the warps for the workshop will call for 400 ends. (Not many people want to wind 840 ends for a workshop, I believe.)

So here are the steps in the dyeing process. I'm actually giving away a good portion of the instructions for the warp prep in this workshop, but I enjoy the results so much I thought I'd share it. The complete directions can be found on the ProChemical and Dye website, under MX Fiber Reactive Dyes: the instructions are for warp-painting on cotton and silk. (Please note: I don't use print paste in this process, so you can ignore the step that calls for making print paste as well as the instructions for making thick dyes.)

Step 1) As you wind your warp, do not use choke ties. Instead, use twining every 18". (If you use choke ties, they will resist the dye and you'll get little white lines across your painted warp.) Of course, you will want to use a choke tie at the end of the warp, where you cut it, and at the beginning of the warp, where you secure it around the back tie-on rod. (I warp back to front.) Also, you'll want to secure the cross quite snugly. But otherwise, use twining, as you often see when you purchase a skein of yarn. Here's a photo of what twining looks like.

Step 2) Soak your warp for at least 30 minutes in a soda-ash solution, according to the directions. (This assumes that you have already scoured the warp to get rid of any oils, dirt, or sizing in the yarn.)

Step 3) Prepare the urea water. Urea basically helps the dyes to stay active longer. I use 4 cups of urea for 1 gallon of water. Make sure the urea is completely dissolved. This is your basic water solution for making your dyes.

Step 4) Put on your respirator mask and gloves. Make sure you're wearing old clothing, too.

Me rockin' my respirator mask

If the water is really hot, I use these humongous gloves. 

Otherwise, I use food-preparation gloves or the cleaning gloves 

you can get at the grocery store.

Step 5) Mix your dyes.

I alter the recipe a bit, using 1 and 1/2 teaspoons of dye powder for one cup of urea water. This gives me a medium shade that I like.

8 different colors all lined up and ready for painting.

Step 6) Paint your warp. Make sure you thoroughly saturate the threads with color -- so for me that means using 2"-wide sponge brushes and turning the warp over as I paint, so that both sides get painted. I don't follow any particular color order, just using the colors randomly. Also, I try hard (although I don't always achieve this) not to paint horizontal stripes with my dye colors. Instead, I work to paint each color at an angle on the warp, which makes the warp more interesting visually. For each color, I paint a 2-4" long swath of color, no longer than that. (Don't want the weaving to get boring.) So each of the colors is about the same length on the warp.

Step 7) Wrap the warp entirely in plastic so that none of the dye leaks out onto your floors or tabletop or any surface. One thing I do to avoid leakage is that I sop up the excess dye on the sides of the warp as I paint, using old bath towels. (This makes for some very colorful towels that I continue to use for dyeing after washing and drying them. Somehow, with no soaking in soda ash, the dyes do adhere to the cotton towels.)

Step 8) Cure the dyed warp for 24 hours in a room that is at least 70 degrees Fahrenheit. This is really important. If your room isn't warm enough, your dyes won't strike (adhere) to the yarn and you'll be rinsing and rinsing to the get color out, only to wind up with faint colors. There are many ways to achieve a temperature of 70 degrees or higher. In my case, I take the warp (rolled in plastic and then put in a plastic bag) and place it on top of my boiler in the basement, which is hotter than 70 degrees. Some folks use those grow-mats for keeping seeds warm. Others use electric blankets but somehow that makes me nervous....

Step 9) Rinse out the warp. I have two stationary tubs, so I load one plastic bucket in each tub and rinse the warp in warm (maybe 100 degrees) water until it's filled with color (and it usually is). Then I transfer the warp to the other water-filled bucket and repeat the process. I do this until the water, with the warp in the bucket, runs nearly clear. To be honest, I have yet to achieve perfectly clear water in rinsing a warp with fiber-reactive dyes. But a pale-colored water is good enough for me.

Step 10) Hang the warp to dry. Understand that, at this point, the warp will look pretty tangled. I urge you to leave it this way until it is completely dry. Tangles come out much better when the yarn is dry. What I do, when it's dry, is wind the loop at the end of the warp on a hook and walk back the entire warp until it's taught, stretching and snapping it straight as I go. Even then, there will be some tangles. These will have to be combed out as you dress your loom.

So there you have it! Two colors for the effort of painting one warp. Although I almost always use this for Echo and Jin designs, I have used the same process for a striped warp in 60/2 silk -- black stripes alternating with painted stripes -- and then woven in a turned twill, going in one direction for the black stripes and the other direction for the painted stripes. The effect is always beautiful, because we all love color, don't we?

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments section. And thanks for reading!

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!

 

Making Plans...

The image above is part of a drawdown of a design I call "Azteca," which refers to the indigenous people who founded the Aztec empire as well as to their culture. They flourished in central Mexico from 1300 to 1521 C.E., founding their capitol, Tenochtitlan, on the site that is now Mexico City. To me, the warm, vivid colors and the geometric motifs have the feeling of Aztec art. 

Architectural model, Mezcala, 1st-8th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art

(Public domain)

Coronation stone of Moctezuma, Xocoyotzin, 1503, Art Institute of Chicago

I'm thinking of weaving this pattern to create a tunic that derives from the art of the traditional Azteca women's tunic known as a huipil (pronounced wee-PEEL), worn by indigenous women from central Mexico to Central America. The garment's history predates Spanish colonization, with designs and weaving traditions pass down through the centuries. These designs represent a complex tradition of communication, with weaving and embroidery symbolizing the wearer's ethnic community and identity. Traditionally, huipils were woven in cotton on backstrap looms, such as the one seen below.

As for my plans for this modern-day huipil: I aim to weave it in 16/2 cotton and rayon/bamboo on my 32-shaft Louet Megado, with a width in the reed of 24.75 inches. I figure this gives me plenty of width to weave a rectangular shape that can be folded in half to fit an average-sized woman. Further, I want to decorate it with an inkle-woven band or two, maybe adding beads, giving it a look similar to the images below -- which are, by the way, from the wardrobe of Frida Kahlo.

In fact, I found a "Frida Huipil" sewing pattern on the website of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Here's the link: Frida Huipil V&A.

The design is a 4-color parallel threading, based on a design line that is basically Ms and Ws.

The tieup makes it a Jin pattern, and the treadling is an advancing point twill (with tabby shots in between the pattern shots, in keeping with Jin).

I would like to make this more of a garment for show rather than an everyday piece, so I may embellish it with beads and -- get this, real gold thread! (It's actually gold-plated, I guess you'd say, not solid gold, because that would be unaffordable.)

There is so much that weaving has to say, non-verbally but beautifully, to celebrate other cultures, traditions, and beliefs. Textiles awaken us to our connections and our individuality as well.

Now, off to the warping reel!

Thanks for reading.

The Huipil de la Malinche, one of the oldest huipils 

ever found, carbon-dated to the 1700s.

Creating an Optical Illusion in Block Double Weave

 Perhaps it's because our brains just want to see patterns -- but do you see expanding circles in this drawdown?

But it's all squares, right? What's going on?

This is known as a "fiction illusion," in which the brain perceives a shape or figure that is not actually present in the image. Optical illusions involve different ways in which the brain and the eye process visual information, such that the perception is different from the reality. 

Why does this happen? Quoting from my Google search: "Your brain uses patterns, past experiences, and context to make sense of visual input, but illusions exploit these processes by presenting confusing or conflicting information, causing the brain to 'fill in the gaps' in a way that leads to a perception that doesn't match reality." 

Aha! Confusing or conflicting information, differences between perception and reality -- this is where weaving can createsome interesting patterns!

Our immediate perception of this black-and-white version of the pattern above: It's full of flowing lines that intersect, dilate, and compress.

But, in the weaving pattern, it's all black-and-white rectangles, increasing and decreasing in length and width. In weaver-speak, it's just double-weave blocks.

I'm in the process of dressing my loom with this design, which is simple block double weave on 8 shafts. Here's the threading:

Two blocks, that's it. But, if you look at the top of the threading, you'll see that the units of 1, 2, 3, and 4 descend from 9 to 8 to 7, etc., in number, all the way down to 3 -- and then they begin to expand again. This means that the widths of the two different warp blocks get progressively smaller, and then they reverse and get larger again.

The treadling is "tromp as writ," meaning that it's identical to the threading. ("Treadle as written" is my rough translation.)

Looking at the weft, you'll see the same progressive increases and decreases in the number of units per block -- from 9 units in the first block to 8 in the second to 7 in the third and so on down to 3, where the number of units begins to increase again. This means that the height of the blocks changes, getting progressively longer and then progressively shorter.

The beauty of double weave is you get solid colors: In the case of my drawdown at the top of this post, green weaves with green, in alternating blocks that are either on the top layer or the bottom layer. And red is doing the reverse. Double weave makes for bold colors and graphic patterns, which is probably why weavers like it so much.

Here's the tieup. It's a double-weave tieup, so that the first 4 shafts on the first treadle lift just shaft 3, while the second 4 shafts weave the bottom layer, which is being woven upside down. This means that, effectively, shaft 7, which is technically down, is the only shaft lifted on the upside-down bottom layer. Then, on treadle 2, the layers exchange, so that shaft 8 is lifting the warp on the top layer while shaft 2 is "lifted" on the upside-down bottom layer. You're exchanging the top layer and the bottom layer to form differing rectangles. And effectively you're weaving plain weave on both layers. (Caveat: I don't consider myself a double-weave expert, so I simply created a tieup that works for me.)

The structure itself gives you two layers of cloth that exchange (top to bottom) in the pattern we talked about, squares that 

increase and decrease in height and width. In my case, I'm threading everything in beige -- but one layer is 20/2 wool and 

the other layer is 17/2 nm silk noil. Using differential-shrinkage techniques (where the wool fulls and draws in 

and the silk noil buckles and puckers because it's being drawn in by the wool), I hope to end up with a fabric that has a 

really interesting texture. But I haven't finished threading yet ;o) because I had to re-thread to get the pattern just right....

(Please note that yes, this is an unusual double-weave tieup. A friend pointed this out and, to be honest, 

I created it because that's how I puzzled it out. I hope to fix the tieup in the next few days....)

And my loom's acting up, but that's another story. Fingers crossed. 

Thanks for reading!

  

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.