[00:00:00.760] – Janet
Okay. So this live lecture is going to be about The Secrets of Sheds, cleverly disguised as lift plans, treadlings, and tie-ups, which just got released a few hours ago. But we had some hiccups, but anyway, it’s released. I doubt very many of you have seen it yet, so I’m going to go through the concepts from the class and through as many of them as I can in an hour. It’s a pretty meaty class, but I especially want to save time for a couple of demonstrations that didn’t get into the class. I actually made a slide show. So now I got to see if I can make it work. Let me try.
[00:00:58.320] – Janet
We’re going to go with this one. There we go. I wanted to call this class The Secrets of Sheds. But I didn’t figure that most people would know what I meant by sheds, so I called it The Secrets of Lift Plans, Treadlings, and Tie-ups because those are all related to sheds.
[00:01:24.720] – Janet
Let’s start out with, what is a shed? A shed is the space between the warp threads that go up and the warp threads that go down when you move levers or step on treadles or move a heddle or however you manipulate the parts of your loom to make it. So it’s got a top, and it’s got a bottom. The space in between the top of the shed and the bottom of the shed is where the shuttle goes or where the weft goes, at least, not necessarily on a shuttle, like if you’re using a butterfly.
[00:01:54.710] – Janet
And in this, this is supposed to look like a floor loom. My drawing foo is not super strong. So there’s a beater there. The brown thing is a beater. So that space is called the shed. But when we talk about sheds, we also mean specifically the threads that are up in the top pink layer and the threads that are down in the bottom green layer and which shafts have to move to make the warp split apart into those two layers, which shafts have gone up and which shafts have gone down.
[00:02:33.780] – Janet
The other meaning of the shed is the specific combination of shafts that are up and shafts that are down to make the space for the shuttle or the weft to go through.
[00:02:45.820] – Janet
Here’s an example of a couple of sheds. On the left, you’ve got a shed where the orange threads are up. Those are the threads I’ve said are on shafts 2 and 4. And the blue threads are down, so those are the threads on shafts 1 and 3. That’s the left side.
[00:03:01.910] – Janet
On the right side, the threads have gone in the opposite direction. That is a different shed. It’s got different shafts up. It’s got different threads up. The weft will go over different threads on the left than it will on the right, and it will go under different threads on the left than it will on the right.
[00:03:20.260] – Janet
This diagram right here, this is the whole thing with rising and sinking sheds and why fabric weaves upside down when you use a tie-up from a book that assumes you’ve got the other kind of loom. We’ll come to that in a bit.
[00:03:35.360] – Janet
A rising shed or a rising-shed loom, a rising shed is one that’s created when you lift shafts up. When the shafts go up, it pulls the work threads up. And so the top of the shed is formed by the shafts that moved, and the other threads stay either in neutral or they go down. Most looms I know of that lift shafts up only leave the other threads in neutral. That’s how a jack loom usually works. So on a rising shed loom, a loom with that kind of functionality mechanism, you have to lift up shafts 2 and 4 to make this shed.
[00:04:20.300] – Janet
But if you have a sinking-shed loom, a loom where you pull the shafts down to make the shed, you have to pull down the other two shafts, shafts 1 and 3, to make the same shed. So what your treadle is connected to is different on a rising-shed loom or a sinking-shed loom to make the same shed. And if your treadle is connected to the same thing on a rising-shed loom or a sinking-shed loom, you get two different sheds.
[00:04:54.430] – Janet
A countermarch shed, incidentally, goes both ways. On a rising-shed loom, the treadle is tied only to the shafts that go up. On a sinking-shed loom, the treadle is tied only to the shafts that go down. On a countermarch loom, the treadle is tied to all of them, the shafts that go up and the shafts that go down.
[00:05:17.180] – Janet
A rigid heddle is kind of both a rising and a sinking, but it’s not them both at the same time. If you move the heddle up, the active threads go up and the other threads stay in neutral, and you’ve created a rising shed. If you move the heddle down, the active threads have gone down, the ones in the eyes, and the other threads, the ones in the slots, have stayed in neutral, and that’s a sinking shed. So on a rigid heddle, at least when you’re weaving, like, plain weave with one heddle, first you make a rising shed, then you make the sinking shed. It’s not both at the same time, but it is both. So they are different beasties again.
[00:06:00.260] – Janet
A shed diagram, the term shed diagram is one that I–as far as I know, I made it up. I wanted a word that referred to the category of diagrams that tell you how to make these things, which includes both lift plans and treadling and tie-up. So for a table loom or a directly-tied floor loom or a dobby loom, you use a lift plan. For a floor loom that has treadles and lamms, you need treadling and a tie-up. Those together make the shed diagram.
[00:06:41.100] – Janet
And a shed diagram tells you three things. It tells you which sheds you’re going to open. It tells you how to open them. And it tells you what order to open them in.
[00:06:51.360] – Janet
So the two kinds here are circled, a lift plan or a tie-up and treadling. A tie-up by itself or a treadling by itself is not a complete shed diagram. It doesn’t have all that information. You need both to get all the information. A lift plan by itself is complete. So lift plans tell you which shafts to lift on each row. Each row gives you a specific combination of shafts, and those go up. So it has the direction, and it tells you how to do it. You move the little levers or the treadles for those particular shafts. And it tells you the order. First the one in the first row, then the one in the next row, then the one in the next row, etc.
[00:07:34.480] – Janet
A tie-up and treadling tells you the same information in combination. The tie-up is telling you which shafts the treadle is tied to. That’s going to tell you which sheds the treadles make. And the treadling tells you which treadles to step on. It might be more than one at a time. And again, you need both the treadling and the tie-up for the complete story.
[00:08:04.480] – Janet
So talked about this already. The sheds to open is from the tie-up. How to open them comes from both the tie-up and the treadling. And what order to open them in comes from the treadling.
[00:08:18.940] – Janet
So now we get to lamms. What’s a lamm? A lamm is a part of the loom that’s above the treadles, below the shafts, and it’s the intermediary between the treadles and the shafts. The treadles are not actually tied directly to the shafts, unless you have a directly-tied loom. They’re tied to the lamms, and the lamms are connected to the shafts.
[00:08:43.300] – Janet
So on a Baby Wolf, on the left, or similar jack looms or counterbalance looms, etc., those looms all have, if they have lamms, they have one set of lamms. You can see there at the bottom of that sort of visible circle, the treadle cords go to the lamms, not up to the shafts. In that picture–let’s see, right here, these are the lamms. These bits here, those are the jacks. Those are not lamms. Some other looms, like a colonial maybe or some other kinds, they have the jacks up at the top, up above the shafts. But the lamms will still be below.
[00:09:32.040] – Janet
On a countermarch loom, there are two sets of lamms. There’s a bottom set of lamms and a top set of lamms. Each shaft has two lamms, one upper and one lower. And the treadles are tied, again, to the lamms, each treadle tied to one lamm per shaft, either the upper or the lower.
[00:09:59.360] – Janet
Okay. So on a lift… Wait, now. The reason we’re talking about lamms at this point is because table looms, directly-tied floor looms, and dobby looms, they don’t have lamms. They don’t have a way of connecting the treadles directly to the shafts via a lamm. They work in a different way, and, therefore, they don’t have tie-ups because they don’t have that connection that the tie-up represents. So table looms, directly-tied floor looms, and dobby looms use a lift plan, not a treadling and tie-up.
[00:10:39.320] – Janet
Each column of a lift plan corresponds to one shaft. Each row of a lift plan shows you which shaft to–shafts, plural often–to lift up. So on a table loom, you’re going to flip the levers for every shaft listed on the row, and on a floor loom, a directly-tied floor loom. So a directly-tied floor loom is one where the treadles are connected directly to the shaft. One treadle goes to one shaft only, and there’s no lamm in between. And that shaft is connected to one treadle only. So if you step on a treadle, the shaft goes, and there’s nothing else that treadle can do. And there’s no other way for that shaft to move. So it works just like a table loom.
[00:11:19.880] – Janet
To use a lift plan with a directly-tied floor loom, you step on all the treadles that correspond to the shafts on a row. The columns of your lift plan, from left to right, are shafts 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Each row, from top to bottom usually, is one weft pick. Each row shows you which shafts you need to manipulate, which ones you need to lift. So in this example, pick one has you lifting shafts 1 and 2.
[00:11:57.750] – Janet
Some parts of the world tend to put their threading at the bottom and their tie-up, if there is one, at the bottom. If you have a lift plan from those places, it will also be read from the bottom. The thing to look for is, where is the treadling? When you start reading the lift plan, from whichever end is closest to the treadling.
[00:12:20.560] – Janet
Lift plans have all the same kinds of notations that we’ve already seen for threadings in the first class in the drafting series, the threading where every draft begins. They can have labels, balances, repeats. Although in the case of a lift plan, the repeat might be, do this for 6 inches or do this for 20 inches. You’re not going to see in a threading, thread this thing for 10 inches. It’s going to say, do it this certain number of times. On a lift plan, it very well could be, do this for a certain length, centimeters or inches. And they can have pivots, as well. They work just the same way as in a threading.
[00:13:01.150] – Janet
So going back, remember, to what’s a lamm, this is what the lamms are. Now we’re going to talk about looms that do have lamms. If a loom does have a lamm, it also needs a tie-up. The draft needs a tie-up to tell you how to connect the treadles to the shafts. We call these a multi-shaft tie-up.
[00:13:25.300] – Janet
Again, typically they’re numbered from left to right. And the shafts, just like in a threading–well, the shafts are numbered the same way as in the threading. So if the threading is at the top, typically that’s bottom to top. If the threading is at the bottom, often the shafts in the tie-up are also labeled from top to bottom, rather not also.
[00:13:47.600] – Janet
So a tie-up is the thing that tells you how to connect the treadles to the shafts. And remember, we already talked about how when you step on a treadle, some loom’s shafts go up and other loom’s shafts go down. The tie-up is telling you which shafts are moving, and once it applies to your loom, which direction they’re moving, as well. A rising tie-up, a tie-up that is written for a rising loom, tells you which shafts are going to go up. A sinking tie-up, one that is written for a sinking-shed loom, will tell you which shaft–will show that you need to tie to the shafts that are going to go down. And a countermarch tie-up shows both the shafts that go up and the shafts that go down.
[00:14:37.820] – Janet
So if your tie-up is written like this with numbers or filled-in squares or both, it’s not necessarily obvious whether it’s written for a rising-shed or a sinking-shed loom. And that is where a lot of the confusion that new weavers experience comes from. They get a book. They assume that the tie-up in the book will work on their loom. They tie their loom up. They start weaving. And then the cloth doesn’t look right. It doesn’t match the picture, or it doesn’t match the drawdown. And what’s almost certainly going on is that the book has written–the drafts in the book are written with a rising-shed tie-up, but their loom has a sinking-shed tie-up, or the reverse. The book is written for sinking-shed looms, and they have a rising shed on their loom.
[00:15:24.120] – Janet
It’s not that big a crisis. And in the lessons, in the course, I talk about the times when it does matter and the times when it doesn’t matter. And it really doesn’t matter a lot of the time. Except if you’re a new weaver and this is happening to you because you don’t know the difference, chances are you’re going to be really upset if your fabric doesn’t match the picture, and then you’re going to think you’re doing something really wrong, even though it doesn’t really matter. Because what happens is you cut the fabric off the loom and you turn it over and everything looks fine on the other side.
[00:16:00.960] – Janet
The only situations in which it really makes a difference is if you have motifs that are strongly directional, or if your entire design needs to be laid out a certain way from one side to the other. Because that’s going to get reversed when you flip the fabric over. And if you don’t want your design to be mirrored side to side, or your motifs look weird mirrored side to side, like letters, then that could be an issue. Except in those particular situations, it doesn’t make very much difference.
[00:16:34.400] – Janet
But for a new weaver looking at the fabric on their loom that doesn’t match the fabric in the book, it’s really alarming. So that’s one reason why it’s important to know that this effect happens and why it happens. And then you can judge for yourself whether you care that it’s happening. And if you do, then you can deal with it.
[00:17:01.280] – Janet
But you could also write a tie-up so that it’s really clear which direction things are supposed to go. In a sinking shed tie-up, if you really want to be clear that a tie-up is for sinking sheds, you use an X in the squares. This is how, say, Marguerite Davison’s book is written, and a lot of the old-timey books that were written for sinking sheds. They have Xs in the tie-ups. You can see on the left, there’s an X in each of the squares that correspond the numbers on the right. The one on the left is clearly for sinking sheds.
[00:17:36.520] – Janet
If you have a tie-up for sinking shed–well, hang on, I’m getting ahead of myself. The one on the right now has Os in the spaces instead of Xs. Os are the symbols that are the convention to use for a rising-shed tie-up. So how do you get from one to the other? So if you’ve got the Davison book and your tie-up has Xs, but you have a jack loom\, so you want the tie-up with Os, how do you go from one to the other?
[00:18:09.880] – Janet
You start with the tie-up that has the Xs. Into all of the spaces, you put an O. In all of the empty spots, you put the O. Then you take all the Xs out. Now you have a rising -shed tie-up that is equivalent to the original sinking-shed tie-up. So these two tie-ups are equivalent. If you look at the first column of the sinking-shed tie-up, it says lower shafts 1 and 3. On your sinking-shed loom, shafts 1 and 3, all the threads on 1 and 3 are going to go down, and all the threads on shafts 2 and 4 are either going to stay where they are or they’re going to rise up. So the top of the shed is formed by the threads on shafts 2 and 4, and the bottom of the shed is formed by the threads that have moved that are on shafts 1 and 3.
[00:19:04.620] – Janet
Now look at the first treadle of the rising-shed tie-up. This one says, step on treadle 1 and shafts 2 and 4 will go up. All the threads that are threaded on shafts 2 and 4 go up, and therefore all the threads on shafts 1 and 3 either stay where they are or they go down. It’s the same shed in either case. So if you step on treadle 1 on either one of these looms, you’ll get the exact same shed, which means the treadling doesn’t have to change at all to get the same cloth. You just have to change the tie-up.
[00:19:43.620] – Janet
Okay. So here, all drawings. I can go back. Nope, stop [inaudible 00:19:50]. Go back here. Page down. There we go.
[00:19:57.000] – Janet
So this is the one that was in between. Well, here, let me go backwards here. If you started with a rising-shed tie-up, then to convert it to a sinking-shed tie-up, you would fill all of the spaces with Xs, and then you would erase all of the Os and be left only with Xs. Now you have a sinking-shed tie-up. It’s the exact same thing in reverse.
[00:20:20.500] – Janet
But this intermediate stage, which is where we are here, this is the tie-up for a countermarch loom. Remember, we said that a countermarch loom, a treadle is tied to both the shafts that go up and the shafts that go down. So if this tie-up goes to a countermarch loom, on treadle 1 here, we’re going to say, okay, treadle one needs to be tied to the lamm that will pull shaft 1 down and to the lamm that will pull shaft 2 up and to the lamm that will pull shaft 3 down and to the lamm that will pull shaft 4 up, all of them.
[00:20:58.500] – Janet
But you could also use the same tie-up on a rising-shed loom or a sinking-shed loom. On a sinking-shed loom, you would only tie your treadles to the Xs, and you would ignore all the Os. And on a rising-shed loom, you would only tie to the Os, and you would ignore all the Xs. So why do we not write all of our tie-ups like this? Because it would work for any loom.
[00:21:24.640] – Janet
You will notice in future, well, and in past, our Handweaving Academy drafts write tie-ups like this so that it’s clear to everybody whether they need to tie–which direction the tie-up is going and which part of the tie-up to use for your own loom.
[00:21:47.360] – Janet
Okay. Then we get into special kinds of tie-ups. This one is a direct tie-up. It says, tie treadle 1 to shaft 1, tie treadle 2 to shaft 2, tie treadle 3 to shaft 3, tie treadle 4 to shaft 4. If you do this to your floor loom with lamms, it will perform exactly like a directly-tied floor loom or a table loom. That means you can use a lift plan written for a table loom, a directly-tied floor loom, or a dobby loom on your loom. Don’t need to convert anything if this is the tie-up. But you have to step on a bunch of treadles at one time.
[00:22:28.040] – Janet
You can–yeah, yeah, okay, just said that. If you have a draft that has a direct tie-up, this direct tie-up, then you can use the treadling for that draft on a table loom as well, because, again, if a loom is tied up like this, it performs just like a table loom.
[00:22:47.220] – Janet
So if you take a pattern out of a book that has this tie-up, each thing tied to one treadle, and it’s a rising-shed tie-up, you can take it to your table loom and use the treadling just as if it was a lift plan. If you’re taking it out of a book that happens to have sinking-shed tie-ups, then your fabric will weave upside down. But that may not be a problem unless it has, like, letters or really strongly-directional motifs, which is not very common. I already talked about this.
[00:23:28.700] – Janet
You can, in theory, tie any loom up directly. Here’s a direct tie-up for an 8-shaft loom. It’s not very practical, though, because it’s really hard to step on a lot of treadles at the same time, especially if they’re not side by side.
[00:23:44.140] – Janet
If your draft, if your shed, the shed that was required was all the even shafts up, for instance, as is often the case if you want, say you’re weaving plain weave on a straight draw threading–pardon me–it would be really hard to step on all of the even treadles unless you got your good weaving buddy to come over and help you do it. Chances are they’re not going to want to do that, and you’re not going to want to have to wait, and it would just be a big pain. So point is, it’s not very common to see a direct tie-up used on a loom with more than four shafts.
[00:24:35.200] – Janet
A universal tie-up is one that lets you accomplish–lets you open every possible shed on your loom by stepping on treadles. A direct tie-up is a universal tie-up because you can step on one, two or three treadles and get all of the sheds. For the math geeks out there, like me, the number of possible sheds is 2 to the power of the number of shafts minus 2. So on a 4-shaft loom, that means 2 to the power of 4, which is 16 minus 2, 14. You have to take the 2 off because raising all of the shafts doesn’t make a shed, and raising none of the shafts doesn’t make a shed. So you’re left with 14 different possible sheds, one shaft up–or shaft 1 up, shaft 2 up, shaft 3 up, shaft 4 up, shaft 1 and 2 up, shaft 1 and 3 up, shaft 1 and etc.
[00:25:38.680] – Janet
You can get all of those sheds from this universal tie-up by stepping on one, two or three treadles. And that’s not that hard to do when you’ve only got four treadles to manage. Your left foot steps on whichever of 1 and 2 you need, maybe both, and your right foot steps on whichever of 3 and 4 you need, maybe both. It’s not easy to do it on this one.
[00:26:05.040] – Janet
This is another universal tie-up for four shafts. That only means you have to step on two treadles at a time to get all of the sheds. For instance, if you want the shed that lifts shafts 2, 3, and 4, you would step on the third treadle and the sixth treadle here to get that shed. It’s another universal tie-up that may be easier to use in some situations, and it gives you, assuming your threading is straight draw, it gives you plain weave already tied up, so you only have to step on two treadles at a time.
[00:26:39.220] – Janet
There’s another universal tie-up given in the lessons that is a lot like a direct tie-up, but the second and third treadles are reversed. And it’s a very useful tie-up, and the lesson talks about why that is.
[00:26:56.960] – Janet
Okay. So then the last kind of specific type of tie-up we talked about is a skeleton tie-up. If you look at the thing on the left, that’s a tie-up that you might need for a fabric that–it’s probably a summer and winter draft. But it’s got six shafts and 14 treadles. Chances are that any loom with only six shafts does not have 14 treadles. Any loom with six shafts probably has eight shafts, not necessarily, but probably does. And any loom with eight shafts probably has 10 treadles, but it doesn’t have 14. Chances are. Now, if you put this draft on a loom with 20 shafts, well, then sure, you’ll have lots of treadles. But you might want to be able to do it on your 8-shaft loom.
[00:27:47.540] – Janet
So the thing on the right is a skeleton tie-up. It is designed so that you step on more than one treadle at a time to get the sheds that you need, because remember, the shed is the important thing. For example, compare treadle 7 on the left. It lifts or lowers, it moves–because we haven’t said whether this is a rising or sinking tie-up–but it moves shaft 1, shaft 5, and shaft 6. There’s no treadle on the right that moves shaft 1, shaft 5, and shaft 6. But if you step on treadle 3 and you step on treadle 7, then you have moved 1 and 5 and 6. You’ve gotten the same result.
[00:28:37.420] – Janet
So all of the treadles on the left represent individual shafts. And all of those shafts can be made with the tie-up on the right, if you use treadles 3 through 10 in combination to get the things that are 3 through 14 on the left. This is all spelled out in more detail in the lesson.
[00:29:02.800] – Janet
Countermarch looms, though, those ones that go both ways, are tricksy when it comes to skeleton tie-ups because you can’t step on two shafts at a time all the time. So if this is our skeleton tie-up and we’re going to say, okay, it’s a rising-shed tie-up. Now we’re just going to decide. This one’s for rising shed. The one on the right is the rising shed equivalent of the one on the left.
[00:29:28.740] – Janet
Now the one on the left is the countermarch equivalent of the one on the right. Everything that isn’t rising is sinking. Now remember, in the skeleton tie-up we looked at a minute ago, we were supposed to step on treadle 3 and treadle 7 at the same time. Well, that works just fine on a rising- or a sinking-shed loom. But on a countermarch loom, that’s saying that shaft 6 is supposed to go down and up, and shaft 5 is supposed to go down and up. Shaft 4 is okay. Both treadles pull it down. Shaft 3 and shaft 2 are okay, but shaft 1 is supposed to go up and down. That is not going to work. No way.
[00:30:15.780] – Janet
So this is why regular old skeleton tie-ups do not work on countermarch looms. And universal tie-ups are a kind of skeleton tie-up. If you’re using it as a skeleton tie-up, those universal types, the regular four-shaft universal types that we looked at, also will not work on a countermarch loom. There is a universal tie-up for a four-shaft countermarch loom. It’s in the lesson, but it takes eight treadles. And a lot of four-shaft looms don’t have eight treadles. If you happen to have eight treadles on your loom, on your countermarch loom, then you can tie up four of the shafts universally, at least.
[00:30:58.260] – Janet
But anyway, we’re dealing with the–let’s see. Annotating. There we go. We’re dealing with skeleton types on a countermarch. So here’s the skeleton tie-up that we want, but it won’t work on a countermarch.
[00:31:17.620] – Janet
The way to do it is to make it even more skeletal. You take parts out. The logic for this is explained in one of the lessons. If you have a countermarch loom and you are familiar with tied weaves, then it may be worth your time to read through that example. If that is not you yet, then you might just want to skip right on past that and come back to it sometime in the future when you do have a countermarch loom and you are familiar with tied weaves.
[00:31:51.580] – Janet
For the countermarch loom owners out there, now, if you step on treadle 3 and treadle 7, you have a complete treadle, 3 plus 7, that will move all of the shafts in the right direction. So now this skeleton tie-up will work on your loom.
[00:32:09.500] – Janet
The difference is that you can’t just step on treadle 7 by itself because it will lift up two shafts and it will lower two shafts and it will leave the threads on the other two shafts just hanging out in the middle. You’ll have two sheds, and neither of them are the shed that you want. In this one, you can step on just 7 or just 3. And then the original rising- or sinking-shed skeleton type, you could, if you wanted, step on just 7 or 3. But on a countermarch loom, if you have a skeleton tie-up, you can’t just step on one of them and have a shed that makes sense.
[00:32:49.520] – Janet
Now, you might be able to do some really cool, funky things with the sheds that you get. I am very keen to start playing around with this idea of intentionally split sheds on a countermarch loom and what happens if your treadle only ties things up and what happens if your treadle only ties things down. But that’s not what this tie-up was meant to do. This tie-up, you have to step on two treadles at once to get the intended shed. All right. So that’s tie-ups.
[00:33:20.440] – Janet
Now we’ll go on to treadlings. A treadling is the part of the treadling plus tie-up shed diagram that gives you the instructions for which treadle or treadles to step on. It might tell you to step on more than one treadle at a time. And it might, like a threading, also tell you which yarns to use. Same thing with a lift plan. It might tell you which yarns to use, with different symbols that indicate the size or the fiber or the color or whatever. The treadlings will tend to use the same notations as a threading.
[00:33:56.930] – Janet
Lift plans might be a little different because it doesn’t make as much sense to put a symbol in three or four columns of a lift plan that corresponds to the weft thread because it’s really just talking about shafts. All right.
[00:34:16.500] – Janet
So to use the treadling, each column of the treadling corresponds to one treadle, not one shaft, and each row of a treadling shows you which treadles to step on. They can have the same kinds of notations that we’ve seen before–labels, balances, repeats, which may be for a length rather than a number of repetitions, and pivots.
[00:34:44.760] – Janet
Here we go. Okay. So this is a piece of a treadling, and it’s showing you which treadle to step on each time. So the top one here, this one, it’s saying step just on treadle 2. And then this one, it’s saying just on 3. But this one, where the first arrow is, it says you have to step on treadles 2 and 4 at the same time, like in that skeleton tie-up, to get the shed that you need, etc.
[00:35:18.660] – Janet
Some treadlings, instead of putting the treadle number in the square, may instead tell you how many times to step on that treadle in a row. This one is saying you’re going to step on this treadle, whichever one it is, the sixth one on your loom, two times. Then you’re going to step on this treadle, the fifth one on your loom, two times. Then you’re going to step on this treadle, the fourth one on your loom, three times.
[00:35:52.300] – Janet
If you’ve done any weaving at all, you are aware that stepping on the same treadle a bunch of times in a row just takes your weft back out. Puts it in, takes it out. Puts it in, takes it out. So something has to be going on in this draft in order for the weft to stay put.
[00:36:08.140] – Janet
Chances are somewhere else in the draft there will be the notation to use tabby, which means you need to alternate each one of these pattern picks with one or the other of the tabby picks, which should be indicated somewhere in your draft.
[00:36:24.220] – Janet
Now, not all drafts tell you what to raise for tabby. Not all drafts tell you you need to use a tabby. Ideally, they tell you both that you need it and how to make it. This little bit of threading is telling you, these are the two treadles that make tabby, and it’s telling you that you need to use tabby.
[00:36:43.880] – Janet
So the instruction is, step on this treadle, the sixth one on your loom, and then throw a tabby. Step on it again, that same sixth treadle on the loom, throw the weft, beat it into place, and then throw a tabby, which means open this tabby shed, throw the tabby weft through that one. Beat it into place. Then you’re going to step on this pattern treadle the first time, throw, beat, and then you’re going to step on a tabby. And then you’re going to step on this same pattern treadle a second time, throw, beat, and then throw and beat the tabby. Then you’re going to use this one three times with tabbies in between.
[00:37:23.480] – Janet
And each time you throw a tabby, it needs to be the tabby you didn’t just use. So you’re alternating the tabbies all along as well.
[00:37:34.700] – Janet
Some drafts show you every single pick without the tabbies in between. Some drafts show you every single pick with the tabbies in between.
[00:37:46.720] – Janet
And if you go–let’s see, that’s the end of my slide show. I have more to share, but let’s see. I’m going to stop sharing this and go to my Use Tabby lesson. Go to Use Tabby. Here we go.
[00:38:14.100] – Janet
Here’s an example of a draft that shows you every tabby pick, alternating with all of the pattern picks. It makes the treadling a little bit hard to follow. It makes it hard to see the logic in it, especially if these were all the same color. I have them in this example with the tabby treadles in green. But if they were all black, it might look like kind of a jumble, especially to somebody who hadn’t woven very much overshot–this is an overshot draft–before and kind of knew how to parse it.
[00:38:49.460] – Janet
Here’s an example of exactly the same draft. Now the tabbies are just shown up at the top, and the pattern picks are separate. But you can see up here that the two tabby picks are alternating all the time–one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. Now, these tabby picks may not be named one and two. These tabby treadles may not be named one and two. They may be named A and B. That’s very common. And that is discussed back in the lesson on treadling basics.
[00:39:24.320] – Janet
The rest of the course fleshes out all of those ideas in more detail and also then talks about ways that you can manipulate the tie-up and, therefore, the treadling in order to make the treadling easier to follow. I have some sort of wordy examples of doing this in text because to do it in still pictures and text is kind of hard to describe and to see. But I’m going to show you the same thing in Fiberworks so you can see exactly what’s happening and the result. But before I get into Fiberworks demos, I want to look and see the questions.
[00:40:15.100] – Dawn
More comments than questions. Joy figured out why they’re called jack looms. And Dayamitra gave her an A for that.
[00:40:25.460] – Dawn
And Joy said, What’s the name of a sinking? And the answer is Humpty Dumpty or perhaps Jill.
[00:40:31.888] – Janet
I see.
[00:40:31.960] – Dawn
So there you go.
[00:40:33.390] – Janet
Great. Okay. Carry on. Before I go on to getting all tricky with the tie-up, are there questions so far?
[00:40:50.900] – Dawn
Nothing popping up. Hello, hello.
[00:40:53.360] – Janet
Hello.
[00:40:54.700] – Dawn
A lot of ahas in the Chat, though.
[00:40:57.670] – Janet
Great. Okay. All right. Then I’m going to do a couple of different demos. Before I get to more demos, though, I do want to show you, if you go to the Course page, there’s a list at the bottom of the toolboxes that are related to the course. Several of these are new, and some of them are not but have been updated a little bit.
[00:41:25.300] – Janet
So we have a toolbox for how to convert a treadling with tie-up into a lift plan. I’m going to give you a demonstration of that in just a second. We also have a toolbox with a video. Both of these have video demonstrations, kind of awkward little pen and paper things, but they work, of how to convert a lift plan into a treadling and tie-up if you have a loom with lamms.
[00:41:51.900] – Janet
These toolboxes were there all along. How to tell whether your loom has a rising or sinking shed, and how to tell whether your draft is for a rising or sinking shed, if you can. Then how to convert your tie-up from rising to sinking or back. We already looked at that process in the slide show, but there’s a toolbox that talks about it too.
[00:42:14.660] – Janet
Then there’s one, is plain weave possible on this threading? That’s related to Use Tabby. If your diagram–if your draft doesn’t tell you that you have to use tabby and it doesn’t give you treadles for it, but you know that you’re supposed to, you might need to figure out how you tie-up the tabby. So there’s a toolbox for, can you weave plain weave? And how do you do it on a given threading?
[00:42:39.840] – Janet
Now for the example of how to convert a treadling with tie-up into a lift plan. Yes, that’s what I’m doing. Oh, my goodness. I’m going to use a spreadsheet because I know that that will work.
[00:43:05.400] – Janet
Here we have a treadling and tie-up on the left. And on the right, we have a grid that is waiting to become a lift plan. What we do first is look at the very first pick. And I’m going to start at the top because that’s where the tie-up is. It doesn’t really matter, though, whether you start at the top or the bottom. You can start anywhere you want it as long as you do every row.
[00:43:30.880] – Janet
So in this first row, here, it says step on treadle 1. If you look up at the tie-up, we see that treadle 1 is connected to shafts 1 and 2. So assuming this is a rising-shed tie-up, so that’s step zero, make sure you’ve got a rising-shed tie-up. And if you don’t, convert it to a rising shed. But assuming you have a rising-shed tie-up, when you step on this first treadle, you’re going to lift up shafts 1 and 2.
[00:44:03.220] – Janet
The lift plan equivalent of that is lift up shafts 1 and 2. So you’re going to fill in shafts 1 and 2. I have set up my spreadsheets so that it miraculously puts numbers in there, as well. If you’re doing this with a pen and paper, then you could just write the number 1 and 2 in there, or you can just fill in the little squares. You can do whatever you want that makes sense to you.
[00:44:27.660] – Janet
Now, the next weft pick here. It says you’re going to step on treadle 3. You look straight up the column of treadle 3 to the tie-up, and you see which shafts treadle 3 is tied to. And it’s going to lift up shafts 3 and 4. So in your lift plan, the equivalent instruction is lift up shafts 3 and 4. So you fill in the third column, and you fill in the fourth column.
[00:44:55.320] – Janet
This third pick here, third row of the diagram, says you’re going to step on treadle 1. Well, treadle 1, as we have seen, is connected to shafts 1 and 2. So your lift plan equivalent instruction is lift shafts 1 and 2.
[00:45:13.200] – Janet
Then we have just treadle 2, which is connected to shafts 2 and 3. So we’re going to put in the lift plan 2 and 3. Then we have treadle 3, which is connected to shafts 3 and 4. So in the lift plan, we’re going to put 3 and 4. Then treadle 4 is connected to shafts 1 and 4. So in the lift plan, we’re going to fill in shafts 1 and 4.
[00:45:41.320] – Janet
Then the reverse to go back down. Treadle 2 is connected to 2 and 3. Wait a minute, what did I do? I’ve done something wrong, haven’t I? 2 and 3, 1 and 4. Ah. I skipped, sorry. Backing up. Aha. Did anybody else catch my mistake? Is the Q&A or the Chat full of, Wait! What? All right. This one, I missed this treadle. Treadle 1 is connected to 1 and 2. That’s the one I missed. There we go.
[00:46:24.220] – Janet
Now treadle 4, which is connected to 1 and 4. Oops. Just 1 and 4 and fill it in. There we go. Now treadle 3, which is connected to shafts 3 and 4. Does not pay to cut corners. Then treadle 2, which is connected to shafts 2 and 3. Then treadle 1, which is connected to shafts 1 and 2. And finally, treadle 3, which is connected to shafts 3 and 4.
[00:47:03.000] – Janet
Then the last step is to copy all of the notations, the labels, the repeats, all the things to your lift plan, because you have to repeat the same lifts that you would have had to–if you had to repeat the treadles, you have to repeat the lifts too.
[00:47:23.160] – Janet
So that is how you turn a treadling and tie-up into a lift plan. If you have a table loom or you have a directly-tied floor loom and you have a draft with a lift plan and a treadling, this is how you turn it into a lift plan that works for your–sorry, if you have a draft that has a tie-up and a treadling, this is how you turn it into a lift plan that you can use on your loom.
[00:47:48.860] – Janet
Now, parenthetically, if this pick here, for instance, it said it should also be connected to–or you have to step on treadle 2 as well. So you have to step on two treadles. Oh, that’s a very bad example. Let me say treadle 1 as well. Well, here, let me just go ahead with treadle 2, and you can see why it’s a very bad example.
[00:48:17.360] – Janet
You have to put over here in the lift plan the shafts that are connected to all of the treadles that are stepped on to make that shed. So treadle 2 is connected to shafts 2 and 3, so those have to be filled in as well. Now you can see this pick is lifting up all the shafts. You’re not going to get a shed. That doesn’t make any sense. So that’s why 2 was a bad example.
[00:48:40.900] – Janet
Let’s undo it and say, okay, maybe instead this one is telling us to step on 1 as well. So 1 is connected to 1 and 2. So over here in my lift plan, it’s already got shaft 1, so I just have to add shaft 2. So now this particular lift lifts up three shafts just like this particular weft pick, because you step on two treadles, and the combination will lift up three.
[00:49:15.970] – Janet
There’s a video demonstration, two different examples of how to turn a treadling plus tie-up into a lift plan in the toolbox. One of them has treadles–or weft picks that only use one treadle at a time, and the other one has weft picks that step on two treadles at a time here and there so that you can see exactly what’s required.
[00:49:39.960] – Janet
There is also a toolbox for how to turn a lift plan into a tie-up plus treadling. So if you have a lift plan for, say, an 8-shaft loom or a dobby loom, you could turn it into a tie-up plus treadling. It may take more treadles than you have available, but you can do it.
[00:50:02.000] – Janet
If you have a lift plan for a 4-shaft loom, you can go through the process there, too, or you can just tie-up your loom directly and step on more than one treadle at a time, as you need to.
[00:50:19.040] – Janet
We’re almost out of time, but I want to show you one other thing that comes up in the lessons. And that is–oops. I didn’t mean to make that small. Make that big again. Let’s see. I’m going to put that over there. Hopefully that means that the tie-up and the treadles are not behind our pictures. Sorry?
[00:50:49.710] – Dawn
Plenty of room.
[00:50:51.080] – Janet
Good, good. Okay. This is a plaited twill draft that I got from Handweaving.net. It’s a four-shaft, six-treadle, plaited twill. And if you have only six treadles because you’re weaving this on a 4-shaft loom, then this is a perfectly reasonable treadling to use.
[00:51:11.480] – Janet
But if you’re weaving it on an 8-shaft loom, you can straighten this stuff out and make it easier to treadle so that it’s not just–instead of having to go 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 5, 3, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 5, 3. There’s not really a very logical rhythm to that.
[00:51:31.260] – Janet
If we add two more treadles, which you’ll have if you’re weaving this on an 8-shaft loom, and say, okay, this pick right here, it is supposed to–when I step on this treadle, it’s opening the shed that moves–stepping on this treadle will move shafts 3 and 4. Whether it moves them up or down, doesn’t really matter for this exercise.
[00:52:02.540] – Janet
I would like to be able to step on a treadle that is not treadle 1 that does the same thing. So I’m going to make another treadle out here that lifts the same combination of shafts and step there instead. Why, you say? Well, I’ll show you in a second.
[00:52:20.700] – Janet
Now, here’s another one, this 3. It lifts or moves shafts 1 and 2. I’m going to make a duplicate of it, as well. So if I change all of these now to those, say, and there and there, and then I rearrange the treadles in the tie-up–the sheds in the tie-up and the treadles in the treadling the same way–in Fiberworks, I can do that with a tool called Shaft Shuffler. It’s called Shaft Shuffler because you can rearrange the shafts, but you can also use it to rearrange the treadles.
[00:53:02.370] – Janet
Now, if I take this one and I move it over there and I grab this one and I move it over there, now I have a straight draw treadling that will be way easier to remember than 1, 2, 3, 4–what was it–1, 5, 3, 6? You just go ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba across the treadles. Easy peasy. Granted, you have to have extra treadles for this maneuver. So, you know, your mileage may vary. But if you’ve got them, this is a nice trick.
[00:53:35.020] – Janet
The other thing I wanted to show you while I had Fiberworks open is how to turn a treadling into a walking treadling, walking tie-up. We used to say walking tie-up, even though it’s the treadling that really walks. Those two terms are interchangeable.
[00:53:51.500] – Janet
What you do in this case is to take a–so we say, okay, look. This first treadle is my left foot. It’s on the left side of all the treadles I’m using. I’m going to take the next treadle and put it over on the right side. Then the third treadle is also on the left. That’s fine. I’m going to take the fourth treadle and put it over on the right. Now, the fifth treadle is on the left. That’s good. I’m going to take this treadle and put it on the right. Now do you see with this tie-up, my feet will alternate–left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, all the way down. And they also still go in a logical order. It’s outside and then one in and then one in and then the middle, and then back out to the outside and one in and one in and then the middle.
[00:54:44.570] – Janet
This is not really any harder to keep track of than left to right all the way across. And it has the benefits of being a walking tie-up, which is easier on your body and usually easier on your brain to keep straight. In my mind, it means I only really have to keep track of four treadles at a time. Am I on the outside? Am I on the one in? Am I on the one in from the [inaudible 00:55:11] inside? I don’t have to think, am I on treadle 3 or 4 or 5 or 6?
[00:55:18.100] – Janet
Some people really like walking tie-ups. Some people find it much easier to have things straight. You cannot necessarily achieve a walking tie-up or a walking treadling for every treadling because something that needs to be on the left at one point will have to be on the right at another point. If you have spare treadles and you can add extra treadles, well, then maybe you can make it into a walking tie-up. But this is another one of those things where if it works, it’s pretty slick, but it doesn’t always work.
[00:55:53.150] – Janet
Okay. That’s what I got. What do we have in the queues?
[00:55:57.000] – Dawn
So great. Barb Thoreson says, is there an advantage to countermarch looms? Do they work better for specific projects?
[00:56:06.740] – Janet
Countermarch looms have a great, big, beautiful shed you could practically crawl through. So people really like them for that reason. They’re also very, very easy to treadle. A counterbalance loom is fairly easy to treadle because you’re only moving some of the shafts and the others automatically go the other way because of pivots–not pivots, pulleys, some kind of a pivot device.
[00:56:34.670] – Janet
A jack loom, if you have to lift up six or seven shafts, or 10 shafts, or more shafts, that gets really heavy really fast. On a countermarch loom, it doesn’t matter how many shafts you’re lifting up or lowering. It’s always very easy to open a shed. Countermarch looms are great if you have bad knees, for example, because it will be a whole lot less effort to open a shed.
[00:57:02.700] – Janet
On the other hand, there’s a lot more effort in the tie-up. Those of you with bad knees will probably spend more time on your knees down there tying the thing up. It has trade offs. But the chief advantage of a countermarch loom is that you get a great big, beautiful shed, and it’s easy to treadle no matter how many shafts are involved.
[00:57:27.180] – Janet
And they’re also easy to treadle even when the tension on the warp gets really tight. Like for weaving rugs, you really want a tight warp. But if you jack up the tension really high on a jack loom, it gets even harder to open the sheds, and that can be really hard on your knees and hips.
[00:57:47.920] – Dawn
Joy Pate says it’s also easier on your back.
[00:57:50.683] – Janet
Yep.
[00:57:51.160] – Dawn
Northwest Access Exchange says another advantage of countermarch is all the threads are deflected more or less evenly, meaning your lower threads are not slack.
[00:58:01.580] – Janet
Right. The bottom of a jack loom’s shed, the bottom of a rising shed, jack loom’s shed can be pretty sloppy. But that doesn’t ever happen on the countermarch. It doesn’t happen on a counterbalance either. But counterbalance looms with more than four shafts are a rarity. They exist, but not in the market. You can’t easily go out and buy one. Not that let you get all of the sheds.
[00:58:35.860] – Dawn
Okay, great. You got time? Two more.
[00:58:38.990] – Janet
Yeah, of course.
[00:58:39.810] – Dawn
Okay. AOKMD says, if you have a four-shaft, no-treadle, what do you do with the treadles? Hmm. Sorry, I didn’t read that in advance.
[00:58:51.380] – Janet
I don’t understand the question. If you have a four-shaft no–what do you do with the treadles? If you don’t have treadles, there are no–can you rephrase that?
[00:59:04.100] – Janet
Maybe what you mean is, if the draft takes four treadles, but your loom has six, what do you do with the extra treadles? And the answer is you leave them unhooked. Then the other question is, which ones do you leave unhooked? And there are advantages and disadvantages to different things. I, personally, prefer to tie-up the outside two and not the inside two. And there is an explanation of why that is in the lesson on treadling tricks to make your life easier, something like that.
[00:59:42.800] – Janet
I call them locator treadles. If you have all four tied up right together and the outside two are not tied up, then when you’re stepping on the middle two, it’s hard to tell which one you’re on. But if you tie-up two and leave two empty and tie-up two more, then every treadle has an open space beside it to one side or the other. And you can kind of wiggle your foot around on the treadle and see where are you. You can locate your foot on the treadle without having to bend over and look.
[01:00:17.940] – Dawn
Joy wonders if possibly she meant no tie-up, tromp as writ?
[01:00:24.360] – Janet
Well, tromp as writ. If there’s no tie-up, that means it’s a direct tie-up. If a draft doesn’t have a tie-up, that means it’s got a lift plan. And so each of the rows of the lift plan are telling you which shafts to move. So you step on whichever treadles will lift up those shafts.
[01:00:53.140] – Janet
If you don’t have a treadling, well, then you don’t really have any idea what to do. You probably don’t know what fabric you’re headed for. I mean, there are some contexts in which you can just kind of assume what the treadling is, but those are very specific. So there isn’t really a general answer.
[01:01:19.780] – Dawn
AOKMD, I see you’re still here. If you want to clarify, now’s your chance. I have a question from Dayamitra. If you had a jack loom, could you split the treadles to accommodate all shafts and make it easier to lift all shafts needed?
[01:01:34.740] – Janet
Absolutely you can. Yes. So in effect, you’re creating the skeleton tie-up sort of thing, and that’s definitely a possibility. I once wove a fabric. It was a tied overshot, a 24-shaft tied overshot on a–no, a 20 shaft. It was a 20-shaft loom. And those shafts were so hard to treadle that two of us did it at the same time. And one person would step on one of the tabby treadles because that would lift half of the shafts. And then the other one would step on whichever pattern treadle we actually wanted. And then the other, the original person would take their foot off the tabby, and the right treadles would be in the right place.
[01:02:13.880] – Janet
But yes, you can split the treadles up between–no, you can split the shafts up between the treadles if you have spare treadles. Yes.
[01:02:25.640] – Dawn
Excellent.
[01:02:29.500] – Janet
All right.
[01:02:30.260] – Dawn
It’s the end of our questions.
[01:02:33.020] – Janet
Okie-dokey.
[01:02:34.740] – Dawn
I have them copied.
[01:02:37.200] – Janet
Great. Okay. Apologies for having the class come out just right before the lecture, but at least you have time before the Q&A. So go ahead and read the class. And I’ll be ready to A your Qs on it when we get to the next lecture.
[01:02:56.460] – Dawn
I think people just learned a whole lot.
[01:03:00.280] – Janet
There’s a lot in there.
[01:03:02.040] – Dawn
There is. It’s great.
[01:03:03.020] – Janet
You can see why I broke this up into more than one class.
[01:03:09.160] – Dawn
Yes.
[01:03:09.420] – Janet
Okay.
[01:03:10.040] – Dawn
All right. Happy trails.
[01:03:15.160] – Janet
That’s it. Take care, everybody.