Shadow Weave and Weaving Software

It's been an interesting few days spent exploring weaving software and how to convert a profile draft to a shadow weave draft.  I thought I would share what I learned in a post.

 The conventional ways to convert profiles into shadow weave involve having a profile draft with a tie up that lifts 1/2 of the shafts such as a 2/2 twill or a 4/4 twill tie up.  Most weaving software programs don't give you a block substitution for conversion, but I found three that do.  WeavePoint, Proweave & Windows Weaveit Pro.  

It all started with  a profile draft on Handweaving.net  (#32432) that I liked and wanted to see how it would look in shadow weave. 

Because my weaving software of choice is WeavePoint, I tried translating it to shadow weave using the Translate Profile option.  WeavePoint gave me what I was looking for.  A four shaft, shadow weave design.  Great!

I had my draft and could have stopped there.  But, I didn't.  I wanted to see what other software programs would do and this is where it got interesting.  I found that Fiberworks didn't give me any options to convert profiles to shadow weave.  I did find that there were tutorials to help you do this - but with one caveat, that the tie up be in the format of 2/2, 4/4, 6/6 etc.   I didn't have this in my original profile and if I put a tie up like that into my profile the whole design would be different.  

Then, I tried Proweave.  I don't use this software very much, but it does have a lot of translation options to different weave structures.   I found a bunch of different options, so I took the one for four blocks and no incidentals.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great - but this is an 8 shaft draft and the block lengths have been expanded.  I could work on the draft to downsize the length of the blocks, but it didn't seem like a better choice than WeavePoint gave me.

Off to Windows Weaveit Pro.  This program gave me three options for converting my profile.  Atwater method, Powell method and Lang and Voolich method.  This was interesting because I hadn't heard of Lang and Voolich before - something new to me.  My first tries were with Atwater and Powell.  Both of the translations gave me a draft - but not for the original profile.  Instead, the software had evidently changed the tie up to a 2/2 twill because when I changed my profile tie up and looked at the pattern, the translated pattern looked identical to the thread by thread draft.  Next I tried the Lang and Voolich option.  Yeah - it gave me a correct draft, but again, one for 8 shafts.

I could have stopped there, but I really wondered why WeavePoint would give me a 4 shaft draft and the other two programs gave me an 8 shaft draft.

As I looked at the WeavePoint version, I realized that actually the profile was three blocks and Weave Point had analyzed this before it translated my profile.  And, where there was a transition from Block A to Block B, there was a double thread inserted so that the color sequence of dark and light wouldn't be interrupted (examine the first draft in this post).

So, I went back to the three programs to see how they would deal with my new, three block profile.  WeavePoint was happy.  It translated  exactly as it had the first time.  Proweave, translated it to a 6 shaft draft and Windows Weaveit Pro wouldn't give me an option to translate it at all.

 I think if you examine the profile and the solution that WeavePoint gives you, you could probably figure out other profiles.  I also tried to find Lang and Voolich's monograph, Parallel Shadow Weave  but couldn't find any current source for it.  Even Complex Weavers didn't have a copy in their library.  It would be interesting to see how their solution worked - even though it wasn't as elegant a solution as WeavePoint gave me.    

 Yeah for the WeavePoint programmer, Bjorn Myhre.

Using WeavePoint to design an amalgamation draft

 I've been fascinated with amalgamation drafts since I first read Alice Schlein's Network Drafting: An Introduction.  Recently, Alice published a new monograph  called Amalgamation: Double your Dobby and I eagerly purchased a copy directly from her.

As I read the monograph, it appeared that only some weaving software programs were capable of copying the drawdown portion of the draft and pasting it into the threading.  I use WeavePoint for most of my design work, so I went to AVL to see if the programmer of WeavePoint, Bjorn Myhre could help.   At the same time, Bob Kruger from AVL sent the question to Jannie Taylor.  Between the two responses from Bjorn and Jannie, I was able to amalgamate to my heart's content!  So - thanks to both of them for making my software just a bit more valuable to me.

The following is my process.  I've also tried it with Fiberworks for PC and it works well there too.  Choose a threading that you want to amalgamate.  You will notice that I have selected a threading that can be duplicated, in other words, I haven't ended on shaft one so that it repeats without double threads.  Alice's method is just a bit different and she does put in threadings that begin and end on the same shaft.  (More about that later).

 

The next step will be to add a satin tie up and select "tromp as writ" to fill in the treadling.  In the example below the counter is 11.  (Satin counters are explained in Alice's monograph which I recommend buying if you are interested in doing this kind of design work.)  A plus to WeavePoint software is that you select Fill from your options bar - then select satin.  This feature will give you all the counters that will work with the number of shafts in your design.  Otherwise you will need to research satins for the number of shafts you are working with.

Then, change from tie up mode to liftplan mode.  This will give you a liftplan that you can paste into your threading.  So - copy the liftplan and paste it into the threading to the left of the original 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Change back to a tie up and treadling and do another "tromp as writ". 

 

Now you are ready to get rid of the satin tie up and experiment with twill tie ups.  Check the float length when you have one that pleases you.  Sometimes it can be hard to get something that has  floats that are 5 or less in length.  WeavePoint makes searching for a tie up easy too.  In the Fill option, select twill tie ups.  You will be able to set the float length for the tie up.  I usually start with 3, sometimes need to go down to 2 in order to find a tie up that won't result in too long floats in the drawdown.

 

 

You can use the draft as is now, or do another little fiddle bit.  I often copy the entire threading and then use "paste special" which is found in the Edit menu.  Click on "flip vertical" and then paste that threading to the left of the original threading.  This option gives you more designs.

 

 

The final bit of information that I gleaned while working with Alice's monograph and my WeavePoint design solution is that when you copy the original liftplan with the amalgamation in it, you can paste it into the threading by doing  a vertical flip (again use paste special in the Edit menu)  This allows you to start and end on the same shaft with your original threading.

 

3/18/23  This is a postscript to this post.  I recently found that Handweaving.net has a feature that automatically will make a series of amalgamation drafts online.  Watch the tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4cysOpJSKk   and see what you think.  You can always upload one of your own drafts to the site and manipulate it online as well.  Amazing tools that make our weaving design life so much better.