Basket weave selvedges for 8 shaft looms

I've been a big fan of basket weave selvedges ever since I was introduced to them by fellow weaver and friend, Sandra Rude.  They work most easily with multishaft looms and liftplans.  However, they can be added to other weaving drafts and this post is to let you know how that can be done.

The reason for using a basket weave selvedge is to keep your edges neat and even and to avoid having to use floating selvedge threads.  Their beauty is that as you throw the shuttle back and forth, your weft catches the edge thread of your woven piece on each throw.  Another reason for using the basket weave selvedge, rather than just a plain weave selvedge (using only two shafts) is that plain weave selvedges take up differently than your main pattern and will give you a ruffled edge, whereas basketweave seems to truck along nicely at the same take up as the rest of your piece.  One of the pitfalls in using this treatment on everything you weave is that it uses up four of your precious shafts. 

The very first thing you need to think about when trying to add this selvedge treatment is that a basket weave selvedge  not only needs four extra shafts, but four picks as well.  The biggest mistake that I have made is thinking I have four shafts for my pattern and four shafts for the selvedge.  But, if I am weaving with a point treadling my sequence will be 1-2-3-4-3-2 which has six picks.  I can manage to weave this if I have a table loom and put my draft into a liftplan or I might be able to work out a more complicated treadling sequence with my floor loom, but it's going to be awkward. Everything needs to end up with a treadling sequence that is a multiple of four so in my example above, the minimum treadling sequence is going to be 12 (which is divisible by 6 - the pattern treadling and 4 the selvedge treadling). 

Once you have decided that your pattern choice is going to work and you are going to proceed, it becomes more straight forward.  I usually put my selvedge threads on the last four shafts, but when working with a multishaft loom, sometimes I put them on the front four shafts for easier repairs should a warp thread break. (This was a tip given by Allen Fannin on Weavetech many years ago).

The example below shows the threads on the last four shafts which have been colored blue in the warp. (Half the threads are on the right side and the other half are on the left side.)  I have used five threads to make the floats smaller between the interior pattern and the selvedge threads, but you can just use four on each side if you like.  Notice the tie up on the last four shafts.  In this example the treadling is a repeat of 8, so the tie up for the basket weave is repeated twice.  Also, the threading for this example makes it necessary  that you start throwing your shuttle from the right side.  You can see that if you started throwing from the left side, you wouldn't pick up the edge thread and nothing would work right after that!  I always keep my selvedge threads in this threading configuration so that I always throw my shuttle on the first pick at the right side of the warp.

The best description of selvedge treatments (that I have found) is in the book Handloom Weaving Technology by Allen Fannin.  It is on pages 264 & 265. The book is fairly technical, but does have other things that will interest handweavers.  If you are interested, used copies are fairly inexpensive. 

After this post was published, another weaver friend pointed out that Peggy Osterkamp discusses the same topic in her book Weaving and Drafting Your Own Cloth on pages 88 & 89.  She refers to this selvedge treatment as "tape selvedges"  and also 2/2 hopsack weave. Peggy's book is crammed with information for weavers and would make a good addition to your weaving library.  Unfortunately, her blog posts about this subject have disappeared!

Cally Booker from Dundee Scotland discusses double weave selvedges - possibly the same thing as tape selvedges.  At any rate, here is a link  to her post  https://callybooker.co.uk/2017/10/comparing-selvedges/

Floating selvedges that break

A couple of months ago at a weaver's meeting, someone asked the group  for a solution to a floating selvedge that was constantly breaking.  In the back of my mind, I remembered a paper that Alice Schlein had written about the subject for the Complex Weavers CADE study group, but couldn’t really recall the details well enough to give an answer at that time.  As these things go, I had a warp with floating selvedges on my loom and the one on the right side started unplying and breaking frequently.  I looked up my copy of Alice’s article and found that she has a pretty good answer to the problem and one that you aren’t going to find with a Google search.

Alice explains that when your shuttle goes over a plied thread, it either increases or decreases the twist.  If you decrease the twist enough, it eventually frays and breaks.  The solution Alice proposed  is to determine whether your selvedge thread has been plied S or Z.  Most commercial yarns are plied S and you can check yours with a hand magnifier if necessary.  If your yarn has been plied S, you will pass your shuttle over both floating selvedges when your shuttle travels from left to right and under both of them on the return trip from right to left.  If your floating selvedge yarn is plied Z, then you reverse these instructions by going under both floaters from left to right and over when you throw the shuttle right to left. 

It takes a bit of time to learn this technique of going over or under both threads, but after you have practiced a while, everything falls into place and your selvedges look better too.

While doing my online research about this subject, I found that many people recommended a temple, which helps if there is too much draw in from your reed to the fell line. But I am firmly convinced that Alice's explanation is really the answer to selvedge breakage on one side of your warp.

Reference: Schlein, Alice. "The Selvedge Dilemma: Dealing with Breakage" Complex Weavers Computer Aided Design Exchange. October, 2003

Basket Weave Selvedge for Two Shuttles

I am woefully behind on my samples for the Complex Weavers Early Weaving Books and Manuscripts group and decided I wanted to use a threading from American Star Work Coverlets by Judith Gordon (see page 90 for a 22 shaft version) and use four tie down threads instead of two so that the tie downs were spread out a bit on my loom.  The tie ups I had in mind to use with this threading are drafts from the Christian Morath pattern book.

I warped 18 yards of white 8/2 cotton so that I would have plenty for the samples and more for some towels to sell at a Christmas fair.  I wove the samples up without too much problem using a fine 28/2 white cotton from Finland as the tabby weft and some Harrisville Shetland wool for the pattern weft.  The wool seemed to stick in place at the selvedges without too much problem.  The real problem came when I tried shifting to the towels.  I used an 8/2 cotton and my selvedges were a real mess.

I called for help on the Yahoo group called WeaveTech.  Sandra Rude, who is weaving on a Jacquard loom and using multiple wefts, came to the rescue.  She told me how to elongate the regular basket weave selvedge treatment so that you throw two shots in each shed. 



 

In the draft above, your threading is on shafts 1 and 2 on the right side and 4 and 3 on the left side.  This configuration is important.  You may use any four shafts on your warp for the selvedge treatment and I either use the first four or the last four.

 

 

To try this out on the warp I was weaving, I cut four selvedge threads on each side and rethreaded them to shafts 21, 22, 24 and 23.  Then, I took my lift plans and added the eight pick treadling sequence to those shafts.  You must make your liftplan picks a multiple of 8 before you add the selvedge lifplan so that it transitions correctly at the end of your treadling sequence and starts over again.

 

 

Sorry that this is so small, but I hope it is large enough for you to get a clear picture of the threading and the liftplan.

 

Once I resumed weaving, this is what the selvedges looked like.



 

 

It is important to remember that you  thread your selvedges according to the plan given and start your weaving from the right side.  The selvedge draft shown starts the treadling at the top and works down.  When I actually do my drafts, I use the convention of treadling starting at the bottom and working up in the liftplan mode.

 

One last comment about basket weave selvedges.  I use them all the time when I weave towels and I am usually using one shuttle.  If you want to add basket weave selvedges to other weaving projects that only use one shuttle, use this draft.  For a good description of the process, see Handloom Weaving Technology by Allen Fannin pages 264-265.