Saturday, June 08, 2024

That Cute Hearts Draft: The Evolution of a Project

That cute hearts draft I'm referring to is this one . . . 

Image from from my New Project For the Table Loom post.

It inspired me to enthusiasm, But when Valerie commented that it has some pretty long floats, I thought I'd better take a closer look. The floats skip five threads at regular intervals, which might be okay in some contexts, but also could mean the threads getting caught on something. This was a good reminder of two things:
  1. Just because it's on Pinterest doesn't mean it's a tried and true draft.
  2. Don't neglect sampling.

I played around with it for awhile, to see if I could make improvements, but I could not. So, I looked at a few other drafts with a similar motif. 

This one one is a free Valentine's draft from Handwoven Magazine

I wanted to better preserve the background stripes, so I played around with it in WeaveDreamer.


I like the hearts, but I didn't care for the doo-dads between them. These are what resolve the floats problem, however, so I understand why they're there. 

Then I found this one on Pinterest . . .


The hearts are threaded and treadled the same as in the Handwoven draft, but a circle-like motif is added between the hearts. This was done by adding a 1-2-1 threading between two 4-2-4s. I played around with it a bit, and ended up with this . . .


By changing the warp colors and the treadling, I got my distinct stripes, my hearts as chains of hearts, and no long floats.

I'm not sure if I'm done playing with drafts yet, but this is the one I favor at the moment. 

8 comments:

Valerie said...

Ooooh! I like that last one.
Fun opportunity to exercise your pattern drafting skills!

Leigh said...

Valerie, drafting is a skill I really need to re-learn. I have Madelyn van der Hoogt's The Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers, so I have no excuse. :)

Michelle said...

I like what you came up with!

Leigh said...

Thanks Michelle! So much fun exploring and playing with drafts. :)

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

Drafting for a weave. I had never thought of that, but it makes perfect sense.

Leigh said...

TB, it's funny, but I never thought about the word much at all. Nor how it fits into the larger picture of it's meaning and human activity. Actually, this is part of what makes weaving so much fun.

Meg said...

Oh, I do so love reading about these developments. Well done, you!

Leigh said...

Meg, the whole design process is half the fun of weaving. :)