Last night’s weaving was a revelation to me.  I’ve been doing a sampler in Summer and Winter and because I put on a 3 yard warp I decided I would weave a couple of runners with different treadling to help it all sink in. I have to admit I am such a novice weaver that until last night I had a slight grasp of what I was doing but truly didn’t really understand the structure.  Last Sunday Pam held a class on drafting and we also had to do our own draw downs on graph paper.  I am amazed at how hard I have to think to make the design part work.  I’m sure that after I do this a while it will be easier.  The class was excellent and I came away with a much better understanding of structure – how the warp and weft work together to make the desired pattern.

A couple of weeks ago I was weaving the beginning of this pattern, I had done about 2 repeats then left it for my next session.  When I got there last night it took about 15 minutes to just figure out where I’d left off.  I didn’t have a real draft of what to weave so I struggled to get going and REALLY struggled when the pattern had to change.  After weaving and unweaving I finally decided I would look (really look) at what I was weaving and what I wanted it to do and write my own draft – at least the treadle part.  I figured out each change by raising different sheds to see what they’d do and wrote it down with whatever repeats I thought would work.  Eureka!  I wove the next full repeat and it worked exactly the way I wanted it too.  This is EXCELLENT – heh, heh.

As I was weaving along I had to take a couple of photos – because I love the way it looks – I could just photograph it all day long.  I also wanted you to see that the back of the piece is the exact opposite as far as color and pattern.  Weaving is very cool.  I was also thankful that all I had was four treadles – with anymore I may never have figured it out.