Doubleweave: Beyond the Basics (March 2011)

For three days on March 10, 11 and 12, seventeen intrepid Guild members devoted their brains to the ins and outs and ups and downs of doubleweave in a workshop given by Jennifer Moore of Santa Fe, NM.  Jennifer's work has appeared in Handwoven and Weaver's magazines.  Her book, Doubleweave, was published last year by Interweave Press in “The Weaver's Studio” series.

Group Results

Ten different doubleweave structures were threaded on seventeen looms (with several structures threaded on more than one loom) in a round-robin workshop.  This yielded quite a few variations, some of which are shown at left being compared.

Jennifer Moore (r) looks on.

Doubleweave Threadings:

8 shaft twill pick-up
    (Linda Green, Ro Spinelli)
8 shaft block pick-up
    (Chriztine Folz, Suzanne Rothstein)
2 block doubleweave windows
    (Charlotte Crowder, Ginny Longley)
8 shaft 2 double blocks
    (Pat Flaherty, Mary Mandarino)
4 shaft color block rotation
    (Judy Jones, Ivy Priede, Dorothy Solbrig)
8 shaft 4 layer weave
    (Carol Wooten)
8 shaft stitched cloth
    (Dianne Chaisson)
2-block doubleweave checkerboard
    (Ruth Buchman, Deb Watson)
Double width twill cloth
    (Deborah Kaplan)
12 shaft 3-block doubleweave
    (Kathy Eklund)

Chriztine

Chriztine doing pickup
Windows

2-block double weave windows

Checkers

2-block double weave checkerboard

8 shaft two double blocks

8 shaft stitched cloth

8 shaft block pick-up

8 shaft block pick-up (different loom)

Jennifer Moore's Easier Drafting Method

Jennifer's method of threading and tying up for doubleweave (covered in her book as well as in the workshop) makes it much easier to visualize on paper what is happening in the cloth, as well as making it easier to expand doubleweave structures to more than four shafts.  For example, instead of threading 1-2-3-4 with the top layer on 1 and 3 and the bottom on 2 and 4, she threads the top layer on 1-2 and the bottom layer on 3-4. In multiple layers, threading a third layer on 5-6 and a fourth on 7-8, and thus keeping the layers on adjacent shafts, makes the draft more intuitive or user-friendly.  Her treadling method, too, with one layer of the cloth controlled by the left set of treadles and one with the right set, makes it easier to keep track of which layer is being woven.

Jennifer usually lectured for an hour or so to begin the morning and afternoon sessions and then sent us off to our looms to work.  Often what seemed crystal clear in lecture was not so crystal clear when we arrived at the looms; conversely, some concepts that seemed difficult in lecture made much more sense when we started to weave.  Probably the most challenging structures for everyone were the 8 shaft twill and block pick-ups.

Thanks to Deb Watson for the writeup and captions.
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