Weaving Errors: Treadling

Marcy Petrini

11/23/2015

The registration booklet for HGA’s Convergence 2016 is off to the printer, I am told, so this seems a good time to start a blog, as I organize my thoughts about the seminars I am scheduled to teach. One that is totally new from all of the previous Convergences where I have taught, is about weaving errors: what strategies can we use to minimize them? What can we do to fix them after they occur? It is so discouraging to see this after the cloth is off the loom: in the fabric below woven with a black weft, do you see the missing shot in the second diamond from the top?

The pattern should look like the fabric below, woven with a blue weft:

These kind of errors are hard to fix off the loom. An additional weft can be added, following the path of the missing one, but the extra weft will make the fabric denser in that spot; sometimes this is not very noticeable, or at least less noticeable than the wrong motif, other times is just as obvious. It is best to use a strategy that will help us avoid those mistakes. I like to visually match my cloth to the drawdown step by step. This and other strategies will be part of the discussion at Convergence.

Other errors can be successfully corrected off the loom. The fall issue of Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot, besides the Convergence registration booklet, will also have my “Right from the Start” article on fixing some of these errors by mending. Stay tuned….

Please email comments and questions to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..