Name Draft Symmetry

Marcy Petrini

May, 2018

In the previous two blogs we discussed the schemes and the rules for designing a name draft using overshot, and then how the draft could be adjusted with incidental threads to make it symmetrical. Our other option for making the draft symmetrical is to flip it, much as we do to produce a pointed twill, or in our case a reverse pointed twill, as shown below:

And we combine it, remembering to eliminate one of the “1”s in the middle:

Similarly, we can flip our overshot blocks. Here is our original threading: 

And here is the symmetrical draft pivoted around block A (1, 2) in the middle, shown in the lighter blue, reducing it to 5 threads:

The reduction also occurs when we thread more than one repeat, as shown below; the light blue is once again the pivots for the two repeats; the dark pink is the combined block A for the end of the first repeat and the start of the second; the total number of threads is also reduced.

Below is the tromp-as-writ drawdown, or star fashion:

Click here for the full-sized draft (a PDF will open a new window)

And here is the rose fashion:

Click here for the full-sized draft (a PDF will open a new window)

Remember that in these drafts, what looks like long warp floats are, in fact, tabby areas as the tabby weft is not shown to emphasize the design.

All the drawdowns are derived for a sinking shed loom. Note for example that, in the above draft, all of the threads woven by the first block, D, shafts 1 and 4, are covered: those threads are lowered and the supplementary weft covers them.

While I prefer using numbers for clarity, traditionally sinking shed tie-ups are shown with “X” and rising shed tie-ups with an “O” (think “balloons rise”). To convert a sinking shed tie-up to a rising shed one, we lower the opposite shafts since, for example, when shafts 1 & 2 are lowered in a sinking shed loom, 3 & 4 remain up; in a jack loom, we can obtain the same effect by raising 3 & 4 thus leaving 1 & 2 lowered. Here is how to convert:

I haven’t woven this particular draft, but I have done a name draft of my name a while back, so there are lots of possibilities. Here is the fabric from a previous name draft.

This is the last blog on name drafting, so it’s really your turn! Try your name, or a saying; try different schemes if the first one doesn’t give you a pattern that you like; use various incidental threads where needed, so that a pleasing design results; leave asymmetrical or try strategies to make the threading symmetrical; treadle star or rose fashion – or any of the other possibilities used with overshot.

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