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The Fabric Determines the Structure But You Must Know the Structure |
Marcy Petrini
April, 2024
When faced with an unfamiliar structure, I generally do a drawdown which allows me to break it down starting with the Emery classification.
Glance a drawdown without writing it? That’s exactly what I did recently – and got it wrong!
I received a drawdown from a weaver asking me to figure out what a structure called Eskelhemsdrällen may be. Unfortunately, my software couldn’t read her wif file (I do need to upgrade!) but she sent me the pdf shown below:
It came at a particularly busy time, so I looked at it and I thought that carefully inspecting it would be enough. This is what I decided:
- By Emery classification the fabric is a “Rectangular Float Weave Derived from Plain Weave “ – blocks formed with one warp and one weft.
- Adjacent blocks are not combined in the treadling, thus it cannot be a unit weave, for example, Bronson Lace.
- There is plain weave across the width of the fabric and down the length of the fabric, which is typical of huck.
Scandinavian weavers do imaginative arrangements with huck, so I decided that it was huck.
But, in fact, it is Spot Bronson, the way I learned it many years ago.
The partial drawdown below and the one in the pdf are sinking shed. All the drawdowns that follow for the various structures are rising shed. All my looms are rising shed, so I find myself thinking that way. Of course, as always, the other side of the fabric is the opposite shedding mechanism.
Where did I go wrong?
I went wrong by using the plain weave along the edges as a characteristic and not remembering that one shaft – in this case shaft 1 – is common to all the blocks in both Bronson Lace (aka Lace Bronson) and Spot Bronson.
The Eskelhemsdrällen in the pdf is on more than four shafts. Plain weave can be added to just about any structures by using extra shafts, so the plain weave along the edge should not have led me to conclude that it was huck.
It is important to realize that Eskelhemsdrällen is NOT Bronson Lace. That part I did deduce correctly.
Let’s compare and contrast Bronson Lace with Spot Bronson first on four shafts, than on more.
The next drawdown is Lace Bronson on four shafts; there are two blocks, here repeated in the threading. Plain weave is woven across the fabric by alternating the two tabbies: shaft 1 vs. all other shafts. The tabby on shaft 1 is used in treadling every block.
Its most distinguishing characteristic is that blocks can be combined in the treadling.
Shaft 1 alternates with pattern shafts, but the float of each block is delimited by shaft 2.
Because of the tie in shaft 2, blocks are separated by one thread, most clearly visible in the lower portion of the drawdown where the blocks are treadled together. It’s that separation that allows the blocks to be treadled together, avoiding a long float.
If we sacrifice shaft 2, we can add a block. That’s exactly what Spot Bronson does. In the drawdown below, we see that the blocks are still threaded shaft 1, pattern shaft, but now the pattern shafts are 2, 3 and 4, giving us three blocks. The float is no longer delimited by shaft 2 as in Lace Bronson, rather, the float stops when the pattern shaft of the next block is encountered. The tabbies in Lace Bronson are still shaft 1 vs. all other shafts. The shaft 1 tabby is still used in treadling with every block.
In contrast to Lace Bronson that has one thread separating the blocks, those in Spot Bronson are “stacked” – since shaft 1 is in common with all the blocks, the end of one block is at the same point as the beginning of the next. This is visible in the drawdown.
The other consequence of not having a tie shaft in Spot Bronson is that the blocks of the same type (weft or warp floats) cannot be woven together, it would result in a long float over those blocks, as shown in the drawdown when treadling the first two blocks together.
Thus, Lace Bronson is a unit weave, Spot Bronson is a grouped weave, the same category as huck. It’s unfortunate that this distinction is not always clear. I hear people refer to the structure as “Bronson” – which Bronson?
In huck, as in Spot Bronson, blocks of the same type cannot be combined in the treadling, as shown in the drawdown below, however, the reason is different: to weave plain weave, the tabbies 1 & 3 and 2 & 4 alternate. The blocks with different tabbies cannot be treadled together because 1 & 3 and 2 & 4 would have to be combined for a tabby.
However, the fact that blocks cannot be treadled togethers puts huck and Spot Bronson in the same category.
The Eskelhemsdrällen that my pen-pal sent me is on more than four shafts. Let’s expand our structures to more shafts.
With eight shafts, Spot Bronson has seven blocks, shown in the drawdown below. With more blocks available we see that non-adjacent blocks can be combined in the treadling, adjacent blocks cannot; this is the same situation as Spot Bronson on four shafts, where each block is always adjacent to the others. Treadling adjacent blocks would produce a float over the two blocks.
Treadling together non-adjacent blocks can also be done with huck on more shaft than four, shown in the drawdown below. Adjacent blocks cannot be combined because they have different tabbies.
It is this characteristic that results in the most important difference between Spot Bronson and huck: adjacent blocks of different types can be treadled together in huck, but not in Spot Bronson. In fact, this is huck lace, in the drawdown below. This is possible because the tabbies are shared, that is, block A woven with weft floats has the same tabby as block B woven with warp floats.
In Spot Bronson, weft and warp floats can be woven on the same side of the fabric. The tabby on shaft 1 is used in weaving weft blocks; the tabby with all the other shafts is used in weaving warp floats, the two combined activates all the shafts!
The other characteristics are not so unique. These weaves are classified as “Rectangular Float Weaves Derived from Plain Weave”, thus most, but not all of them, can be surrounded by plain weave.
The Eskelhemsdrällen drawdown has plain weave along the edge, but with multishift structure, we can use one or two shafts, depending on the circumstances, and add plain weave.
Furthermore, if we want two, rather than three blocks in Spot Bronson, we can have plain weave down the selvage edge, as shown in the drawdown below. It’s still Spot Bronson.
When I was originally studying these weaves, they were often lumped together as “lace weaves”, a term that my lace making colleagues argue we shouldn’t use, because we cannot weave true lace. I prefer the term “lacey weaves.” The mantra we used to differentiate them was: one thread between blocks for Lace Bronson, blocks abut for huck, and one shared thread for Spot Bronson.
But even that mantra doesn’t hold true. Here is a Scandinavian huck with threads overlapping!
Below is a drawdown for droppdräll from Practical Weaving Suggestions One Color Upholstery Fabrics, Vol. 2-58, by Edna Olsen Healy and published by the Lily Mills Company, Shelby, N.C. It is in the public domain and is available from the University of Arizona at this link:
https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/periodicals/pws_58_2.pdf
It was brought to my attention by my study group colleague Peggy Cole.
So, here is a summary of how to differentiate between these weaves:
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Tabbies |
Shafts 1, |
Shaft 1 |
Shaft 1 |
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Tabbies |
Odd vs. |
Shaft 1 vs. |
Shaft 1 vs. |
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Treadling blocks with |
Only |
Only |
Any |
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Treadling blocks with |
Yes, huck lace |
Not possible |
Not possible |
I hope comparing and contrasting these structures will give you some ideas on how to design with them.
Happy Weaving!
Marcy