I’ve only been weaving for about four months now, but have had a lot of fun doing four shaft patterns on my rigid heddle loom (a 16” Kromski Harp Forte). My current project is pretty complicated. So I’ve picked up a few techniques that I think have been useful.
Weaving has been around long enough, so I don’t assume this is a novel invention, but so far it has worked well in allowing me to be much more confident that I’ve got the threading right before plowing ahead.
I’m using heddle rods for all four shafts, though one of your shafts could be a pickup stick. The heddle will be acting as a reed. That is: we won’t use any holes, just the slots. For the method below, you’ll want at least 3 pickup sticks. You might want to label the sticks (painter’s tape and sharpie) 1, 2, and 3 while doing the below method.
If I was doing a sett of 10, or if doing a sett of 20 and one of the shafts happened to be satisfiable with using a second (or third) rigid heddle all would be well. But the situation is that the pattern I’m doing (which I had started with a fuzzy pic which was evidently originally snapped from here) doesn’t lend itself to using the holes on rigid heddles at all when doing a sett of 20.
Because of that, I’m skipping using the holes on the heddle altogether and just using slots, as I did when I made chevron twill towels from worsted weight cotton. As even at a sett of 8, the holes in the heddles just didn’t wind up in the right place for the pattern. So the heddle functioned just a reed; a four dent reed. Separately, I did contact The Woolery as they sell custom reeds, but they sadly can’t make a reed for the Forte. It’s not wonderful, but it all works and looks fine after wet finishing.
Anyway, back to my current project. My 10 dent heddle will be functioning as a 5 dent reed. All the shafts will be done as heddle rods. Right now I’m sampling with about 176 ends. So getting the string heddles installed correctly can be a challenge as there are just a lot of them, and counting and such would be hard for me to get right. And even if I got it right, I don’t think I’d be sure I got it right. What I was trying to figure out was if I could find a way that was easier and had ways to check along the way to know I got it right or not.
First, because like all four shaft patterns I’ve seen, there’s a tabby treadling. So what we can do is, using a pickup stick, pick up every other thread starting with the second. Why the second? IDK, but it’s the first time I’m doing this, and so why not. What we’ve then picked up is, what’s usually shafts 2 and 4. If for some reason this gives you different shafts, it’ll still work, just it’ll be different shafts.
Something I’ve discovered is: when you have multiple threads going through the same slot, as long as the threads in a slot do the right thing, their ordering on the back beam doesn’t appear to matter. Obv, if the colors varied in a batch of four it would matter, but right now, the warp is one color. The only caveat is that they don’t get hung up on each other when lifting the heddle rods after they’re installed. In such cases, I’ve only seen that when the string heddle goes under some other warp thread. Fortunately, this is easy to see, and easy to fix.
But the main rule is as long as what happens between the fell and the reed is right, what happens behind the reed sorta doesn’t matter.
So in case it’s not clear, the reason for all of this is because my pattern is complex and I don’t want to screw it up.
Simplifying The Threading Of The Draft
This may look weird at first, but stay with me, this should make sense shortly.
The threading looks like the following with the | here is the beginning and end of the repeating section:
4 4 4 4 | 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 | 4 4 4 4
3 3 3 | 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 | 3 3 3
2 2 | 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 | 2 2 2
1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1
This is 95 threads.
The tieup is
4 X X X
3 X X X
2 X X X
1 X X X
1 2 3 4 5 6
The tabby pattern is shafts 2 and 4 on treadle 6, and 1 and 3 on treadle 5. So lets look at it divvied up that way, starting with treadle 6: shafts 2 and 4:
4 4 4 4 | 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 | 4 4 4 4
2 2 | 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 | 2 2 2
And you notice that it’s repeating 4s by repeating 2s and back again with no overlaps, so if we just count the repeats, we get this:
4: 4 | 6 6 | 4
2: 2 | 3 18 2 | 3
And similarly for shaft 1 and 3
3 3 3 | 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 | 3 3 3
1 1 1 | 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 | 1 1 1
Which just counting repeats gives:
3: 3 | 3 6 1 1 6 3 | 3
1: 2 1 | 1 2 3 3 3 2 1 | 1 2
Now to check that we didn’t mess anything up, we sum up the counts across those rows:
| shaft | repeat counts | # of threads |
|-------|-----------------------|--------------|
| 4 | 4+6+6+4 | 20 |
| 2 | 2+3+18+2+3 | 28 |
| 3 | 3+3+6+1+1+6+3+3 | 26 |
| 1 | 2+1+1+2+3+3+3+2+1+1+2 | 21 |
20+28+26+21 sums to 95, so it checks. Good.
Installing The String Heddles And Rods
If you have floating selvedges or a selvedge pattern where treadles 5 and 6 don’t “tabby”, you’ll have to deal with them special, but after reading, hopefully you’ll see what you’d do.
Picking Every Other Warp
First, between the front beam and the heddle, pick every other thread, starting with the second thread, using the stick labeled 1. Once you’ve got it picked, set the stick on edge, and transfer that shed to the back by installing the stick labeled 2 in the shed behind the heddle.
Pickup Shaft Four
Then start working from the back of the loom. We’ll start with shaft 4. If we’re going by the above pattern, we’ll use the pickup stick labeled 3, and pick 4 threads, skip 2, skip 3, then pick 6, skip 18, pick 6, skip 5, then pick 4. We’ll skip the repeat for now and just go straight through, but it should be clear what you’d do.
Now if you slide stick 3 against stick 2, it should be pretty straightforward to verify you picked and skipped where you wanted to.
If everything is correct, then put heddle strings on each of the threads that cross stick three, then put them on the rod. Lift the rod and verify that all the threads that go over stick three go up. This shaft is shaft four.
Pickup Shaft Two
Then, with stick one, pick all the threads that stick three didn’t pick up, but stick two did. Lifting stick one should lift stick three and there should be no floats underneath it. This will show that you picked up everything you should have. With that now done, pull stick three. So what’s left should be stick two which has the every other on it, and shaft one which has the newly picked bits for shaft two.
Put heddle strings on each of the threads that cross stick three, then put them on the rod. Lift the rod and verify that all the threads that go over stick one go up. This shaft is shaft two.
Now lift shaft two and four and all of the threads resting on stick two should rise.
Now we can pull stick one and reinstall it on the front beam side of the heddle which should match the same set of threads as stick two. Pull stick two.
Then check things by pulling up shaft two and four independently and verify that everything looks right and nothing is getting hung up.
Picking Every Other Warp, Again
Slide stick one towards the heddle, and then using stick two, pick the threads that stick one doesn’t have. To verify, pushing the two sticks together will make the interlacing easy to see. If you have an even number of warp threads, if your first thread is coming from under, the last thread should be coming from the upper side of the stick, or vice versa. Once you’re happy that it looks right, pull stick one.
Now turn stick two on its edge, and check there are no crossed threads or anything that looks off. If everything looks good, transfer the shed to behind the heddle using stick two to keep it.
Doing Shaft Three and One
The process for shafts three and one are the same as for four and two.