April 2026: Handweaving.net Draft #36980
Woven by Jennifer Shuster-Clark
Finished cloth - 20 Shaft (click image to enlarge)
I had volunteered to weave a sample for the guild, but I found myself in a situation where all my looms were warped up and occupied. My AVL had a 40-shaft straight draw threaded with an ambitiously long (for me!) warp. I decided that I should try and find a draft that I could weave on that current warp. I always wonder if other weavers enjoy seeing samples woven on many, many shafts or does it make them slightly depressed with shaft envy?
One of the advantages of having a lot of shafts is that you can treat your loom like multiple smaller looms lined up one after another. For example, my 40-shaft loom could behave like two 20-shaft looms, but whatever happens on those first 20-shafts has to also happen on the second set of 20. If I lift shaft 1, I also have to lift shift 21, and if I lift shaft 2, I also have to lift shaft 22, and so on. With this in mind, I went to Handweaving.net and started looking at different drafts for 20 shafts. I kept returning to draft #36980 and decided it was a winner.
When I look at this draft, I think it looks like crackers. My finished sample, however, does not read as strongly. In my excitement to get the sample washed and dried, I unfortunately did not take the time to set aside a piece of the cloth that would not be wet finished. Add this to my list of things I “should do next time.” I did, however, take a picture on the loom and it looks much more like the actual drawdown. It would be interesting to explore how a different yarn or a tighter sett might make the finished cloth read more like the draft and more like the on-loom cloth.
While the first sample was on the loom, my mind kept coming back to that question of shaft envy. I thought it might be fun to take this draft and see if I could reduce it while still maintaining the intent of the original design. As I mentioned, I see crackers in the draft and I wanted to maintain that look. The first reduction, from 20 shafts to 10 shafts, was very easy. All I did was delete shafts 11 through 20 from the draft! (36980_10S.wif) This 10-shaft draft could again be woven on my warp by treating my loom like four 10-shaft looms. Again, I feel like the final cloth does not read as strongly as the drawdown.
What about compressing this draft even further? I tried reducing it by half again and simply deleting shafts 6 through 10, but the result was not appealing. I played around considerably with the draft, deleting a shaft here or there, starting over, deleting picks in the sequence, starting over, trying again, until I finally came to an 8-shaft draft (36980_8s.wif) that I liked. I suspect that if one were to search Handweaving,net, they would find something very similar to this draft that I created through reduction. I did not weave up this draft, but again, I could have by treating my 40-shaft loom like five 8-shaft looms. (Note: These WIFs will be available for download from the Guild website.)
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Cloth on loom - 20 Shaft
Draft #36980 is Figure 2089 from Atlas de 4000 Armures, Louis Serrure, France, 1920.
Yarn: 10/2 unmercerized cotton in both the warp and weft
Sett: 22 EPI/22 PPI
Finishing: Machine wash and dry, hot iron
Shrinkage: 8%
Loom: AVL K-series
