Hi all,

I loathe moving heddles, and have drawn a draft with 8 shafts where I will either need to move heddles (yuck) or spread the draft over multiple shafts. I have 24 shafts to work with, but Weavepoint won't do the "Multiply Shafts" utility because it wants "more than one repeat". If I make repeats, WP will just pop the second repeat onto the next group of shafts, which doesn't solve my heddle issue.  Its not clear to me if/how Fiberworks offers "use more shafts", although that might just be me missing something.

Am I doomed to do this by hand? It's a fiddly extravaganza of a draft with points and amalgamation and borders. I am not great at linear algebra, but I think I'd rather thrash at writing a program to apply a transform to the liftplan than try to get it right by point-and-click.

Any advice? 

Thanks!

--janell

Haven't seen your draft, but I have pretty good success using the Transform
menu for manipulating drafts. It may take a few steps, but you can insert
and delete and slice and dice a lot of things. Or you could do a heddle
count and redraw one repeat with proportional representation of each shaft
you intend to put into the fabric on more than 8 shafts.

Sara von Tresckow, Fond du Lac, WI
sarav@...
Author of “When a Single Harness Simply Isn’t Enough”
http://www.woolgatherers.com Dutch Master Loom/Spinning Chairs/Öxabäck
Looms, visit us in Fond du Lac or contact us about your weaving/spinning
needs

Hi Janell, 
When I find myself with a draft requiring more heddles than I have on a shaft, and I have available shafts to use, I divide the oversubscribed shaft into two or more, and draft those onto 'substitute' shafts. For example, if I have a lace weave (the usual culprits for this kind of thing!) on, say, 13132 13132 14142 14142 etc where 1 has sooo many threads, then I often thread it using shaft 9 with shaft 1 - for example 13932 13932 14942 14942 etc. It doesn't matter which shaft(s) you use as substitute(s) because you just include them in the liftplan or tie-up wherever you are also lifting or tieing shaft 1. Any shaft used this way becomes an extension of the original oversubscribed shaft. 

Does this help? 
Warmest wishes, 
Stacey 

Thanks Sara and Stacey, I am not stuck on what needs to happen, just on how to do it accurately (and preferably programmatically). I did play a little bit manually - putting an empty shaft next to one that needed some help - but any misplaced click is really hard to chase down because the threading looks like nonsense. 

I used this evening to retrace my steps in creating the draft.  This time I spread the starting undulating twill draft over 24 shafts -before- adjusting and amalgamating it and adding borders. That certainly worked. But if folks have other methods they would like to share, I am all ears! 

—janell

Janell,

I can only comment in respect of Fiberworks, not Weavepoint, but for my current warp I had to do some extensive changes to spread my draft over more shafts so as not to need to move heddles around (not a user-friendly thing to do on a Louet Megado). My draft started out as a plain weave triple cloth on 6 shafts interleaved by a further 10 shafts for a pique pattern (which in turn was a double two-tie threading. I am working in 2/16ne cotton at 90 epi (30 per layer) for the triple cloth, so it's all very dense. 
When I checked the heddles required per shaft (in cloth, notes and records) I was significantly short of heddles on shafts 1-6. My original threading was 1,3,5,2,4,6,P (P= supplementary warp pattern thread for the pique). First, I added 12 more shafts and shuffled the empty shafts down to occupy shafts 7-18. Then I changed the initial three threading groups to: 1,3,5,2,4,6,P,7,9,11,8,10,12,P, 13,15,17,14,16,18,P. I then selected the threading on just shafts 1-18 of the first 21 threads and repeated to reach the length of the original threading. Because the pattern threads are not part of the selection they are left as original. I checked the heddles again and now I was going to be a bit short of heddles on 11-18. So I made a further adjustments in a similar way. I also discovered that I needed to spread out the tie downs of the double two tie over 4 shafts rather than 2 so again I added two more empty shafts and moved them into position so I could use the same principle of manually entering the first repeat of the tie downs only, then repeating to the end of the draft. Do check at each stage the effect of changes on the heddle count - sometimes you end up with unintended consequences.
This sounds complicated to describe but is less difficult to actually do. But having added these extra shafts, you do still have to do some manual copying and pasting in the tie up, duplicating rows relating to the original shafts into the empty positions.
I hope this helps.
Best regards
Brenda

Hi Janell -

TempoWeave from LoftyFber has a runction that does exactly what you are looking for.  You select a shaft and have the program assign it to itself and another shaft (and even a third or fourth). For example, take shaft 1 and assign it to 1, 9, 17, etc.  The program then moves the second occurrence of shaft 1 to 9 and the third to shaft 17, and then repeats.  No affiliation, I just love the program.

Helen

In Weavepoint, you can "insert in threading" or "insert in liftplan" using a
file. I would identify the shaft to be "expanded" and create a file for 2 or
more shafts spacing the threads into a single repeat and insert that using
the transform menu.
You can specify the interval between inserted ends. The program inserts the
extra shafts. At that point you remove the old shaft that had too many ends
for the heddles.
I used the transform features this winter working on some continuous
brocading that could be woven in various structural ways. I designed the
basic patterning and colorplay with just a point threading and no tabby in
the liftplan.
Then, using this "insert" feature with a premade structure file, inserted
the necessary threading and liftplan interleaving. Worked very nicely.
I think the thing to remember about software "functions" is that they need
to be the "standardaized" part of the equation. The creative part - the
pattern and colorplay - are best done with sketching and working with the
mouse.

Sara von Tresckow, Fond du Lac, WI
sarav@...
Author of “When a Single Harness Simply Isn’t Enough”
http://www.woolgatherers.com Dutch Master Loom/Spinning Chairs/Öxabäck
Looms, visit us in Fond du Lac or contact us about your weaving/spinning
needs

OMG. I didn’t know about that feature. I love Tempoweave as well!
Nancy Warren