14/03/2014

International pi day

Let's first see if blogger accepts the pi sign - as it didn't, here is a picture of a pi sign:

I wanted to celebrate the day by making a drawdown showing such a sign, but it turns out that 16 shafts are not enough to make a nice pi.

However. Pi has an infinite number of decimals, so let me instead present an infinite number of (ok, just 8) ways to achieve a straight 2/2 twill, all with straight treadling.

First: a straight 2/2 twill on a 4-shaft broken threading:

Next, an 8-shaft, 12-treadle variant. (Why 12 treadles? - because the draft started out as a weft-emphasis plaited twill, which needed 12 treadles)

However, that many treadles are not needed - in fact, you only need 4. Any 4:

A 10-shaft variant. Could this be called a "broken point threading"? As before, only 4 treadles are needed.

Onwards we go... 16 shafts, with a couple of threadings I don't know why one would like to use:

As I actually have 20 treadles on my trusty CM - here is one that uses all of them:

So why the label "cultural differences"? Because it shows why some of us dumb Swedes do not understad the term "twill threading" so often used on the international forums... (I have writtten about it before - here is one example on this blog, here is an article on my website.)

2 comments:

Kati said...

Well-done Kerstin! Thanks, Kati Meek

jean said...

Thankyou, Thankyou for addressing this again. It's something that 'rattles my cage' yet I haven't figured out how to speak to it without sounding like a nutcase.

I don't think it's strictly a cultural difference..... I think education plays a large factor- drafting isn't taught much in North American weaving courses- at least not to any significant degree.

I also believe it's as much a function of the thinking process as a cultural difference. In the absence of a real understanding of drafting, a scientific or analytical mindset is more apt to comprehend that there can be multitude of threadings, tie-ups and treadlings that will all yield the same structure.