Breeze Block is an attractive shadow-weave pattern with bold geometric designs on both sides, which complement each other while remaining visually distinct — I have trouble deciding which is the “front” because both are strong enough to stand on their own.
The floats are evenly distributed and balance each other out, so it lies nice and flat.
It’s inspired by a chart in an old German book of weaving patterns, although I had to scale down the original to fit on our little looms.
For the curious, below is the source image I adapted this from, taken from Die färbige Gewebemusterung (“The Colored Fabric Pattern”) by Franz Donat (1907), plate 36, figure 6. I eliminated six rows from both the warp and weft in order to get the above 27-peg design, and even more to squeeze it down to the 19-peg version.
As with the other branch designs, the motif is echoed by another set of branches pointing in the opposite direction, and it’s all repeated on the back side with the colors reversed.
It’s mostly tabby weave, with ribs of over-two floats running down the spine of each branch, so it lies nice and flat and square.
(Perhaps it could represent a laurel wreath, awarded to someone who approaches cooking as an Olympic sport?)
Some things come off the loom and they are so perfect you can’t stand it. This is one of those things. What a delight!
The pattern is unexpected from the chart. Rotational symmetric floats form boxes that draw up on themselves. The front has four interlocking knots; the rear four connected boxes. The knots and boxes stack atop each other, so the fabric is extra thick at those four points. The result is soft and thick, yet still drapey and flexible. A marvelous pattern!
Tensioned on the loom, you see the exploded version of the front knots.
On the front, you can see 4 interlocking knots, like textile frogs.
Similarly, on the rear view, the boxes have drawn up to obscure 4 white dots you see on the chart preview (upper right corner).
The thickness is more apparent in the hanging view, here of the boxes on the back.
And here on the front view, the knots stand out from the fabric physically as well as visually. The boxes on the back line up, so the result is not distorted or wavy.
Here’s another linear shadow-weave design just added to our charts: “Pulsating Saltire.”
It’s mostly tabby weave, so the resulting fabric is smooth and flat flexible. Parallel twill-like wales run diagonally towards each corner to produce the X-shaped design. The back side has a different but equally-striking pattern, with a small eye in the middle that disappears when you take it off the loom.
Woven here in Harrisville purple and white, this would work equally well in any contrasting pair of colors — or replace one or both with a range of related colors, like black against a rainbow, or blues against yellows.
Here’s a fun new pattern we’ve come up with but struggled to name.
[Update: When we asked for name suggestions on Facebook the most common theme was variations on “waves” — ripples, echoes, sound waves, vibrations, radar, microwaves, etc. I struggled with choosing between them, until I was struck by the parallel with Chladni wave plates, invented by German physicist Ernst Chladni in the early 1800s, who found that by sprinkling sand on a metal plate, you could reveal their vibration patterns, a technique that is now used to design violins and other acoustic equipment.]
Intersecting Corners is a variation of our earlier “Diverging Corners” chart that was inspired by a fabric image shared by Deborah Jean Cohen. An interesting mix of tabby sections linked by twill diagonals create a flexible, scrunchable fabric that is mostly flat and even.
The diagonal twill lines (which are horizontal and vertical in the hanging position) are evident on the potholder surface.
Look how easily you can scrunch the potholder in your hand.
Highlighting the over(under)-2s before beginning to weave reveals the diagonal pattern of twill lines, in 3 alternating zig-zags. The potholder will bias around those lines, so it flexes in many directions.
The first 3 rows lock in the pattern.
5 rows….
This chart is complicated enough that I mark my progress as I weave to help my eye track on the correct row.
7 rows…
9 rows and the chart-in-progress.
13 rows (and the chart)…
17 rows (+ chart)…
19 rows…
21…
23…
27…
Finished, still on the loom.
Completed chart, showing all of the highlighting accumulated along the way.
And here’s a clean chart you can download and print:
Exploring the stacked diagonal twills of Branch with variations, we have 4 good patterns and one that’s okay.
Clockwise from top left, we have Branch in pine and winter white, Parallel Branches 1 in pine and flax, Branch and Root in pine and ochre, Forked Branch in navy and ochre, and Parallel Branches 2 in pine and autumn.
All 5 related patterns, right side up.
Branch
Branch is mostly tabby (over/under across the row), and makes a very flat fabric with a raised center seam on both sides.
Branch begins. Here I have highlighted the center row and column (purple), and the stacked twills on the diagonal. (The orange highlighting marks an error in the draft, now corrected in the published pattern.) The pattern is simple enough that I don’t need to track my progress through the weaving, and can mostly work without referring to the chart.
1/3 of the way through, the pattern is clear.
Completed Branch on the loom.
Reviewing the hanging options, I chose the the one that looked more like a growing stem.
Forked Branch
Forked Branch is an exploration of what happens when you break up the stacked diagonal twills by inserting pattern directional changes. Without the strong center seam, the fabric remains more tabby-like overall, flatter and more even throughout. (More explorations of forked branch forthcoming!)
One good way to tackle a new chart is to highlight the floats, so you can see how the weaving might proceed.
Forked Branch was complicated enough that I needed to track which row I was working, but didn’t need to mark the whole row, since only a small section of each row has floats (crosses more than one column).
Parallel Branches
Splitting into multiple branches, you get two versions of Parallel Branches. The additional seams form valleys in the fabric that encourage folding along the diagonal. They also draw up the fabric in one diagonal direction only, pulling it out of square into a diamond shape.
Parallel Branches has 3 major stems running in parallel. The stems have stacked twill diagonals, which is also how we create the ends of the needles between the stems. Each seam shows up raised (on both sides of the fabric), and pulls the fabric in across its width.
Closeup of Parallel Branches, fully woven.
Hanging from the top corner, the off-kilter distortion from square into diamond is not so obvious.
Once you turn the potholder to “square”, however, you can clearly see it no longer is.
A large central valley forms naturally, suitable for long pot handles.
We can also break branches into smaller widths, with 5 stems in view here.
Part way through, the pattern is beginning to form. Because of the shortness of the distance between pattern segments, this one turned out to be the easiest to weave, somewhat surprisingly.
Fully woven, on the loom.
And a closeup of the highlighted chart, in which I marked the stacked twills in purple, the center row and column in green, and started tracking my progress in pink.
Branch and Root
Working the branch both up and down from the center, with 2/2 twill side sections, you get a very interesting garden effect we called Branch and Root, with a muddled middle (this is the pattern that is just okay). If we can fix the center, this pattern will improve.
The 2/2 twill side variations (instead of the plain tabby of the original Branch pattern) make for a softer fabric overall, slightly thicker, with a bit more drape. The potholder appears more square, as well, because the fabric in the twill side sections draw up on themselves, evening out the disparity from the center vertical seam.
Marking up the Branch and Root chart to show the twill patterns, we see immediately that the side sections will vary significantly from the plain-weave of Branch.
The blue highlighter marks 3-floats, of which 8 run in a column down the center. The stacked 3-floats in the very center aren’t effective; the outcome is a bit muddled there.
Fully tensioned and woven on the loom, it looks great….
But when you bind it off and release the tension, the middle sags. Still pretty, though, and worth continuing to develop, I think.
Super hearts? Beating hearts? Followup to “It’s Raining Hearts”, we have this beauty. Shares many of the same characteristics, texturally. The weave is not too difficult, but there is no obvious pattern to it, so following the chart precisely is key. You can see that I printed my chart & highlighted my progress as I went.
You decide which direction you want your hearts to hang. I held mine up in 2 directions, and decided I preferred “back” side up. So I started binding off from square 27/27 of the chart.
A very minor tweak to a pattern can have a dramatic effect on the resulting fabric. Here, we look at a modified tabby pattern that is mostly over/under with one 2-float per row, and examine the difference between aligning the floats in a diagonal of 2 overs per row, moving by one column from one row to the next, or in a diagonal of stacked floats, 2-over in one row and 2-under in the neighboring row, each pair of floats moving by one column every other row.
The diagonal floats produce a fabric that looks and feels very much like tabby, with a design pattern of lines that turn a corner. The stacked diagonal floats, in contrast, pull the fabric together, forcing the floats into a raised wiggly line on each side. The outcome is also a bit smaller, because of the pulling. The distinct center ridge is very raised, making this too bumpy to be a good choice for a trivet or coaster, although very protective against heat.
Here are Branch and Corners (left and right, respectively) on the loom. The patterns look very different already, even without the surprise of taking them off the loom and watching the stacked floats draw up on themselves.
Left, the new pattern Branch. Right, Corners. Both use a diagonal line of 2-floats, to dramatically different effect.
Rear view of Branch and Corners, You can see that the other color is highlighted on the back of Branch, whereas Corners looks very much the same on both sides.
On Corners, all the floats are over-2, and proceed in a neat diagonal.
Here on the chart for Branch, I have highlighted the under-2 / over-2 stacked floats on the diagonal.
Bed of roses! Yet another delight from the mad adaptation skills of Matthew, who converted a multi-shaft weaving design by Mary Bentley into a potholder chart. Isn’t it lovely!? And ripe for color play. There is so much fun to be had with this design.
The fabric is thick but not especially puffy, and hangs remarkably flat.
I was short 4 red loops, so I used carnation instead. I think they look like scattered petals. There is so much scope for color play here!
On the other side, we see that the pattern is inverted, with 5 “roses” and 4 “thorns”.
Stretched out on the loom, the design is very geometrical. We see no hint of the organic nature to come after binding off.
Here’s how my chart looks, after weaving. Highlighting alternate rows helps me keep track, especially in this design, which does not alternate colors.
Surprise! Remember that the loop colors do not strictly alternate!
