Jacquard Study Group - Advancing Point Twills

A Loom Story -Advancing Point Twills on Dobby and Jacquard Looms

by Sheila O’Hara 11/14/08

(This is the unedited version of my article for Handwoven Nov/Dec 2008- issue 142)

In 1984, when I was considering buying an AVL 16 shaft, 60" compudobby loom, I called AVL Looms in Chico, CA. I was living in Oakland, CA at the time and weaving on a 16 shaft second-hand countermarche loom made in Germany. It had been brought to the US some time after WWII. In 1980, I found a notice for the countermarche loom on the bulletin board at Straw Into Gold, a textile supply store, where I was working part time. I had only seen people weave with fine threads on AVL looms and didn't know if the loom would get a proper shed with a dense warp of 3 ply wool yarn at 32epi with 1,920 ends. Peter Straus told me to call Jim Ahrens for advice. Jim was one of the AVL loom designers – the “A” in AVL looms.

It turns out that Jim Ahrens also lived in Oakland at the time, on the same street as me and only one block away. What are the odds of that? :-) I called Jim. He came over and studied my weave structures and the technique I was using of changing the shed up to 20 times across one weft row to get my design to come out. I think the words he used to describe what I was doing were "pretty nifty." He took my drafts home and came back a few days later. He said that the AVL loom would help make my weaving easier with the efficient loom design for ease of weaving. The compudobby would eliminate the problem of the pedal limitation on my countermarche loom. He recommended that I buy one, so I did. I was thrilled with just typing in the many tie-ups and peg plans instead of hooking up 256 cords to the 16 countermarche pedals. He also said that other than a compudobby loom, the only loom that would really solve the weave structure problem would be a jacquard loom. We became good friends and I visited Jim and Ethel on a regular basis until they moved to Utah. I was able to visit them there once. He was a great man. I miss him. I still have Ethel on my Holiday Letter mailing list. She is alive and well at 92 years old.

So, 24 years after Jim Ahrens advised me that I needed a jacquard loom, a 672 hook hand jacquard loom came to me through the amazing generosity of Mim Wynne in Fayetteville , Arkansas. This was after weaving on my AVL 16 shaft compudobby loom since 1984. Also, since November 2000, I have rented 550 hours of weaving time on two hand jacquard looms in Berkeley: Nina Jacob’s 880 hook TC-1 loom and Cathy Bolding’s 1,728 hook TIS/AVL loom.

I am curious by nature and want to know about who has what loom and how well it works. I called Mim in April 2005, about a year after she bought her AVL jacquard loom, only to find out that she had been diagnosed with MS and hadn’t been able to weave on her loom yet. She owns a 3,000 square foot gourmet kitchen store and gift shop called Handmade in Fayetteville, Arkansas, that keeps her quite busy. She has woven and sold beautiful rag rugs with hand dyed muslin strips and sock loopers - at least to the moon and back - for over 30 years. I was able to work with her on the phone to start to teach her the jacquard software ArahWeave written by Dušan Peterc of Arahne in Slovenia. Mim and I had made some progress over three years with intermittent calls. Finally she realized that because of her illness she didn’t have the energy it takes to both tackle a jacquard loom and software and run a 3,000 square foot store. When I called her on her birthday this year, 2008, she said she was going to give me her loom! I was in shock but gladly took up her offer even though AVL is now making a new, very different version of jacquard looms. I flew to Arkansas in May 2008. For five days, Mim and her husband, Greg Thomas, helped me build custom crates and pack up the 1,240 pounds that was then shipped to California.

As soon as I told Madelyn about getting a hand jacquard loom, she cornered me at Convergence in Tampa. She told me about the idea she had for an article on variations in Advancing Point Twill using 4, 8, 16 and 32 shaft looms and a jacquard loom. I was on a mission (almost impossible) to complete these weavings for Madelyn. When Madelyn talks: people weave! When under a deadline, pushing the inspiration button doesn’t always get results but with help from everyone it worked out well.

I met up with my husband, Bill Fredriksson, at the shipper’s dock in Santa Rosa, CA, on my way home from Convergence. We brought the loom home in 11 boxes, crates and tubes in our two vehicles. I put it together mostly by myself, using all my notes and photos and a few e-mails to Bob Kruger at AVL. Then with help from Bill and Ed Torres, our neighbor, we lifted up the two 80 pound jacquard heads onto the top of loom making it 8 feet 8 inches tall. Bill also helped with the electric wiring, the electric loom cables, the air hose and the air compressor hook up, the software and computer set up. The loom just clears the peak in my studio ceiling. I have named the loom Big Momma and she is happy to be in my studio with my other looms I use for teaching.

My AVL672 hook hand jacquard loom in tubes and crates and then assembled - nearly 9 feet tall.

I was familiar with an Advancing Skipped Point Twill weave structure from an article written by Bonnie Inouye for Weaver’s #37, Fall 1997, also published in Best of Weavers: Fabrics that go Bump. I taught my students about advancing twills and compudobby looms at Mendocino Community College in Ukiah, CA, while teaching for Holly Brackmann several semesters from 2002-2007. Each student made up a new tie-up and treadling pattern to go with Bonnie’s threading. At home, I created the weave structure easily in Fiberworks-PCW using the “step” feature. When I asked for help, Jane Eisenstein told me that I could save the Fiberworks-PCW drafts as .wif files and open them in ArahWeave, the jacquard software I use and love. This was a saving grace since the draft was 176 x 80 squares and no fun to copy by hand. Jane owns a TC-1 loom and uses ArahWeave as well as her own softwares.

Next, thanks to Mim, I was so happy that the warp already on the loom was black 10/2 cotton – just what Madelyn wanted. I rethreaded the loom after putting it together and spread the 672 warp ends out to 30epi (22.4”) and wound 11 yards back onto the warp beam. I had a cone of Safari 10/2 cotton yarn left over from a student’s project – just the color Madelyn wanted for the weft. I put the advancing skipped point twill into ArahWeave and pretended I had a 16 shaft and then a 32 shaft loom. I wove two napkins one with Bonnie’s overall pattern and then I adapted one with blocks that would require a 32 shaft loom. These fabrics took on a sort of Japanese look to me in classic black and tan. They make very nice napkins. If you have a 32 shaft loom you can weave both variations from the same threading if you just use the 16 shaft treadling. Fortunately, Madelyn had found someone to weave the 4 and 8 shaft versions as the deadline approached. To weave the napkins just follow the drafts for the 16 and 32 shaft patterns listed on line at www.interweave.com . Go to Handwoven, click on Free Projects & Articles, then click on Projects on more than 8 shafts and scroll down to my web article. The blocks in the 32 shaft version are 88 ends x 80 picks. The whole repeat is 176 ends x 80 picks so I used half the warp repeat for the blocks. You can vary the number of blocks& density according to your yarns and needs. Try various treadlings. Have fun.

Next – what do I do with advancing point twill with a jacquard loom design? Since I was thinking about Japan, I remembered the photography book my Mom had published in 1980. She used photographs she had taken while they lived in Japan from 1948 to 1954. Our Dad was Port Captain for American President Lines. I am the last of seven children – three of us born in Japan – but I only lived there the first six weeks of my life. I chose a 16 x 20 photo of Lake Biwa taken by my Mom in 1953 (the year I was born) and took a digital picture of it. I decided to use the advancing skipped point twill weave as a texture in the leaves of the tree. I was able to take Bonnie’s draft and turn it into a three shuttle weave in ArahWeave. There is a special feature in ArahWeave which allows you to see each shuttle’s weave structure and work on it separately and then combine them for the complete weave. I made up another 3 shuttle advancing point twill for the rocks below the tree. Then I used 3 shuttle 1/7 satin weaves with single weft colors and also pick and pick blends along with a warp faced black satin. I reduced the colors in the design from the 256 colors to 20 and assigned a weave to each color - like weave-by-number. The magic begins when you can see it simulated in Arahweave as a fabric and then weave it where every thread can be moved independently. To create the sepia color that my Mom used when publishing her book, I blended whites, tans, greys and browns. I added the border with the advancing point twill to frame the piece. I think my parents are enjoying the creativity they inspired in their children even though they are no longer with us.

As a special Thank You to Mim, I wove her a jacquard tapestry. It is based on a drawing she made as a child. She showed it to me displayed on her refrigerator when I was in Arkansas. I snuck a copy of it while she was out in the studio one day. At home, I enlarged and traced her drawing and then scanned it into the computer. Taking the graphic design I resized it in ArahPaint and put a different color in each shape so I could assign a different weave to each shape since she likes pattern weaves. This added various textures inside the shapes of her line drawing in single and double weaves. What fun to put different weaves in each shape and then have the various patterns come up as I was weaving with two shuttles. There is a great library of over 30,000 weaves in the ArahWeave software to choose from for single layer weaves. She enjoys bright colors so I made the background a rainbow of hues. She had no idea that I had woven this for her. She received it on Monday, October 13, 2008, and loves it.

Needless to say, I am thrilled to be weaving on my own jacquard loom and am looking forward to the experimentation and spontaneity it offers me. I also think Jim Ahrens might just be smiling down on me, knowing that my dream of a jacquard loom came true.

Special Thanks to Mim Wynne and Greg Thomas, Bill Fredriksson (Mr. Fix-It), Madelyn van der Hoogt, editor Handwoven Magazine www.interweave.com , Ed Torres, Jim and Ethel Ahrens, Jane Eisenstein www.softweave.com, Bonnie Inouye www.bonnieinouye.com , Ingrid and Bob Boesel www.fiberworks-pcw.com , Dušan Peterc www.arahne.si , Vibeke Vestby www.digitalweaving.no, Bob Kruger & Peter Straus www.avlusa.com, Nina Jacobs, Cathy Bolding www.cathybolding.com and my students.