Weaving draft designer

On a shaft loom, each warp end is threaded on one of the shafts, the treadles are tied to lift chosen shafts, and together the threading, tie-up and treadling make the pattern: twills, diamonds, overshot, blocks. A weaving draft writes all of this on a grid: the threading, the tie-up, the treadling, and the drawdown, the cloth they make. Chromattice redraws the drawdown as you change the other three.

A weaving draft with its threading, tie-up, treadling and drawdown — An example made in Chromattice

What the designer does for weaving

All four parts of the draft, live: tap to change the threading, tie-up or treadling and the drawdown redraws at once, in colour, black and white, as threads crossing, or from the back.
Threadings written the way weavers write them: type a sequence such as 3(1..8) 7..1 and how many repeats; straight, point, rosepath and advancing units are built in.
Twill and plain-weave tie-ups in a tap, and treadling “as drawn in” that follows the threading.
Warp and weft colour orders typed as counts, with the ends and picks of each colour counted.
Checked before you warp: floats longer than your limits, ends on no shaft and picks that lift nothing are flagged, and the sett gives the cloth its true size.
A print for the loom, with the threading in repeats, heddles per shaft, the tie-up and the treadling in runs, and WIF files to open the draft in other weaving programs.

Good to know

In the common American layout, the threading’s bottom row is shaft one, the shaft nearest you, and it’s read from right to left; the treadling is read from the top down, a row a pick. Swedish drafts are laid out differently. (gistyarn.com)
The drawdown pictures what the threading, tie-up and treadling make between them: you don’t usually need it to weave, but it lets you try colours and treadlings before you start. (handwovenmagazine.com)
Twills want a closer sett than plain weave, since the weft passes over more than one end at a time and the threads draw together: a yarn at 12 ends an inch in plain weave might want 15 in twill. Weave and wash a sample first. (schachtspindle.com)
A point twill runs one way and then turns back (1-2-3-4-3-2); an extended point twill combines straight runs with points, and threadings like bird’s eye make diamonds. (schachtspindle.com)
WIF (Weaving Information File) is a plain-text format made so drafts can be shared between weaving programs. (nationalarchives.gov.uk)

Other crafts

Chromattice needs JavaScript for the designer.