From “New Design” To A Plan For Rep Weave
Design rep weave in fields of colour, and let the editor do the loom work. In the new ripsmatta editor you tap fields dark or light, and it works out the shafts, the tie-up and the treadling, keeps the tie-up balanced so it suits a counterbalance loom, and gives you a print you can weave from.
Rep weave, the Swedish ripsmatta, is warp-faced: the ends alternate two colours, the wefts alternate thick and thin, and the weft hardly shows. Whichever colour is lifted over the thick pick shows in that block. The editor is for rep weavers at a shaft loom, new to rep or not, and Loom even offers a liftplan for a table or dobby loom.
Here is the whole way through, on a small sampler.
1. Start a ripsmatta
Start from your loom, so the editor can check the design against it.
File › New… opens New Design. Under Weaving, choose Ripsmatta (rep weave), give it a name and set Ends (warp threads) and Ribs. We made Lakewalk Rep Sampler, 80 ends by 24 ribs, with a palette that already had Charcoal and Pale grey in it.
Then open Loom and set your loom’s Shafts and Treadles, say, 8 shafts and 10 treadles; they’re kept with your account. The same dialog has the sett (30 ends and 4 ribs an inch to start, which makes the sampler about 2.7 × 6 in), your reed and the warp length.
2. Find your way around
The warp, the blocks, the treadling and the tie-up all sit on one screen.
A new ripsmatta opens with four shaft pairs of 20 ends and four blocks of 6 ribs. Across the top is the warp: each shaft pair a two-colour bar with its two shafts numbered in it, its ends underneath, and a grip and a × above it. Down the left, each block has its number and its ribs (“2/4”, “ribs 7–12”). To its right are its treadle squares, its “× 6”, a grip and a ×. The square at the top right is the tie-up: a column a treadle, a row a shaft, shaft 1 at the foot.
A new ripsmatta: shaft pairs across the top, blocks down the side, each block's treadle squares beside it and the tie-up at the top right.
3. Colours
In rep the colours live in the warp, two to a shaft pair, and that’s where you set them.
Tap a shaft pair. Its dialog (“Shaft pair 1 of 4”, “Shafts 1 and 2”) has a button for each shaft’s colour, Shaft 1 and Shaft 2, with ⇆ between them to swap the two, and the palette below with Another colour…. Under SHAFTS you can choose which shafts it’s threaded on: Shafts 1 and 2, Shafts 3 and 4, or New shafts (5 and 6). Under ENDS, − and + change it two ends at a time, or type the number. Then come Split in two, Insert a shaft pair after it, Copy after it, Left, Right and Remove.
The colours belong to the shaft pair, so we gave each of the four Charcoal and Pale grey in turn, and pressed Done.
A shaft pair’s dialog: its two shafts’ colours, the swap, the palette, its shafts and its ends.
4. Make the pattern: tap the fields
This is where the editor does the work for you: you draw the pattern, and it works out the threading.
Each field, one shaft pair in one block, shows dark or light. Tap it to flip it (“Tap to flip this field’s face in this block”). You never assign shafts yourself. When we flipped shaft pair 2 in block 1, shaft pair 4 no longer wove like pair 2, so it was given shafts 5 and 6 of its own, and the tie-up grew: “Treadles 4 → 6 (your loom: 10)”.
One field flipped (shaft pair 2, block 1): shaft pair 4 now has shafts 5 and 6, and the tie-up six treadles.
It handles counterchange, too. We flipped shaft pair 4 in blocks 1 and 3 until it was everywhere the opposite of shaft pair 1. The editor put it on shafts 1 and 2 with its colours swapped, Pale grey on shaft 1 and Charcoal on shaft 2, and the treadles went back to four. It’s the same idea as in Handwoven’s “All You Need for Shadow Weave”, where one block is darks on 1, lights on 3, and another lights on 1, darks on 3: the same shafts, the colours swapped.
Shaft pair 4, the opposite of shaft pair 1 in every block, shares shafts 1 and 2 with its colours swapped.
And it tells you when a design goes past your loom. We flipped shaft pair 3 in block 1, which gave it shafts 5 and 6, and set Loom to 4 shafts and 4 treadles. The tie-up’s extra rows and columns, the treadle squares past 4 and the fields that need more all turned red, and the button read “Problems · 3 · 6 shafts, 6 treadles”. Back at 8 and 10, all was well again.
Loom set to 4 shafts and 4 treadles: what’s past it in red, and Problems saying why.
5. Sizes: diamonds, +, grips and ×
Widths and lengths change by dragging, with a readout that tells you exactly what moves.
Every border has a diamond. Drag it to move the border, and a readout says what you’re doing: “Shaft pairs 1 | 2: 16 | 24 ends · the warp stays 80”. Tap a diamond and it opens into three handles: the middle one moves the border, the outer ones change one side alone (“Drag: shaft pair 1 alone, the ones after moving along” and “Drag: shaft pair 2 alone, from this border”).
A diamond tapped open: the middle handle moves the border, the outer ones change one shaft pair alone.
The small + on the outer edges inserts: along the top, “Insert a shaft pair here”, and down the right, “Insert a block here”. We added a block with one and took it out again with its × (“Remove block 2”). To move a block, drag it by its grip (⠿): a faded copy shows where it will land. We moved block 4 up above block 3.
6. Treadling: the squares
Each block’s treadling sits right beside it, so you can read it and change it at a glance.
Each block’s row of squares is its treadling: the thick pick’s treadle a filled square, the thin pick’s a line. Tap another square (“Treadle 5: weave this block’s thick pick on it”) and the block is woven on that treadle, so it takes that treadle’s face. When we did that on block 4, shaft pair 2 came out the exact opposite of shaft pair 1, so it moved onto shafts 1 and 2 as well, and the sampler settled on 4 shafts and 4 treadles.
The tie-up is worked out for you, a pair of treadles for each face, and Loom says so plainly: “Balanced tie-up: each treadle lifts one shaft of every pair (half the shafts), so it works on a counterbalance loom.”
7. Check it: Problems and Draft
Before you wind a warp, it’s worth a check.
Problems checks the design against your loom. On 8 shafts and 10 treadles the sampler showed “No problems: everything is within the limits.”, then counted the places where the face changes and an extra thin pick goes in, two thin picks side by side, which is Fibraquarelle’s “two picks of thin weft”. At the one border where only some shaft pairs turn, it says the extra thin pick is your choice in the block’s panel, and, honestly, “We know of no source for a partial change: sample it.”
Draft shows the draft itself: the threading, tie-up, treadling and drawdown, with the weft beside it. Profile takes you back.
8. The print you weave from
The print is what you take to the loom: every number you need, on paper.
File › Print Chart… gives the pages to take to the loom. The first has the size and sett (80 ends × 24 ribs, about 2.7 × 6 in at 30 ends and 4 ribs an inch), the width in the reed, “4 shafts · 4 treadles, a pair a face”, and “Weft: a thick and a thin, any colour (hidden in warp-faced rep)”. The Weft button sets the colours anyway; we made both Charcoal.
The print is where letters come in: it names each pair of shafts by a letter. On the first page, under the warp bar, a small grid has a row for each letter (A and B on our sampler) marking which shaft pairs are threaded on it, and below the profile, “Letters: each a pair of shafts” says what each one is: “A: shafts 1 and 2 · shaft pairs 1, 2, 4” and “B: shafts 3 and 4 · shaft pairs 3”. Then it gives the warp shaft pair by shaft pair, “Shaft pair 1 · A · 16 ends: 1-2 × 8 — 1st end Charcoal on shaft 1, 2nd end Pale grey on shaft 2”. After a draft in units comes “To weave from”: the heddles on each shaft, the ends of each colour, the picks of each weft (the extra thin picks counted), the warp length and yarn, and the treadling block by block, with pick numbers.
You can download the sampler’s whole print as a PDF to see all three pages.
The draft in units from the sampler’s print: the threading, tie-up, treadling and drawdown, each shaft pair’s two ends once and each block’s rib once, with the repeats marked over the threading and beside the weft.
A worked example: one of our rep rugs, block for block
For a bigger test we recreated one of our own rep rugs from a picture of it: nine shaft pairs of 20 ends in Charcoal and Pale grey on six shafts, 29 blocks and 87 ribs. It has crosses on a pale ground, a band of stripes, then the crosses broken up. The cloth came out identical, block for block. It’s published as Charcoal Crosses, Block for Block, drawn at its true shape, about 6 × 22 inches.
Start a ripsmatta from New Design and see what you make. What designs does this inspire for you? And what features would make it more useful for the rep you weave? Tell us in the comments.