Drawloom Progress

The drawloom has been sitting here, temporarily abandoned while I have been working at weaving towels and cranking socks to sell, and today I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to have part of a day for my personal weaving interest of making progress on the drawloom.



I had previously sleyed the 440 cords (seine twine, two colors) through the reed shown suspended from the upper drawcord warp beam.



The center of the reed was marked with a red thread, also two inches on each side of the center. This space is left empty to allow the drawcords closest to the middle to pass by those center Texsolv cords as they are pulled. There are 220 cords on each side, groups of 8 cords, with an empty dent between each group.

This afternoon I pulled the long Texsolv cords, that go from the upper jacks and down through the shafts to the lamms, out of the shafts and wrapped them up around the top. Though I had previously read how to put a drawcord warp on, on p. 149 in "Damask and Opphamta," I went about this slightly differently.


With help from daughter Sarah and son Noah (so I could take photos), the reed (with lease sticks still in) were passed to the back of the loom, over and down behind the round steel beam.



Instead of sleying both reeds at the front of the loom, as described in the book, I sleyed the first reed at the front, then passed the reed to the back to sley the second reed. Here the first reed is suspended about five inches above the second reed, making it easy to sley the second reed. The pattern heddles are directly underneath the lower reed.



The second reed is now sleyed straight across, the 4" space in the middle of the reed is not needed on the second reed. I will leave the cords as is until the weaving warp is beamed.



At this point, the first reed was passed back to the front of the loom,...



and tied in place to the upper beam overhead.

The cords are ready to tie to the pattern heddles, after the weaving warp is beamed. Tonight, this is a beautiful sight! One step closer,...