Twill on the rigid heddle loom

I've been playing with 1/2 and 2/1 twill recently. I blame this book. On one of my rare forays to the shops, I visited Borders bookshop and found this, the only weaving book they had. No longer are fabric types totally mysterious. Sadly for me, the book is aimed at weavers with a 4 shaft loom, but there are a few things which are for 2. This twill isn't one of them really because it needs 3. Undaunted, I figured out the threading for extended point threading. I used two 10 dpi heddles and some red 4 ply wool/nylon yarn. I used the holes in one heddle as one shaft, the holes in the second heddle as the second and the slots in both as the third. This involved missing every 4th hole in each heddle and having either 1 or 2 threads in each slot which meant that the sett was variable.

With this setup, six different sheds are possible: front heddle up, rear heddle up, both heddles down, giving weft dominance and the opposite: front heddle down, rear heddle down, both heddles up, giving warp dominance. The patterns you can get are not what you expect to see on a rigid heddle loom. Yet again, I'm using up oddments so my trademark eclectic colourways are in evidence.










It's been fun trying this out and I may use the technique for an actual item sometime. The uneven sett doesn't really detract from the fabric, in fact it adds an extra dimension to it, especially on the chevron pattern.

Just to say that I have still been knitting, and that the second sleeve of Kearsarge was finished last night. I will have enough yarn. Phew!