If you’ve ever looked at a book of four-shaft patterns and sighed because you’d never be able to weave them on your rigid-heddle loom, I have good news. Using three heddles on your rigid-heddle loom gives it the same patterning capabilities as a four-shaft loom. Yes, you can weave overshot, twills, block laces, and more.
The most versatile of four-shaft threadings is straight draw. In straight draw, the threads are connected to shafts 1, 2, 3, and 4 in a repeating sequence: 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4, and so on. With this structure you can weave many types of cloth, including diagonal twill patterns, block weaves, and doubleweave.
The only rigid-heddle loom currently on the market that has three threading slots built in is the Schacht Flip, but you can modify other looms to support three heddles by using clamps or screwing additional heddle supports to the inside of your loom.
As you experiment with using three heddles, here are a few thoughts to keep in mind:
In the following sections, we’ll be using the additional heddles to affect the pattern of the cloth, not its density. We’ll be skipping some slots and holes in order to keep the overall density of the cloth to that for a single heddle. Please choose yarns and sett based on the epi of a single heddle.
This project is purely research, like the color gamp. Weaving 4-shaft twill patterns on a rigid-heddle loom is exciting, and at the end, you'll have a reference you can refer to when planning projects.
For this sampler, I used three 12-dent heddles. The extra heddles provide pattern control, instead of increasing the sett as in fine-cloth weaving. Normally, I would set a worsted-weight yarn at 8 ends per inch, instead of 12. Because twills have floats, you need to set them at least 20 percent closer than you would for plain weave to create a stable cloth.
In addition to those shown here, you can weave other types of twills, such as point twills and advancing twills, on a rigid-heddle loom. To do so, change your threading to match the 4-shaft threading. For example, for point twills, the threading would be 1-2-3-4-3-2. For more information about how to do this, see the explanation of how to translate 4-shaft drafts to the rigid-heddle loom found here.
Continue across heddle 3 following this same sequence. When you are done, you will have threaded every other hole on the heddle; half the slots will have one thread and the other half will have two threads.
Note: Each set of four threads comprises one threading repeat (left to right): hole, slot with one thread, slot with two threads. Repeat this sequence with every group of four threads across the heddle.
Repeat this sequence with every group of four threads across the heddle. Note: Each set of four threads comprises one threading repeat (left to right): slot with one thread, hole, slot with two threads.
Because the threads are set tightly in this sampler, you may find some sheds hard to put a shuttle through without catching threads in the top or bottom of the shed. If this happens, simply put a weaving sword pickup stick into the shed you’ve created with the heddles and turn the stick on its side to widen the shed.
The mother of all weave structures, plain weave has the most interlacements.
row |
heddles |
|
1 |
Raise 1 and 3 |
|
2 |
Lower 1 and 3 |
In this twill, you create a diagonal line. When the epi and ppi are the same, the line is at a 45-degree angle.
row |
heddles |
|
1 |
Raise 1 and 2 |
|
2 |
Raise 2 and 3 |
|
3 |
Lower 1 and 2 |
|
4 |
Lower 2 and 3 |
For zigzag twill, you change the direction of the diagonal, creating a zig-zag effect.
row |
heddles |
|
1 |
Raise 1 and 2 |
|
2 |
Lower 2 and 3 |
|
3 |
Lower 1 and 2 |
|
4 |
Raise 2 and 3 |
|
5 |
Lower 1 and 2 |
|
6 |
Lower 2 and 3 |
This twill creates strong vertical lines in the fabric. (For photo, see here.)
row |
heddles |
|
1 |
Raise 2 and 3 |
|
2 |
Lower 1 and 3 |
|
3 |
Raise 2 and 3 |
|
4 |
Raise 1 and 3 |