Theo Wright : Handwoven
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When Waves Collide weaving notes

The When Waves Collide collection is woven in 10/2 mercerised cotton by Lunatic Fringe (available in the UK from The Handweavers Studio). I weave using a 16-shaft Louët Megado floor loom with a mechanical dobby.
 
The weaving technique used for this collection is an interleaved network drafting technique that allows two curves to be represented within a single layer of cloth.
 
The technique, referred to as Moiré, is described by Marian Stubenitsky in her book Weaving with Echo and Iris. The following notes give a basic idea of the technique but are not intended to be a tutorial.

Network drafting
To get to grips with the technique you first need to understand the simpler network drafting technique used to represent a single curve, or indeed any other line.
 
The curve is drawn onto a grid. I am using 16 shafts, so I’m making life easy by using a grid sixteen squares high.

Picture
Picture
Rather than using this directly as the threading sequence for the warp, the curve is then mapped onto a network.

The network I am using is based on a 1/3 twill.


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On a 16-shift loom this network means that
warp end 1 must be on shaft 1, 5, 9 or 13
warp end 2 on shaft 2, 6, 10 or 14
warp end 3 on shaft 3, 7, 11 or 15
warp end 4 on shaft 4, 8, 12 or 16
warp end 5 on shaft 1, 5, 9 or 13…
 
So the resulting threading sequence would look like this:

Picture
Moiré
This technique uses the same idea but with two curves on two networks
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The second curve is also mapped onto a network, but this network is offset from the previous one (this ensures that you never get two adjacent warp ends on the same shaft).

Here, warp end 1 must be on shaft 3, 7, 11 or 15.


A second curve is drawn ...
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... and mapped onto this second network
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The two mapped curves are then interleaved to create the threading sequence for the warp.
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The same sequence is used for the order of lifts during weaving, with the 16 rows of the dobby set as shown below.
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My intention in this project is to show some of the different possible interactions between two sine waves, so I have used the same network drafting approach throughout. There are lots of other variations to be explored, have a look at a book such as Marian Stubenitsky's and get inspired.


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