Floor Looms and Weaving Drafts

Floor looms

Table and floor looms add shafts, usually four or eight, each carrying heddles. Threading each warp end through a heddle on a chosen shaft, then lifting combinations of shafts, makes any interlacing those shafts allow ¹. Table looms lift shafts with levers; floor looms use treadles tied to shafts, leaving both hands free.

Three actions:

Reading a draft

A draft is the recipe for a cloth, drawn on graph paper ²:

• Threading (across the top): each column is one warp end, each row one shaft; a mark shows which shaft that end goes on. Read right to left, starting at the tie-up ².
• Tie-up (the corner): each column a treadle, each row a shaft; marks show which shafts each treadle lifts. The number of rows is the number of shafts needed ².
• Treadling (down the side): each row one pick, each column a treadle; read top to bottom ².
• Drawdown (the big grid): the cloth the other three produce.

Conventions vary - European drafts may read from the other side or show sinking rather than rising shafts - so check a draft’s key.

Working a drawdown

To fill in one square of the drawdown:

1. Look down the column to see which shaft that end is threaded on.
2. Look across the row to see which treadle that pick uses.
3. Check the tie-up: does that treadle lift that shaft?
4. If yes, the warp shows (fill the square); if no, the weft shows.

Repeat for every square. Doing a small one by hand is the fastest way to understand drafts; weaving software does it instantly for real projects.

What four shafts can weave

• Twills: straight, broken, point (zigzag), herringbone, and bird’s-eye from different threadings and treadlings.
• Rosepath: a Swedish point-twill threading, treadled countless ways - a staple of Scandinavian rugs and runners.
• Overshot: pattern floats over a plain-weave ground, the classic American coverlet weave.
• Monk’s belt, huck lace, summer and winter, and many more.

Four shafts are enough for a lifetime of weaving; eight open up complex twills, double weave, and more.

What to take from this

Floor looms lift combinations of shafts (jack, counterbalance, or countermarch) with treadles. A draft gives threading (right to left), tie-up (shafts per treadle), and treadling (top to bottom); the drawdown fills a square with warp whenever that pick’s treadle lifts that end’s shaft. A straight 1-2-3-4 threading with a 2/2 tie-up makes twill; four shafts also weave rosepath, overshot, and more.