Fun with twill tie-ups

We’re used to creating twill tie-ups by choosing some shafts to tie-up in regular intervals on our first treadle, then stepping up or down by one to continue the tie-ups in a diagonal line for the subsequent shafts. This works well when our intervals fit neatly into the number of shafts. But if we are working with an awkward number of shafts (something with very few factors) it can lead to twill lines that are grouped or spaced unevenly. Whether or not this is a problem depends upon the type of draft, but sometimes it can look like a mistake.

I discovered a trick I could use to even out the twill lines, which works with any number of shafts. Instead of stepping up (or down) by one, step up by two or more instead. Here is the same tie-up stepping up by three.

Sometimes stepping up by numbers other than one introduces long floats. The tie-up above has five-thread floats. But you can play around with stepping up by different intervals and with changing the tie-up on that first treadle, to control the floats. Here’s an example where I made a small change to that first treadle before stepping up by three. My new tie-up has a maximum of three-thread floats.

Try playing around with this to see what kinds of fun patterns you can find!