It doesn’t take long when learning to weave until you encounter
your first drafts, and it took me a while to figure out what
they were and how they worked. I thought I’d write about how I
learned to understand a weaving draft. A draft can be considered
to be the equivalent of a knitting pattern. Actually, not
really. It’s more like a chart in a knitting pattern. Its not
enough information for a weaver to start a particular project –
details such as sett, yardage, material, finished project
dimensions are all absent , but it provides information on how
to set the loom up and work it to produce a cloth with a
particular interlacement. Drafts are usually divided into four
quadrants. In the draft below of a 2/2 twill, I’ve labelled the
quadrants A to D. The Threading (A) This section shows how the
harnesses/shafts of a loom must be threaded. (Editor’s note: I
used the term shafts and harnesses interchangeably without
realizing and didn’t have time to fix it.) A harnesses job is to
raise the threads that are assig