26.07Loom floor

One square wrong on the draft is a line down the whole bolt

A draft is drawn on squared paper. One square across is one warp end; one square down is one pick of weft. Filled in means that end floats over.

Get one square wrong and a single end is lifting when it should be sinking, on a single pick. On its own that is one point. But the repeat runs the length of the piece, so that point recurs — and what you get is a broken line running down the entire bolt.

When it shows up

Checking the file before it goes to the loom catches structurally illegal drafts — an end floating over twenty picks and snagging, say. It cannot catch “legal, but not what you meant”. That only shows up in cloth.

Which is why every new figure gets a fifty-centimetre sample first. Fifty centimetres covers at least two repeats, and anything that repeats will declare itself.

The diagram on the front page

The interactive draft on the home page runs the real rule: drawdown[pick p][end w] = tieup[treadling[p]][threading[w]]. Move a few marks in the threading and watch the cloth rewrite itself. What one wrong square costs is a click away.

Tell us the hand you want.
The loom works out the rest.

Bring a swatch, a drawing, or just a sentence — "it should drape without going soft" is enough to start. We work backwards from yarn count. Minimum run 30 metres.