Weave: It refers to the order of interlacing of warp ends and the weft picks.
The figure shows the plan view of the most popular weave, which is called plain weave. Cross sectional diagrams are also used, however they are ideal of showing the basic structure of compound weave.
The preferred method of illustrating weave structure is to use point paper as shown.
A square is filled in or filled with a cross mark, every time that a warp end passes over a weft pick, called warp lift or warp up.
Weave repeat
A weave repeat is the smallest number of threads required to show all the interlacing in the patterns. It is usually considered sufficient to show one repeat only.
DRAFTING, DENTING AND LIFTING PLANS
Draft
A draft indicates the number of heald shafts used to produce a given design and the order is which warp ends are threaded through the heald eyes of the heald shaft.
The healds control the movement of warp threads to form a shed, through which the weft picks pass and it is in this way that the yearns are interlaced to form the woven fabric.
The principle of drafting (i.e. putting of ends on different healed shafts) is that ends which work in different order require separate heald shafts.
To keep matters simple, we can also say that the ends that work alike are put on the same heald shaft.
Let us understand the most simple and commonly used
draft of all i.e. the STRAIGHT DRAFT. Let us take a design as given below:
First we should read the design and find its repeat.
How to Read a Design- A step by step procedure
Step 1 Calculate the number of rows and columns. It has four rows and twelve columns. Rows in design indicate the weft and columns in the design indicate the warp ends.
Thus the design is made of four weft picks and twelve warp ends.
Step -2 Note down the working of first warp end.
We see that there are two cross marks at pick position 1 and 2. The cross marks indicate that warp is ‘over’ the pick at that position or we can call it as ‘warp up’. Thus we can say warp is ‘up’ at 1st pick and 2nd pick and as there is no cross mark in 3rd pick and 4th pick, we say that warp is down on 3rd and 4th pick or weft is ‘up’ at 3rd and 4th pick.
In weavers language we say that working of 1st end is 2 up 2 down or “2/2”.
Step- 3: Similarly, note the working of other ends till you reach a point where the whole pattern is repeating itself
Working of first end is 2 up 2 down or (from step 2) –––––
Working of 2nd end is 1down 2 up 1 down
Working of 3rd end is 2 down 2 up
Working of 4th end is 1 up 2 down 1up
Working of 5th end is 2 up 2 down
Working of 6th end is 1 down 2 up 1down
Thus we see that after 4th end the whole pattern is repeating itself.
Thus we can draw the design again upto 4th end, which indicates the smallest repeat of the design, as shown in Figure:
Thus the design is 4×4 i.e. 4 ends and 4 picks.
