| Many variations
are possible on the standard twill, bird's-eye, and herringbone
weaves that appear in the covers from southeastern Anatolia around
Djezire. Here I've reproduced a draft of one common structure from
Marguerite Davison's Handweaver's Pattern Book, 1968. |
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This draft shows one
standard loom threading, and then shows how the fabric swatches at
the right were woven.
The markings in the horizontal band across the top of the draft show
the order in which the weaver threaded warp yarns through her
heddles--in this case, through the heddles of four harnesses, or
shafts.
The six fabrics here were all woven without rethreading the
loom. The vertical bar on the left shows the manner in which the
weaver treadled--in other words, the order in which she lifted the
harnesses. For the first fabric swatch, at the top, single harnesses were
lifted, making a 3/1 twill. For the next five swatches, the
harnesses were lifted in pairs, but in different sequences. These five fabrics are all 2/2 twills,
meaning that each warp floats vertically over two wefts; each weft
likewise floats horizontally over two warps. These fabrics are basically the same on their
front and back faces; the
colors merely reverse.
As you might imagine, these treadling sequences may be combined to
produce further fabric variations, as we see in some of the
Djezire weavings. A herringbone section may merge into a section with
diamonds, for example.
Different horizontal sections of a warp may of course be threaded
differently, to produce dozens of unusual weave effects. The
startling special features in the Djezire Kurdish weavings are the
localized patterns produced within the twill fabrics by artisans
who manipulated discontinuous wefts of contrasting colors by hand. |
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