The Spring 2009 issue of the Damask Network Newsletter contains an article by Corrie van Eijk, entitled Different tie-ups for harness- and draw looms. I have no drawloom experience, but this article rang a bell for me. The 12 tieups Corrie illustrates contain risers, sinkers, and neutral areas, and when applied to damask designs of two distinct pattern regions will produce structurally sound damask weaves.
In all these 6x6 tieups, the trick is to have at least one sinker & one riser per row and column, and no risers or sinkers occupy the same position. These fall into the category I call “inclusive” weaves, as the white squares are all included within the non-black squares.
I have redrawn one of Corrie’s 12 tieups below. The grey areas are to be considered neutral (nothing rises or sinks), the black squares represent risers, or warp up, and the white squares sinkers, or warp down.
In Photoshop, you can create a pattern preset based on this model. Open a new RGB file, and fill it with gray. Label this Background. Create a new layer, called Risers, and with Risers layer active, take the Pencil tool, color black, dot in the black squares as shown. Create yet another layer, called Sinkers, and with the Sinkers layer acrtive and with the pencil tool, color white, dot in the white squares as shown. Now make the background invisible by turning off the Background eyeball in the Layers palette (the faint checkerboard background indicates transparency).
Save this file as a pattern preset (Edit>Define Pattern).
Now in a new design file, any image, reduce the image to black and white. Here’s a Dover design:
Add a new transparent layer and fill it with the Pattern Preset just created:
Here’s a close-up:
Notice that there are no floats longer than 5 in either direction. This file would be weaveable on a jacquard loom. For dobby work, the same technique could be used. The dimensions of the pattern preset would have to conform to the number of shafts available on the loom: this 6x6 preset would be OK for 24, 30, or 36 shafts. The same technique on an 8x8 preset would work on 16, 24, 32 and 40 shafts.
Read more about Pattern Presets for weaving design in The Woven Pixel.