There's a work in progress on the dobby loom, so I can't do these tests on the dobby side yet, but I can do some simulations on jacquard. First, here's what the dobby template looks like. There is a background, a little spot motif, a ring around the spot, and a final ring around all that. And these spot groups are arranged on the liftplan in an 8-end satin order. Got it?
First I used the quadruple weave in the background, and used only the inner spots to insert a weft satin. The floats at the edges of the spots were too long, so I didn't weave this one. But I show it to you here so you can see the thought process.
But the following three variations looked weavable, so I tested them on the jacquard setup in a dobby simulation. The first draft features satin spots with plain weave halos; the second draft has small granite spots, no halos; and the third draft is perhaps overkill: granite spots, satin halos, and an extra plain weave ring around all that. The ground weaves of all of these is quadruple plain weave.
Here are the swatches still on the loom.
Right off the bat, a difficulty appears. the various weaves in the spots build up higher at the fell than the background quadruple plain weave areas, so after each spot is woven, the ground weave gets "squished" over the spot to compensate. This results in a small area that is more weft dominant than the rest of the ground. I think this will disappear in the wash. We shall see.
Meanwhile, I've got to get my dobby loom freed up so I can test these structures with an auto cloth advance. I think that will make a huge difference. I'm hoping it will eliminate the streakiness.
This is such fun! I feel like a young bloodhound on a promising scent. I want to tell you about the quadruple weaves, and how I made some decisions with these. More tomorrow.