In the words of Scotland's foremost tartan historian, Peter Eslea MacDonald, a total border pattern uses the
selvedge pattern around the whole plaid.
There was a time when I had no idea what that meant; therefore, in the interest to help someone exploring this matter, a selvedge is the "natural" edge of the cloth, "self-edge," also "selvage," where the threads that constitute the weft end their trip through the warp, and go back. A selvedge pattern makes that border part of the cloth distinctive, by a choice of colors different from the rest, or by the pattern of weaving, different from the 2/2 twill.

\\\\\\\\
\\\\\\\\ 2/2 twill (tartan standard surface pattern)
The standard is that tartans are woven with twill in one single direction, a diagonal going from top left, down to lower right at strict 45 degrees.
weave0101twill.jpg

////\\\\///\\\
////\\\\///\\\ herringbone
Happens when a segment is twill in one direction, the next in the opposite, then flip-flop again as many times as desired. I did here 10+1 threads per direction.
For the ends, top and bottom, it's done by inverting the order or sequence of lifting the shafts. For the sides, right or left, it's built-in by the thread sequence in setting up the heddles.
weave0101herringbone.jpg

\\\///\\\///
///\\\///\\\ birdseye
\\\///\\\///
Happens when the sequence of lifting the shafts is inverted, and the heddles were set for herringbone.
weave0101birdseye.jpg

Oh, it's hopeless to explain every word... Seems that for each, I need to pull at least two more, without counting that I am far from being an expert in weaving nomenclature (corrections welcome!). Sigh. Let's move on.
Funny how weaving is the gift that keeps on giving in that sense. Browsing a new book I received today, parts read like the Jabberwocky.
Yay!

A lot of things will make better sense if you read or at least browse MacDonald's papers on these matters; that is how I started. He writes quite clearly, for such a complex topic.

First, I was a little intrigued. Then, fascinated.
Until a couple of weeks ago, when I decided to start hands-on experimenting. And studying and learning for real. And joined this forum.

Here, for a good start:


Last week I completed a "theoretic" solution to the total border, using strips of paper, and then a computer graphics program. Then purchased a table jack loom on Craigslist. (Yes, I want to build my own, but my wife wisely pointed out the time delay, as she saw me fretting to start weaving...)

Why it matters

It's cool.
It's unique.
It's complicated.
The aesthetics are logic.

That kind of making adventure is to me like a candle to a moth...


Many lessons learned. There is hope
  1. I should not leave my day job.
  2. Bands of color, especially a selvedge mark (a distinctive color band running along the selvedge) should match/overlap in the axis of the mirror on the herringbone/birdseye.
    Best if it takes the whole width of the ///\\\ mirror pattern. That wide white looks pretty decent. While a narrow mirror pattern is centered on the green, I wasn't symmetrical with the width of the dark red, the end result for those sectors looks wrong.
    weave0101.jpg
  3. make plenty shuttles, the first one I made is working fine. (mine is on the top right, center is a real Leclerc. Big plastic straws for bobbins)
    shuttles.jpg
  4. The right tools make a difference. This loom is NOT able, with someone as clumsy as I, to do quality work.
    Fine loom for initial learning.
    theloom.jpg
    Jumps in tension is bad for you, it's no good for weaving, either.
    • Transform the jack loom into a countermarch loom. Sorry, I won't explain that, I'll just do it.
    • A friction brake for the warp beam.
    • A worm-gear device for the cloth beam
  5. This is the first week in my life that I am using a loom with heddles. Skills in more uniformly running the shuttles, etc., hopefully will come with more practice.
  6. 45-degrees, square squares, must focus on.
  7. Careful sewing line-to-line looks SO much better than "just sewing." (probably will redo. I started in the center, and sort of made some sense by the end of what is on the left side of the picture)


Setting up the threads
The hardest challenge so far was to figure out the "logic" for weaving birdseye with 4 heddles. It has been done by others, so, it can be done. Took me two weeks of doodles while waiting here or there, then 4 hours with cut pieces of paper on the kitchen counter. Not trivial. But so much fun!

What I love of this, is that it's all geometry. Pure maths. And logic.
To the point that, at some moment I was confused, couldn't figure something; I decided to just trust the principles of symmetry, et voilą, it worked!
It's all binary; that is, a thread is up, or it's down.

Each heddle carries one thread, and one thread only.
Heddles go in shafts. "Canonically" we use 4 shafts for tartan weaving.
Each shaft carries 1/4 of the threads that form the weft.

The pattern for each shaft is usually something like this:
1000
that being, one thread is caught in a heddle, 3 threads pass by. That would be shaft a, a sequence of
1000100010001000... etc.

The next shaft, b, will catch one of the threads that was not captured by a. Thusly
01000100... etc

shaft c will go like
00100010... etc.


The basic pattern to weave 2/2 twill is 2 lines up, 2 lines down, for example, 1100, repeated.
1100110011001100... etc.

We will need to lift shaft a and shaft b at the same time. In my case, with a table jack loom, that is done with a lever A that has two strings, one going to each shaft.

then, the next line is the same principle of two-up and two down, but moving one line to the right. In binary, divide by 10, get
011001100110011001
Nobody knows binary? no problem!
just tie together shaft b and shaft c, to lever B

Figure out lever C by yourself, and, let me help, for lever D[/B] you tie together shaft d plus shaf a.

The sequence line by line is repeats of those lines.
Each line (that being, each thread of the weft), is determined by lifting a pair of shafts using the corresponding lever. The tunnel-like opening in the warp that is made that way as threads of the warp form two planes is called the shed, and we run the shuttle through that "tunnel.'

1100 pull lever A (pass the shuttle with one line of weft)

0110 lever B (pass the shuttle the other way)
0011 etc.
1001

then, if you continue doing the same, A B C D followed by A B C Dover and over, you got twill
1100
0110
0011
1001
1100
0110

BUT, if you inverse your sequence, as in A B C D followed by C B A D, then A B C D again, you get herringbone
\\\
///
\\\

1100 A
0110 B
0011 C
1001 D
0011 C
0110 B
1100 A
0110 B
0011 C

Now, and here is where the fun gets fun, think about mesing with those heddles back when you were setting up your warp.
01000001000 100010001000... shaft a, normal, as if a twill
00100010100 010001000100 notice that shaft b is getting funny...
00010100010 001000100010 and then c is hilarious
10001000001 000100010001 while d is evidently ridiculous

Notice the space in each line of the description. It's just to help see how the pattern before that space is forming chevrons (that is, herringbone on its head) while the rest is just plain twill.

Tah-dah! When attached to the levers, as you go ABCDABCDABCD, you get herringbone/chevron as selvedge pattern, followed by 2/2 twill for the rest.

Then, and brace yourselves, if you go ABCDCBDABCDCBDA, BirdsEye forms on the edge! And herringbone in the rest, exactly what you want to begin and end (or in my case, the center also).

Pfew!

Alas!, this is turning into a (bad) treatise of maths-in-arts... And I haven't even gotten to the logic for the shafts in a loom to be paired, how those pairs behave like DNA nitrogenous bases in base pairs, the famous "helix." That is, shaft a can pair with either b or d, joined as levers A or D respectively, but never with c. It would be possible to weave a genome using the 2/2 twill principles... I'm sure it's been done already, it's so obvious, so no need for me to dwell on it.

This is, more precisely, what I did, for each shaft:
BaselineTotalBorder.jpg
Then, this is what I expected to get (and got!)
totalBorder-20.jpg

playing with different sizes for the birdseye (I used the pattern that was 20 lines wide)
BaseChevroneBirdsEye.jpg


parts.jpg