Fiber in the Hands of an Angry Spinner

For the purposes of this explanation, let’s assume you are weaving some probably pretty-ugly cloth. The upper layer of your cloth is alternating orange and green yarn, and the lower layer is alternating blue and pink yarn. To make matters worse, you have loaded your shuttle with a thick, black yarn.  I am sorry to say that you have done this. I hope you will be more careful with your colour choices in the future, so you don’t end up with such ugly cloth.

Here are the ends of your warped threads:
For ease of conversation, let us assume that you have threaded the loom like this:

Orange threads in Harness 1

Blue threads in Harness 2

Green threads in Harness 3

Pink threads in Harness 4

You know that the 1-3 combination will give you plain weave for the top layer, and that 2-4 will give you plain weave for the lower layer.  To begin weaving the lower layer, you’ll need to raise Harnesses 1-3-4, leaving Harness 2, with the blue threads, down:

Then you will throw your first shot, or pick, left to right, from the center of your fabric to the selvedge, with that thick black yarn (oh, why, oh, why did you choose this colour combination?).

Your cloth now looks like this:  you have one strand of warp that is lying between the threads on Harnesses 2 & 4:

But in order to have cloth stay together, you’ll need to wrap the weft back around the other way — under the blues, and over the pinks.  So your next order of business is to raise Harnesses 1-2-3:This gets the top layer of fabric (orange and green) out of the way of the lower layer that you’re working on.  Throw your second shot, right to left this time, from the selvedge to the fold.

Your cloth now looks like this (though I see that you’re in a rush to start work on the upper layer of cloth).

Your next treadling combination will raise only Harness 3, the green threads.  You want to leave the lower layer of cloth down and out of the way of your weaving, and you want to place the yarn over the oranges threads and below the green ones.

At this point, you’ve thrown 3 of the 4 combinations needed to make this double-layered, plain-weave cloth:

The last pick, or shot, takes us under the Orange thread, and is done with just Harness 1 raised.  You’re still working above the lower layer of cloth (Harnesses 2 and 4), so you leave them lie.

Here’s the entire sequence, starting in the lower left corner, and ending in the upper left, after crossing the page, er, cloth, four times with that black weft thread.

The 70s called– they want their weaving back.