by Guild Member Ann Fox
Do you find yourself staring at the jacket of the person in front of you in line, wondering how the fabric is made? Or trying to puzzle out the woven towel or placemat that you saw being woven on a loom at the Guild? Or perhaps you simply want to dig deeper into weave structures to help gain confidence in your own weaving? Then the Reverse Drafting Club is for you.
Reverse drafting is the process of unraveling woven fabric in order to understand how it is constructed. By systematically unraveling a swatch of fabric thread by thread, the interlacement pattern can be mapped and the corresponding draft generated. It provides a deeper understanding of weave structure, but it is also great puzzle-solving fun.
Members of the club receive quarterly mailings containing three swatches of fabric—easy, medium and hard. Each mailing also includes the solutions to the previous set of swatches. A quarterly Zoom gathering, hosted by The Weaving Mill, provides an opportunity to ask questions, puzzle out the solutions with other members, and “nerd out” thread by thread with the samples. The first mailing of the year also contains instructions for the process of analyzing the samples.
I’m starting my third year as a member, and I can say wholeheartedly that I have greatly enjoyed this experience. I don’t always “solve” the puzzles, in fact I often do not. But I learn so much from the process, and even more from the sharing and explanations at the Zoom gatherings, that it doesn’t matter.
Here are the details:
Thirty-eight dollars a year brings instructions on the process of fabric analysis, a quarterly packet of three swatches and the solutions to the previous set, participation in the quarterly Zoom meet-up, and an opt-in contact directory of the more than 400 other members. Sign-ups for 2025 are underway, and mid-year sign-ups will receive all previous swatches and solutions for the year.
Here’s the website for sign-ups, and you can certainly contact me as well if you have questions. Hope to see you at the next gathering!
https://www.theweavingmill.com/reverse-drafting-club
Image courtesy The Weaving Mill, provided by Ann Fox
