Continuing my lace weaving experiments, I now have my loom warped to give Bronson lace a try. As usual there were a few glitches along the way. I carefully counted heddles before I began. For Bronson half the warp threads are on the first shaft, so it needs extra heddles. I added plenty, but then got the shafts out of order when I put them on the loom. I had threaded heddles and sleyed the reed about 2/3 of the way across when I saw that I was running out on the first shaft.
A learning opportunity! I decided not to take the obvious path of undoing my work and starting over – thus learning to be more careful and doublecheck everything. Instead I decided to work with what I had and come up with a threading that would make a viable cloth with the Bronson treadling, using shaft 1 every six threads, and using shaft 2, where the extra heddles ended up, more often than others. I came up with this threading pattern: 1-2-3-4-2-3-1-2-3-4-2-4 I thought there might be long floats so I sett this section at 3 threads per dent, vs 2 threads for dent for the Bronson.
It is looking pretty good so far. The invented pattern would make a good button placket if the Bronson is the front of a shirt, I think. I’ll get a picture when I’m further along.