Drawing Weaves

Weavers have some great software that draws a design when a user enters a weave structure and colours for the warp/weft threads. I could see the value of a similar tool in my design work — so my December project was creating this software for my personal use.

The following pictures give you an idea of the things I am thinking about in my design work. You will have seen some of these ideas in existing designs. I wanted to design software that would allow me to explore all off these ideas together.

I wanted the program to draw weave structures of different sizes. I need to vary the number of cables in a repeat and also the effect of change number of vertical repeats.

The program needed to accept different set up rows (that is different combinations of MC/CC design stitches). This is what is needed to design the motifs of the coaster & placemat patterns.

Given a set up row structure, I wanted to be able to change the colour without specifying each cable colour individually. The program allows to set values for MC/CC or specify individual cable colours. This is similar to how patterns are written, that is, the knitter chooses the MC/CC.

The program works for 4 colour Two Pass Woven Knitting too! This is the next type of woven knitting that I will be testing.

From left to right, the diagrams below show what happen if

1. the cable colour stays the same when the cable reaches the edge
2. the cable colour changes when the cable reaches the edge
3. the cable colour stays the same when the cable reaches the left edge/the cable colour changes when the cable reaches the right edge

These are 3 of the motifs from the Ten Squared Headband pattern.

This helps me decide if i would like the design elements in the pattern to be 1 or 2 stitches wide. The two motif below are the same; the coverage of the cables differs.

Below is the main reason I needed to design this software — so I can create different weave structures. I find this very hard to visualize and testing different structures by knitting them is too time consuming.

Everything that you have seen in my design so far has a tabby weave structure. This is what you will start seeing in my designs next.