So, I bought a 32-shaft loom. A Louet Megado compudobby. It’s a great loom. But I’d only had eight shafts before, so it was a bit intimidating. My thinking was that I could either have more blocks of various structures to play with (satins, 3/1, 1/3 twill, summer and winter etc) or I could try and do something else which I could only do with a higher number of shafts. Which led me to to ‘The Liftplan Connection’ by Alice Schlein. This fantastic book (available here: https://www.lulu.com/search?adult_audience_rating=00&page=1&pageSize=10&q=the+liftplan+connection ) showed me how to create designs in Photoshop Elements and then fill in those designs with whatever weave structure I want to create a liftplan, which is directly transferable to Fibreworks. After playing with this for a while, I wove some samples, and then some fabric using a tumbling blocks design.

It was clear to me that this technique was something I wanted to pursue further, and for my next samples I decided to use double weave (interchanging double plain weave).