I think there are several ways to approach weaving on a 32-shaft loom, like my Megado. You can scale things up from eight shafts, and have many more blocks of a structure like summer and winter to design with, or you can investigate techniques like network drafting which seem to produce better results with more shafts.

Having said that, the first warp on my Megado was in 8/2 cotton for tea towels. I produced a design I liked by playing with the tie-up in Fiberworks, using a point threading on the loom.

I warped the loom using a raddle attached to the back beam, rather than the built-in raddle on top of the loom. I use the build-in raddle on my Louet Jane looms all the time, but find it too unwieldy to warp this way without help on a floor loom.

This is what the cloth looks like on the loom:

And because all the patterning is in the tie up, not the threading, it’s easy to change to a new design. This one, called ‘Quarters’, is in the designs that come with the Fiberworks programme:

This warp is almost finished. Next, an investigation into designing for a loom with lots of shafts. I’ve got several resources for this – firstly a download of ‘Exploring Multishaft Design’, by Bonnie Inouye, available from her website. This takes you through the design process step-by-step, weaving a sample of each new design.

After I’ve worked my way through that, I have two books from Alice Schlein to think about, both available as print-on-demand books through her website. These are ‘The Liftplan Connection: Designing for Dobby Looms with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements’ and ‘Network Drafting, an Introduction’. I’ve been interested in network drafting for a while, but both books have a lot to offer, and I’m looking forward to trying out some of the techniques.