Category: inkle loom

SeiZenn – Brocade

Hi

For Christmas, I received “The weaver’s Inkle Pattern Directory” by Anne Dixon. In this great book, she presents lot of different technics.

Many patterns from this book can be reproduced with SeiZenn. One of the last add is krokbragd button :

Some technics would be very difficult to add to SeiZenn, and for, I think, a limited benefit. For example fringes (page 154) or pleating (page 130).

I thought it could be interesting to add an inlay mode to create brocade (page 138).

 

With this mode selected, you just click on the pattern to draw brocade pattern

 

It comes with a few tools :

 

 

 

SeiZenn – tablet pattern editor – twists and chunks

Hi
There are a few improvements in the tablet editor

Twist counter

First a twist counter that you can activate on “display panel”
At the top, display when there are too many twits, backward or frontward
For twist neutral, or almost, it display number of turns

Reference line

Second, a reference line.
Using right click on line numbers you can add “reference line”
It adds a blue mark for the reference line, and cyans marks for all line that are same as reference

Chunk viewer

Third a chunk viewer.

     => 

A pattern can be cut into chunks :

– with right click on border as marks
– using the marks (scissors “cut on marks” )
You can then choose the chunk you want to see. You can add chunk, join the present one with the next one, duplicate the present chunk.
The threading is only visible on the first chunk
The reference is the last row of the first chunk. On the different chunks (apart from first), the reference line is shown at the top.
The end of the chunk “should” be the same as the reference line so that the different chunk could be woven in anyorder. If it is OK, the square is black, otherwise it is red

The twist counter only take into account the present chunk.
As an example, I reproduced a pattern from the great book  “tablets at work” by Claudia Wollny, p406  https://www.claudia-wollny-edition.com/en/tablets-at-work.html
You can choose the chunk you want to see

SeiZenn – Krokbragd, right clic and threading notes

Hi

A few improvement for the SeiZenn inkle tool.

Right click

I was asked about the possibility of adding a thread inside a pattern. Until now it was only possible to add new threads to the right of the pattern with “width” parameter

So we had to play with the buttons

to be able to add the thread in the right place.

It is now possible to right-click to add or remove one or two threads where you want in the pattern.

This function takes into account the “symetry” option.

Turned Krokbragd

Joan Sheridan explains in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtAxaL0S8BU)  how to do turned Krokbragd on the inkle loom.

That kind of pattern can be done in SeiZenn with duals

I added some functions to make it easier to create this type of pattern. From a pattern,   

 

add a double color on the bottom row with “dual half threads” button

we obtain (it uses the selected color for all the duals) :

You must then indicate that you use the double color every other row. Rather than doing it by hand by clicking on the lines concerned, you can use

We obtain

You can then adjust dual colors as you like

 

Threading notes

I slightly improved the function for generating a threading document which was accessible with the button “create instruction note” in the “load, save, export” menu  

Now this button generates a PDF document.

 

(in this example, you need to verify the grid start and end values to be able to see the grid view)

Jeff

Baltic grid mode

Simple idea may take time to emerge.

Baltic grid mode presentation

Up to now, in Seizenn, there were two ways to draw a baltic pattern.

1) In the mode “ Edit an inkle loom pattern”, you can play with pickups and drops thread by thread. I will refer to this as the “realistic tool”.

2) In the mode “Edit a square pattern” you can create a grid (or block) chart. I will refer to this as the “Baltic grid” mode.

Grid charts are more common for Baltic pickup patterns, but they do not give a realistic preview of what the resulting band will look like.

As both are useful, I was asked several times to be able to switch from one to the other and back. I was quite reluctant because it would have been very difficult to program and it would have work in very few cases. The two tools work a very different way, you can draw pattern in one tool that would be impossible to create with the other (three color pattern, carpet pattern etc).

With the experience of what I did with tablet weaving tool (sulewasi mode), I tried an other way to fulfill the need, far simpler.

In the realistic tool, in the “Edit Mode” panel I just added a feature that allows you to select “baltic grid”. It will not work for 3-color pickup patterns, it’s just for simple 2-color baltic patterns.

For a 5 min video => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQToadxlWv8

When you select it, you switch from

to    

 

Grid parameters

To use this mode, you need to adjust where the baltic grid begins on the left and where it ends on the right.

In the threading pattern, you see the first blue dot is done with the 11th thread, and the last one is done with 29th thread

When you select “baltic grid”, new options become available in the “display options” panel.

In this panel, where it says “Threads” set the “first” and “last” values, 11 and 29 in this example.

Grid use

You can then click on the grid to create your pattern

If you leave the “baltic mode”, you can see the result

In the “Display Option” panel you can also adjust opacity of the grid with the “baltic visibility” slider.

If you create a picture while you are in “baltic grid”, the grid pattern will be visible. Thus you can choose the pattern representation you want during weaving.

When you use   or Sunna Heddle pattern, first and last parameters are set automatically.

Selection tool

In the “Edit Mode” panel,  when you select “baltic grid” mode, a “selection tools” checkbox appears. If you check this function, new buttons appear.

You can then select an area on the grid with you mouse. The area is surrounded with dashed blue and yellow line.

When an area is selected, you can act on it using the different buttons. For example you can flip it horizontally.

You can also copy and paste an area. With this selection, click on “selection copy”

 

Animation showing copy and paste

Use clipboard to copy pattern from square tool

you may notice that a representation of the selected area appears on the tool panel.

You can then select the up-left point of the place you where you want to paste the pattern.

 

Then click on “selection paste”, you then get :

 

Animation showing how to copy a pattern from square tool.

Conclusion

There are limitations. For example it may not work if you have two baltic patterns side by side on the same band with a plain weave gap between the two. When you save a pattern, grid position is not saved. Of course will not work for 3-color patterns.

Hope this new mode will help you.

 

A few improvements for this new year

Hi

For this new year I present to you some small improvements for Seizenn.

Lists of patterns

When you save a pattern, it is by default visible for everyone in the public list. It’s now possible to make it private using the “restrict” button in you private list.

Loom colors

You can have colors in your «loom palette» that are not used in your pattern. Now those colors are bordered with brown like this :

Rigid heddle pattern

In loom editor you can load default pattern for some popular rigid heddle

You then get

New tools

Seizenn was first designed for plain weave or baltik bands. I then added a grid tool. I recently wanted to explore some other weaving technics.

Now you have two new tools.

The first one to draw heddle loom patterns

https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/#/heddle

A second one to draw tablet patterns

https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/#/tablet

Those tools are very simple, I mainly created them to undestand how those kinds of pattern work. They reuse main principles of seizenn, and I just added a few new things like right-click menu in tablet tool.

I could improve them if they would be useful for someone.

Jeff

Selection tool for grid patterns

Hi

I keep improving the seizenn tool.

After adding the possibility of making grid patterns, I tried to improve the use on the mobile device. The tool can now be installed on Android or iOS to be used without an internet connection. If you need help with the installation, you can see this article on installing a PWA .

I tested it on iPad, it’s really good.

The latest novelty is the addition of a selection function for grid patterns.

Select the button in the edition menu (the “pencil menu”).

When selected, several buttons appear.

When you click on the grid, the border of the selected cell switch to yellow.

You can select an area by holding down the mouse button.

It is then possible to:

  •   erase the selected area
  •   cut it
  •   swap colors
  •   fill it
  •   invert up-down
  •   invert left-right

 

When you have copied an area with the button, click where you want to paste it (the reference is the up left point), before pressing the button .

This function will facilitate the construction of repeating patterns.

=> => =>

Be careful, if the grid alternates, a paste may not give the expected result because of the offset. (A button might help in this case, please ask for it if needed).

The text box contains the content of the copied selection.

It can be modified, or saved in an external document. It is thus possible to share patterns or to build a library (small development to do if you find this function useful)

Do not hesitate to leave a comment to give your opinion on these new possibilities.

 

Band Pattern Editor overview videos

Hi

To help users get to grips with the new version of Seizenn, I started a series of videos.

They are intended to present the main functions of the tool, to show ways of using it.

The first presents the general interface of the tool as well as the principles of editing a band. https://youtu.be/-Nr8dm-IPSI Band pattern editor The second shows the use of the grid band editor. https://youtu.be/iUCrduK4Aco Grid band pattern editor

If you need a specific explanation or clarification, I encourage you to leave a comment.

Seizenn – update of V2 – improvements and grid patterns

Hi

First of all I would like to thank all those who support me for the creation of this tool. It is with great pleasure that I see that it is being used and that it allows many people to experiment with band patterns. It is very motivating to continue.Annie MacHale three-color pickup for inkle weavers

To celebrate the new book of Annie MacHale, I work back on the next version of the Seizenn pattern editor : https://www.raktres.net/seizenn/

Seizenn band weaving Editor

I took into account the two main feedbacks I received :

  • First an “undo” button, you can now revert for a few steps ;

  • Second an attempt to select the language used in the interface. For the moment you can choose between english, french and spanish. Everything is not translated yet, and as I mainly used an internet translator, I’m not sure everything is fine. If you wish to report mistakes or ask for a new language (danish ?), just leave a comment.

I also tried to extends the instruction page (instruction are not translated into spanish for the moment), mainly to allow users to do the link between the icon buttons and the functions.

An other major improvement is the ability to draw “grid patterns”. The aim and use are a bit different from the traditionnal hexagonal editor.

This tool may not work on old computers. I will therefore make sure to the present version available even when this one would be completely ready.

I hope you will like those improvements and that they will help you for your patterns experiments. Video would be probably needed to show the different functions.

Jeff

 

Basic Instructions for using Seizenn − Band Weaving Pattern Editor

Hi

While creating my Seizenn Band Weaving Pattern Editor, I exchanged a lot with Annie MacHale (https://aspinnerweaver.blogspot.com/) to try to offer a simple and efficient tool for weavers. As one of the first users, she did very interesting things with it. Her book of course – https://www.etsy.com/fr/listing/658320160/inkle-weaving-design-book-par-annie – but also some posts on her blog (for example https://aspinnerweaver.blogspot.com/2020/04/baltic-pickup-part-two.html).

She told me that when she presents this tool, new users are frequently confused by very basic tricks. I tried times ago to write some instructions on this blog but they are obviously not sufficient.

As I am working on an major update, Annie very kindly proposed to me few days ago to write basic instructions for beginners. And she improved it after presenting it to some of her friends.

She did a great job, on 4 pages you have enough instructions to let you understand how the tool works and it gives you keys to continue to explore it by themselves.

You can get it here : Instructions for using V1 Seizenn by Annie MacHale

 

http://www.raktres.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Instructions-for-using-V1-Seizenn-by-Annie-MacHale.pdf

With her permission I will translate it into french. And adapt it and include it directly into the next version.

Jeff