Monk's Belt Sampler

Directions

Monk's Belt Basics

1. Monk’s belt is a block weave in which two blocks are possible on four shafts. Each block can be repeated in the threading and treadling as many times as desired. In the threading, longer floats will be produced with more repeats of a block and should be taken into consideration when designing a pattern.

2. No pattern areas of overlap exist where the tabby and pattern weft yarns interlace to form a blended area. This creates a very graphic design (as opposed to overshot where blocks overlap, producing half tones).

3. Two shuttles are used, one holding the tabby (plain weave) weft yarn, typically the same as your warp yarn, and the other holding the pattern yarn. Your pattern yarn should be double the thickness of the tabby yarn.

4. Monk’s belt is also described as a block weave woven on opposites. What does woven on opposites mean? It may seem like a puzzle, but it’s quite simple and lovely. For example, one block, block A, is threaded on shafts one and two. The other block, block B, is threaded on shafts three and four.

Weaving Monk's Belt

1. To weave, you repeat picks of an individual block, alternated with tabby, to form solid square or rectangular shapes of color with your pattern weft. Your block (think square or rectangle of solid color) is formed by treadling the same pattern pick over and over. The pattern weft floats over a group of threads; the tabby (think of it as a plain weave binder) weaves the background at the same time. In fact, if you were to cut away all of the pattern wefts, you would be left with a piece of plain weave fabric formed by the warp and tabby picks.

2. When treadling a block weave, an example of your sequence might look like this:
   Pick 1: Weave Block A (shafts 3 and 4)
   Pick 2: Weave Tabby (shafts 1 and 3)
   Pick 3: Weave Block A (shafts 3 and 4)
   Pick 4: Weave Tabby (shafts 2 and 4)
   Pick 5: Weave Block A (shafts 3 and 4)
   Pick 6: Weave Tabby (shafts 1 and 3)
   Pick 7: Weave Block B (shafts 1 and 2)
   Pick 8: Weave Tabby (shafts 2 and 4)
   Pick 9: Weave Block B (shafts 1 and 2)
   Pick 10: Weave Tabby (shafts 1 and 3)
   Pick 11: Weave Block B (shafts 1 and 2)
   Pick 12: Weave Tabby (shafts 2 and 4)

3. You have now formed distinct rectangular areas of color–some solid pattern weft, in my case the white wool, and some interlaced tabby and warp yarn (plain weave background). Because the white pattern wool is twice the weight of the tabby weft, it covers the tabby weft whenever it floats on the surface.

Monk's Belt Weaving Drafts

1. If you review the monk’s belt patterns in the resource list, you’ll see that there are many threadings possible. I’ve also illustrated this in the sampler. To illustrate how the weave works, I have provided PDFs of 2 monk’s belts drafts and draw downs.
   
   Sample A weaving draft
   Sample B weaving draft

2. Threading: you’ll notice that Block A is threaded on shafts 1 and 2 and that Block B is threaded on shafts 3 and 4. When planning your weaving you would repeat these blocks as many times as you needed for your weaving width. To balance the threading, you would end with threading Block A.

   

3. Tie-up: Each black square in the tie-up box indicates which shaft is lifted. If we look at the left hand column, you can see that shafts 1 and 3 are lifted (look at the threading and you can see that every other thread (threads on shafts 1 and 3) are lifted. The second column from the left shafts 2 and 4 are lifted. Alternating these two will create plain weave (or tabby). The other two columns represent the shafts that will be raised to create weft floats, so that when you raise shafts 3 and 4 you’ll see that the weft floats over the threads on shafts 1 and 2 (that are not raised). You can repeat lifting shafts 3 and 4 to create a column of color.

4. Treadling: Reading from the top, down, you’ll see that a pattern row alternates with a plain weave or tabby row. (Tabby is just the term that is used for plain weave woven as a background with a pattern weft.) You’ll see on the draw down that the plain weave background never changes. It’s just the pattern weft that changes to create the design.

Weaving the Sampler

1. I threaded seven threading sequences across for my sampler. Two tie-ups are used with a total of 20 different treadling sequences, seven with the first tie-up and 13 with the second. Marguerite Porter Davison, Helene Bress and Anne Dixon are just three weaving authors who have complied a record of the standard threadings, tie-ups and treadlings, but you will soon see that the possibilities are endless.

   

2. Blocks are fun to experiment with, both in the threading and the weaving. Use graph paper and black ink and practice filling in squares to create a pattern. Try threading narrower blocks on the boarders and larger ones in the center field. What happens when you weave without a tabby pick? What if you were to cut through some of the woven blocks to form fringed areas? What if you reverse your tabby and pattern picks? You will notice that in a couple of the treadling sequences (see Sampler A above, #6 & #7), a tabby was thrown as part of the pattern pick. This results in a weave that is no longer traditional monk’s belt, but just one of the many ways you can vary your weaving.

   

3. I also confess to one weaving error in Sampler B #3, An extra tabby pick was thrown resulting in a linen stripe across the cloth. Oops! Happy weaving!