Quote Originally Posted by figheadair View Post
If you want a real challenge, try birdseye across the whole a the pattern. It requires the weaver to maintain two sets of counting concurrently, sett and treadle-pattern. It's extraordinarily complex and not something that I recommend with others around but the result is stunning for a decorative piece.
Wow!
Indeed.

I've been munching also on birdseye of different widths, maybe even lengths, so as to achieve an even distribution of geometric elements as the width of the color columns in the sett differ, as they generally do.

Off my head, I'd say that these weaving patterns set in the heddles (probably) must share a meaningful common denominator, as in a 20-wide birdseye/10-thread herringbone band would fit nicely next to a 4-wide or 10-wide birdseye / 2 or 5-herringbone, but not so easy neighboring a 6-wide. Meaning, many "canonical" sett patterns would suffer from this exercise, right now totally hypothetical anyway.
However, empowered by my extensive lifetime experience of 2 pieces of fabric woven, I have so far also learned that what looks OK in the cartoon doesn't necessarily translate so well to the loom, and vice versa. Example, the "fail" with the green/red/darkRed patterns, where it turns out that it is actually essential to make the mirror image be fully symmetrical for a good effect, and the unexpected "win" of the strong contrast of white on top of the other colors - which would have benefited from one more thread each on bottom and top to complete the pointy corner.

I find interesting the choice made by the weaver of the Maclaine of Lochbuie plaid, when facing the challenge of that pesky 8-thread green band. Preemptively pulling the excess 2 threads into the bands closer to the edge, when deeper into the body of the plaid he obviously was very careful to fit the 5 10-wide herringbone so it fits whole within the 50-wide color bands. That obviously was "planned", as the choice has to be made when setting up the heddles.
I'm just starting to dig into that paper, it seems to cover several of my doubts. I had browsed briefly before, it being my inspiration for my experiments with herringbone/chevron sides and birdseye corner.

Very much in agreement, counting treadle-pattern to conform to the sett, it's... complicated, famous understatement.
I followed this cartoon, cut and glued together the segments to form a long tape, and only once had to unravel 1.5 inches .
CartoonChevronBirdsEye.jpg

My kid sister advices using an abacus... I am growing fond to think that the view of the pattern as it builds up is at the very least a sanity check, yet perhaps the primary indicator of what should be going on and what is the next step. I'll still keep to being guided by the cartoon for at least a while probably. However, I have a feeling that "true expert craftsmen" back then were more into the intuitive/visual, achieved through experience.

And a sigh! note:
Re-reading this morning the traditional selvedge patterns paper, I noticed that some definitions that I put in my original post are wrong. I'll have to rewrite the whole thin; it certainly doesn't read easy, either.