Samba Rug Pattern and Design Grids

A double-sided rug is practical and fun. A weaving partner is also a practical and fun addition to your weaving practice. Melissa Lusk met McCrystle Wood, standing next to a very early example of shaft-switch weaving, at the Cincinnati guild house. They have been designing and weaving rugs ever since.

The treadling for Samba is straightforward—black picks alternate with white picks, and the same four-pick sequence is repeated throughout the rug.

This PDF includes the original instructions, corrected draft with treadling corrected, and a larger option for the design grids. Download and print the three partial design grids on legal-sized paper. See below for directions from the authors Melissa Lusk and McCrystle Wood, for using the design grids for the Samba Rug featured in Handwoven November/December 2020.

About the design grids:

The design grids show every weft float. Samba is woven at 4 ends per inch, with 2 tie-down ends and 2 pattern ends per inch. Each weft float measures ½" and establishes the horizontal weftwise grid. Each blue square on the grid represents ½" corresponding to the size of a single weft float. The detail of the grid shows how the threading aligns with the grid. No matter what system you use for shaft switching, you need to number each shaft-switch warp end to keep track of your design in the weftwise direction.

The grid in the vertical/warpwise direction is determined by the picks per inch. The 4-end block weave structure is completed with a 4-pick sequence. This sequence will put a weft float on each two-thread unit on each side of the rug. The pick on the reverse side of the rug will magically slide under the pick on the surface as you beat. You should get 3 complete treadling sequences per ½". On the grid, you see each ½" weftwise square (the weft float) divided with red lines into 3 warpwise units (the picks).

At the bottom of the partial design grids are two rulers with the shaft-switch design units numbered. Keep one ruler on the grid but cut the other one off. Slide that ruler along the grid as you weave to keep track of your shaft switches. Note that the grid is color reversed to make the lines easier to read. The white areas on your grid will be black on the surface of your rug, and the black areas will be white. The back of your rug will look like your grid.