Pattern and Ground (Drawloom Drafts)
Available on Desktop. Requires the Pro tier.
What It Does
Pattern and Ground is TempoWeave Studio's drafting mode for drawloom and compound structures — damask, lampas, beiderwand, and related weaves where a figure is woven on top of a ground cloth. These structures can't be expressed in a single threading and tie-up, because the loom itself has two kinds of control:
A pattern (figure) harness — up to 128 pattern shafts, driven directly by a pattern liftplan. On a drawloom these are the pattern shafts or drawcords that raise the figure.
Up to two ground shaft groups, A and B — each with its own threading and treadling (up to 32 shafts and 32 treadles per group). These weave the ground structure: the twill or satin binding, the tabby of a lampas binding warp, and so on.
The two systems meet in four tie-ups — AA, AB, BA, and BB — one for every combination of shaft group and treadle group (the first letter is the shaft group, the second the treadle group). Because a treadle can command shafts from either group, the tie-ups are the bridge that decides, end by end and pick by pick, whether the ground weaves or the figure shows.
A Pattern and Ground draft opens as a normal document tab with the full TempoWeave experience: palette sidebar, zoom, selection and copy/paste, undo, printing, View Fabric, and cloud features.
Opening and Creating
New draft: Design tab → Pattern and Ground group → Pattern and Ground. The Setup dialog asks for pattern shafts, ground shafts/treadles for groups A and B, and starting size.
Convert an existing draft: with a standard draft active, Design tab → Convert to Pattern and Ground. Your threading becomes the pattern threading and your lifts become the pattern liftplan in a new tab; the original draft is untouched. You then add the ground layers on top.
Open a file: Pattern and Ground drafts open from anywhere a normal draft does — File Open, Recents, MyCloud. A
.twasaved from this mode reopens fully; see File formats for what other programs see.Import into the pattern layer: inside a Pattern and Ground tab, the view's Open button can load any standard WIF or TWA into the pattern layer only — threading, lifts, and colors — leaving your grounds, palette, and density alone. This is the quickest way to bring a figure in from a standard draft. If the import is larger than the current draft, the ground threadings and treadlings repeat across the growth so the ground doesn't vanish under the new area.
The Editing Surface
Reading top-to-bottom on the warp side: end-number ruler, warp color strip, pattern threading (the figure), ground threading A, and ground threading B (hidden when group B is off). Shaft 1 is the bottom row of each band, and the warp is right-anchored — end 1 sits at the right edge, weaving convention.
To the right of the drawdown, in weaving order outward: treadling B (innermost), treadling A, the pattern liftplan, the weft color strip, and the pick-number ruler. The tie-ups sit above their treadle columns, beside the threading bands.
Everything edits with the familiar gestures:
Threading bands
Set the end's shaft (click the same cell again to clear)
Paint along the band
Treadlings
Set the pick's treadle (one treadle per group per pick)
Paint down the picks
Liftplan
Toggle a pattern shaft for that pick
Paint on or off
Tie-ups
Cycle solid ↔ blank; Cmd/Ctrl/Shift-click cycles dot ↔ blank
— (tie-ups edit per click)
Color strips
Paint the active palette color
Paint along the strip
The ribbon drawing tools (Straight, Point, Line) work in all thread grids with a drag preview, the Select tool (or Alt-drag) makes a marquee for copy/cut/paste/delete and the right-click transform menu (Invert, Reverse, Flip, Rotate, Shift), and the Fill menu seeds common starting points — straight/point threadings per band, twill and tabby treadlings, and one-click "all dots" for the cross tie-ups. Every gesture is one undo step.
The toolbar also offers Setup (change harness sizes and density), Expand Pattern (découpure — every pattern square becomes n ends × m picks), Insert Binding Ends (adds an unpatterned end after every interval, the lampas/beiderwand binding-warp step), Paste Pattern (Image Center figures paste into the liftplan), and Hide Pattern (collapses the tall figure threading band when you're working on the grounds).
A few more editing conveniences:
Select Special narrows a marquee to just the cells you name — handy for lifting one shaft's marks out of a busy band.
Keyboard color entry works along both color strips exactly as in standard drafts: tap a strip to place the cursor, then type the Active Palette numbers (see the Color Palette guide).
Hovering a thread shows its yarn name and thickness in a hint, so you can audit a dressing without opening the palette.
Add/Remove Thread and To End work on the pattern bands just as in standard drafts.
Design Repeats
The Design Repeats dialog (Design tab) works per band. Quick Repeat multiplies the whole warp or weft. Advanced Repeat copies a source range to a start position for a repeat count — regular, advancing, or decreasing — with To End filling to the edge of the draft, and options to carry colors and thickness along. Color and thickness each also have their own repeat mode for painting a short sequence across the full warp or weft without touching the structure.
The Tie-Ups: Three Cell States
This is the heart of Pattern and Ground, and the one place where it works differently from a standard tie-up. Each tie-up cell has three states, and the empty state is not neutral.
Think of each cell as the physical cord between one treadle and one shaft on a countermarch loom:
Solid
Tied to rise
The shaft rises — an authoritative command
Blank
Tied to sink
The shaft sinks — also an authoritative command
Dot
Not tied
The shaft group abstains — no opinion, the decision passes down to the pattern
The dot is what makes the figure possible. Where every active tie-up abstains, control falls through to the pattern liftplan — the figure harness decides whether that end rises. Where any tie-up gives a command, the ground wins and the figure is hidden. A draft whose tie-ups are only solid and blank weaves pure ground everywhere; the pattern appears only where dots delegate.
How each cell of cloth is decided
For every end on every pick, TempoWeave resolves in this order:
Each ground group that has an active treadle on this pick and a threaded shaft for this end looks up its tie-up cell: solid = rise, blank = sink, dot = abstain. (An end threaded in group A consults AA against treadling A and AB against treadling B; an end in group B consults BA and BB.)
If every consulted cell abstained, the pattern liftplan decides: the end rises if its pattern shaft is lifted on this pick. An end on no pattern shaft stays down.
If the consulted cells disagree — one says rise, another says sink — that's a conflict (next section).
The classic setup step
Because blank means "sink," the cross tie-ups AB and BA start out as walls of sink commands. In any draft where picks press treadles from both groups (lampas being the classic case), your first setup step is to fill AB and BA entirely with dots — the Fill menu has one-click commands for exactly this. Forgetting it is the most common reason a figure "isn't showing": the blank cross tie-up is authoritatively holding every end down on the other group's picks.
Conflict Cells
A conflict is a cell of cloth where the ground harnesses give one end contradictory orders on the same pick — one tie-up commands it to rise while another commands it to sink. On a real loom this is a physical impossibility (a shaft can't go both ways), and in a draft it always means there's a mistake in the setup.
TempoWeave renders conflict cells solid red in the drawdown and counts them in the status bar (⚠ N conflict cells). They stay flat red even with Show Interlacement on — a conflict is never softened into a plausible-looking thread. Some other drafting programs silently pick one of the two commands and discard the other, which weaves something, just not necessarily what you'll get at the loom; TempoWeave shows you the contradiction instead so you can fix the draft before dressing.
What causes conflicts
A conflict needs an end that answers to two tie-ups at once which disagree:
An end threaded in both group A and group B (legal and useful — it's how the Chinese-loom style combines a rising group and a sinking group in one cloth) where, on some pick, the A-side tie-up says rise and the B-side says sink, or vice versa.
A pick that activates treadles in both groups where an end's two consulted tie-ups disagree — most often because a cross tie-up (AB or BA) was left blank instead of dotted, so its "sink everything" fights the other group's rise commands.
Fixing them
Look at the red cell's end and pick, and ask which tie-ups that end consults on that pick. Almost always the fix is one of:
Dot the cross tie-ups (AB/BA) so each group only speaks through its own treadles.
Dot the disagreeing cell so that group abstains and the other group's command (or the pattern) stands.
Unthread the end from one group if it was double-threaded unintentionally.
When the counter reads zero, every cell of the drawdown is something a loom can actually weave.
Colors, Yarns, and Views
The standard palette sidebar is fully available: Active Palette, swap and exchange (Core tier and up), Edit Yarn with full metadata and variegation, sorts, and add/remove. Painting the color strips uses the selected swatch; Sync Thickness behaves exactly as in standard drafts — swaps, exchanges, yarn edits, and strip painting carry the yarn's thickness to the affected threads when it's on, and leave hand-set thickness alone when it's off.
Show Thickness (View tab) scales every end column and pick row by its yarn thickness across the whole surface — threading bands, drawdown, treadlings, and liftplan stay aligned.
Show Interlacement (View tab) renders the drawdown with the woven look: the underlying thread visible in the gaps and rounded highlights on the top thread. It turns itself off at very small zoom (the detail is unreadable below 5-pixel cells) and at extreme zoom-out, where the flat rendering takes over for speed.
View Fabric (V, or View tab) opens the fabric preview using the computed compound cloth, project density, and per-thread thickness.
Back View flips the drawdown to show the reverse of the cloth — essential for damask, where the figure and ground exchange faces.
Cloth Simulation and 3D View work from the compound cloth just as they do for standard drafts.
Loom Conventions
All four draft-orientation settings apply to Pattern and Ground, exactly as in standard drafts (Settings → Default Settings): shaft 1 at top or bottom, treadle 1 at left or right, treadling direction top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top, and Origin Side. Choosing Origin Side: Left mirrors the entire surface for Swedish-convention drafts — end 1 anchors at the left edge and the treadlings, liftplan, and tie-ups all move to the left side of the drawdown.
Grid Overlay
The Grid Overlay (configured in Project Info) draws heavier gridlines at the interval you choose — every 4 and 10, say — across the threading bands, liftplan, treadlings, and drawdown, matching the standard-draft overlay. On a 128-cord figure it's the difference between counting squares and reading them.
Float Check
Float Check (Tools tab, or Ctrl/Cmd+F) scans the computed cloth for warp and weft floats over your threshold, lists them, and clicking a result scrolls the draft to the offending spot. On a figured draft this is the honest answer to "will that motif edge leave a quarter-inch float?"
Section Marks
The Section Marker button works as in standard drafts, across the pattern warp and weft only: with marking mode on, drag along the weft to mark a pick range (Hem, Body, Border...) or along the warp for an end range, name it when you release, and the range renders as a tinted, labeled band. Right-click in marker mode (or reopen the dialog) to manage marks — rename, retype the range, or delete. Weft section marks are what the Weave Assistant uses for jumping between parts of the piece.
Project Info and Planning
The ribbon Project Info button opens the familiar multi-tab dialog with the tabs that apply to Pattern and Ground: Setup (sett/beat and units; the harness layout is shown read-only — change it in the view's Setup dialog), Project Notes, Planning, Yarn Usage, Loom Dressing, and Weaver's Writeup.
Loom Dressing (heddle and cord counts)
The Loom Dressing tab is the drawloom counterpart of the standard heddle count: it reads the actual threadings and tells you what to put on the loom —
Ground A and Ground B heddles per shaft, from each group's threading, with group totals.
Pattern cords/maillons: how many draw cords the figure actually uses, how many ends each cord carries, and which ends they are — plus the count of ends that carry no pattern at all.
Print it from Print Center (below) for a dressing sheet to carry to the loom.
Two Planning notes that matter for figured drafts:
Warp yardage is zero until you enter a Planned warp length — the Yarn Usage tab marks the affected numbers with
*until you do.Weft yardage is computed from the draft's actual picks. A figured draft is often one repeat of the design, so the woven length can be just a few inches. Enter the Woven Length override for the length you actually intend to weave and press Calculate Yarn to see honest weft requirements.
Printing
Print Center on a Pattern and Ground tab offers:
Draft Layout — the full surface (threadings, tie-ups, drawdown, treadlings, liftplan) with number rulers, fit to one page.
Drawplan — the pattern liftplan printed pick-by-pick with pick numbers: your at-the-loom sheet for which drawcords or pattern shafts to pull on each pick.
Tie-Up Sheet — the four tie-ups at loom-side size for tying the countermarch.
Warp Winding Order — the warp color sequence with run counts, same as the standard-draft report (winding options apply).
Weft Color Order — the weft color sequence with run counts.
Loom Dressing — the heddle and draw-cord report from Project Info as a printable sheet.
Weaver's Writeup — the writeup document, when one exists.
Weave Assistant
Weave Assistant (Tools tab) opens the Pattern and Ground weaving window: a large pick counter with a progress bar, the draw cords to pull for the current pick shown both as compressed runs ("3–7, 12, 19–24") and as tap-size chips, and the ground treadle(s) to press — A and B tiles, with B hidden when the draft has no group B. A preview line shows the next pick so you can plan the change while beating.
Advance with the Next button, Space, Enter, or the arrow keys; back up with Left/Backspace.
The Section dropdown lists the draft's weft section marks — pick "Body" and the assistant jumps to its first pick.
Your current pick is remembered in the draft file, so closing the assistant (or TempoWeave) and coming back resumes where you stopped. Save after weaving to keep the position.
Cloud and Sharing
Pattern and Ground drafts are first-class citizens in MyCloud and the Pattern Library: Save to Cloud, Browse thumbnails, open-from-cloud, and Share all work, and the draft round-trips at full fidelity. As with local files, older versions and mobile open the pattern layer as a standard liftplan draft.
File Formats and Interchange
TWA (native) — full fidelity. The draft, palette, yarn metadata, thickness, density, notes, planning, and writeup all round-trip. Older TempoWeave versions and mobile open the pattern layer of the file as a standard liftplan draft, so nothing errors — they just don't show the grounds.
WIF (interchange) — saving to
.wifwrites a standard pattern-layer WIF plus a privateTempoWeave DRAWLOOMsection carrying the complete draft. TempoWeave reopens it fully; other WIF programs see a clean liftplan draft of the figure.Duplicate Tab works as in standard drafts and copies the complete draft (the writeup travels with the file, not the duplicate).
Quick Reference
Toggle a tie-up block
Click (solid ↔ blank)
Toggle a tie-up dot
Cmd/Ctrl/Shift-click (dot ↔ blank)
Fill cross tie-ups with dots
Fill menu → Tie-up AB / BA: All Dots
Marquee select
Select tool, or Alt-drag
Transforms / shifts
Right-click a selection
Expand pattern (découpure)
Toolbar → Expand
Insert binding ends
Toolbar → Insert Binding
Collapse the figure band
Toolbar → Hide Pattern
Fabric preview
V
Float check
Cmd/Ctrl+F
Mark a section
Section Marker on, drag along warp or weft
Weave at the loom
Tools → Weave Assistant
Undo / Redo
Cmd/Ctrl+Z / Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+Z
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