weaving damask

The current project that I have in school is weaving damask, a fabric in cotton for a dress and I love it!
There is a whole lot off stuff to do before you start and putting up the whole thing takes perhaps almost twist the time of a regular warp does, but it is so worth it. It makes you able to weave more figural patterns in the weave. It is hard to explain how you do it in English but Ill give it a try. The pattern is built upon sections of four threads, a pattern repeating 17 times over the width of the weave, threading through heddles in groups of four in points on ten shafts, and a liftplan. A bottom weave in 4 shaft cross twill (this is a direct translation from Swedish)

You thread the warp two times, first through the heddles in the back, the ones that you lift manually and then in the heddles in the front the ones that are affected by the threadles.

Pulling the little wooden handles makes the shafts and with that all groups that are threaded on that shaft (four threads in each group) rise up. Then you push the threadles and shuttle the yarn as usual as many times as you have threadles, for me four times. Then you take down the shafts and lift new ones (all depending on you pattern of course.) and repeat until you have finished you pattern.

Weaving this way with this setup is nice since you can try so many different patterns, it is just to lift the shafts in different ways.