I needed a new runner for the bathroom which I had recently refurbished and decided to weave something in diversified plain weave. The structure seemed a good choice for bold pattern, though I haven't heard of it being used for rugs. There are some notes on the structure and example drafts in Strickler's "8 shaft pattern book".
She says that ideally the pattern and background threads should have a difference in diameter of 5-6 times. This seemed a lot, but eventually I choose 8/2 cotton for the background and a mini-mop from lankava.fi to achieve the difference. Usually rugs are woven in wool to be hard wearing but in the bathroom the frequent wetting and need to machine wash made the cotton the more natural choice.
Strickler also recomends that each set of pattern and neighbouring background threads on each side be sleyed through a single dent in the reed, advice I followed.
I should probably have done some sampling to test the structure but as is often the case I was impatient to get going.
There didn't seem to be any tension problems warping the 8/2 and mini mop on the same beam (I only have one in any case) and during the weaving there wasn't ny noticeable take up differences. The main issues I noticed were firstly that it was difficult to beat the mini mop hard enough to get the density I was after (subsequently I have realised that the overhead beater on my old loom effortless beat very hard because of its weight, on the spring II I often need a double beat) and secondly that the background threads had a tendency to slip over or under the thicker minimop, which for me destroyed the effect I was after in the fabric. It would have been much better if in fact the background threads had been in different dents to the minimop to help keep them in place. Whether they would have slipped around during finishing I don't know. A generally denser sett for warp and weft may have helped.
The finished rug is pleasant enough and functional, if a bit too drapey. A reminder to always sample first!
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