I am going back to some basic 4 shaft patterns from a Swedish Weaving Book. I have decided to use some neutrals with a little red or blue. Now stocking up on some grey, natural and oatmeal cotton fibre for my next projects. The colours red and blue were used early on, as natural dyes such as Madder root, Indigo and Woad were readily accessible.
A bit of weaving History:
http://www.tikp.co.uk/knowledge/technology/warping-and-weaving/introduction/
I always thought that weaving , began in Sweden. The teaching and many styles of weave structures and their modern equipment such as looms and shuttles as we see them now, did originate in some of the Scandinavian countries. Some information on fabric, such as twill based weaves (Drall) would come from other countries via, prisoners of war (such as the Saxons) around the early 18th century. Just as in the modern days with internet, we glean information from other cultures and countries.
But before that in China thousands of years ago, Chinese weavers wove with their tall looms that had long strings going up to the place where the pattern was manually controlled. The pattern was formed by pulling on the strings that raise individual or groups of warp threads. The weaving process was extremely slow, since each weft thread required a new string to be raised in a fabric with 5,000 to 10,000 warp threads. The fabrics were in great demand in Europe, where they were transported on the Silk Highway via Damascus, the city by the Mediterranean Sea for which damask fabric was named.
Even before that time, well lets go back to Neolithic times, approximately 12,000 years ago, the basic principle of weaving was applied to interlace branches and twigs to create fences, baskets and shelter for protection.
I remember in grade school learning about the Industrial Revolution, in the late 1700's the cottage industry began its decline because of the invention of the "Spinning Jenny". I don't ever remember seeing a picture of it, but I could remember the name of it and James Hargreaves the inventor. It allowed spinning flax, cotton or wool into fibre 8 to 12 times faster than an individual spinner could. More fibre leads to more weaving and a commercial cloth industry came into being.