Minimizing Loom Waste

When starting a piece of weaving, most people use spacers of cardboard, yarn, even toilet paper to spread out the warp threads. This takes up several inches of the warp. I don't like having that much wastage, so I use "slicky cord" (my name for it) instead. Simply put, slicky cord is nylon cord of a size close to matching that of the warp. In this case, I used 0.5mm yellow cord because I couldn't find the length of green 1mm I'd ordinarily have paired with 8/2 cotton, but as they say, it was "close enough for gov'mint work." There are numerous advantages to using slicky cord, the first being that it can be pulled to adjust the width. The second is that it is easy to withdraw, so after I have woven the first few inches of my piece, I pull out a few rows and do the hemstitching, then remove the slicky cord entirely. The third advantage is that it allows you to use inches of warp you'd otherwise have consigned to loom waste. I usually weave 6-10 throws of slicky cord before beginning the actual weaving, but as I mentioned, I couldn't find the longer green bit I usually use, so had to make do with three throws with the thinner yellow. Predictably, when I went to put the yellow back in the box, I discovered the green had been right there in front of me the whole time.

What Is Loom Waste?

Day 339: As I sit here contemplating the next project to be hung on the floor loom, I'm calculating warp length, factoring in the unavoidable "loom waste" in order to obtain the proper length of cloth. Loom waste is that portion of the warp which cannot be woven, and occurs at both ends of any given warp. There is less waste at the beginning of a piece than at the end because it is simply tied to the apron rod. After a few rows are woven with a cord or other spacer to set the weave, the actual weaving can commence. On the far end, it's a different story. The warp is likewise tied to an apron rod, but the rod cannot pass the heddles/harnesses and reed. On my floor loom, the gap between being able to make an undistorted throw and the back rod is about 18", and that's squeezin' it. Add to that the thread required to tie the warp to both apron rods, and you have "loom waste" of roughly three feet. I usually allow five feet in my calculations, which gives me room to make a sample swatch for my weaving files. The short lengths of unusable warp are called thrums. Ever thrifty, I usually crochet thrums into potholders when I've collected enough of them.

Thrums

Day 365: Appropriate to the last day of my twelfth year of continuous daily blog photos and essays, I'd like to talk about ends (no, I am not planning to discontinue my posts). When a finished cloth is cut from the loom, there will be a certain amount of warp waste at either end of the fabric, the bits which were tied to hold the warp onto the front and back beams. A delightful word, the technical term for these ends is "thrums." Depending on the type of loom employed, thrums can be up to about six feet long per warp strand. Let's say your warp was 400 threads wide. That would mean 2400 feet of thread going to waste! That, to a Scot like me, is simply too much to throw away.

I weave primarily with 8/2 cotton. It's inexpensive and versatile, and of course by sticking with one type of fiber in one size, my thrums match in everything but colour. When I take a project off the loom, I gather the thrums together in bunches and stuff them in my "thrum bag." When the volume reaches a certain point, I develop a project to use them up. If they are long enough, they can be strung on a rigid heddle loom and woven into towels or washcloths. If they're shorter (perhaps leftovers from a previous rigid-heddle project), I weave them into bands using a band loom, an inkle loom, tablet-weaving cards or even a backstrap loom. The bands can then be used to make lanyards, to decorate reusable shopping bags, to apply to Christmas ornaments or cards, etc. Eventually, though, all good things must come to an end, and when my thrums are too short for any other purpose, I cut them into tiny bits to incorporate into handmade paper. Waste not, want not! Or as my grandma used to say, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without."

Tail Project Completed

Day 252: The Tail Project is done, its fringes all tied! Made largely with loom waste from my floor loom, this throw would make my grandmother proud of me for maximizing the materials available. It was an exercise in design to find the proper balance between colours and the "tail count" in my scrap bags, but I am quite pleased with the way it turned out. A scarf using the same colours in different proportions is now in progress on my small rigid heddle loom. The tail census has been substantially reduced, but not eliminated entirely. I see more scarves in the near future. If the pandemic has an "up" side, it is that it is forcing me to use the materials in my stash, many of which have been waiting their turn for several years, and I am now coming to the point where selecting a "main colour" is almost impossible. What I have remaining is small balls and hanks, fifty yards here, ten there, and while I could crochet them into an afghan or use them in Fair Isle knits, it's much more fun to engineer order out of chaos in a well-balanced project for the loom.

The Tail Project

Day 246: One drawback to weaving is that there is always a certain amount...sometimes quite a bit...of "loom waste," the section of warp between the heddles and the back beam. When calculating yardage requirements for a project, the weaver factors in an amount appropriate to that distance and the loom being employed. Different types of loom will have more or less waste depending on their design, so sometimes it's possible to take the waste from one loom and use it on another, or to use it as weft for narrow stripes. Oh, hang on! I've gotten ahead of myself with this story. You're probably wondering where this loom came from, aren't you? Yes, it's "new" (to me, anyway), given to me by a member of our Morris-dance side, and looking very much like a pile of kindling at the time I picked it up. The brochure she gave me to go with it was rather unhelpful. It wasn't that it was written in German; I could stagger through that. It was that it didn't show any model which went together with the parts I had laid out all over my living room floor. Several visits to Mr. Google later, I had a handful of blurry photographs which showed at least some of the parts (not always in the same places) and a model number, Kircher-Rahmen WU80. Don't even ask. YouTube was no help at all.

As the afternoon wore on, I discovered that the "pile of kindling" actually contained two looms, the Kircher and a tapestry frame, the parts of which could not be made to relate to the tapestry adaptation for the WU80. So...I got two looms for the price of one (free!), and two smaller rigid heddle looms (one missing a handle) thrown into the bargain. I'm still not sure I have all the parts in the right places, but what the heck, it's a loom. The heddles go up, the heddles go down, threads can be secured to the beams. That's really all any loom needs to do.

And that brings us now to the Tail Project, i.e., what to do with all those five-foot long bits of warp from my floor loom. I had to pull in some other yarns from my stash, but was eventually able to formulate a plan for a striped lap throw which will be fringed on all four sides, substantially reducing the number of bags of loom waste occupying my crafts room. As my grandma used to say, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." Weavers, take note. Those tails are good for something. Save them until you have enough.