Ways To Weave

Day 36: A weaving group I participate in on line is celebrating their anniversary today, and we were asked to take pictures of our various looms. This is my collection. From top left, they are Max (Bergman countermarch floor loom), Pippin (a "Weave Ahoy" 2-shaft) ... and Merry helping; Schacht table loom; Jutta (Leksand made by my weaving partner Ed) and Nelda (Glimakra band loom); two rigid heddles and a frame loom; inkle looms big and small; assorted manual looms, including three pin looms, a backstrap, a bandgrind and two types of tablet weaving cards. I usually have at least one of the two rigid heddles loaded, but since I direct-warp them (which is to say I stretch the threads from one end of the living room to the other) and have a Small Helper who loves to play with/eat strings, I haven't set either one up. Inky-Dinky Inkle's band was finished before bedtime last night, and I'll be putting a new warp on it today. Max's project is nearing completion, as are the bands on Jutta and Nelda. Time to reload!

A Passion For Weaving

Day 122: My grandmother set me on my fiberarts journey before I was old enough to attend kindergarten. She started me off with stem-stitch embroidery (oddly, not cross-stitch), and put me to work on pillowcases and linen handkerchiefs with the admonition, "Over four threads and back two." It was a lot to ask of a four-year old child and, although I couldn't achieve her level of expertise at that age, I was inspired by her own exquisite work to try. In the following years, she taught me to knit and crochet and to expand on my embroidery. By the time I was seven, I had made at least one knit sweater, multiple crocheted potholders and doilies, several embroidered dresser scarves, and I had gone on to explore needlepoint and crewel. Still, knitting was what drew me most, and by the time I was in my teens, it was my primary craft. After leaving high school, one of my first jobs was as an art-needlework consultant for a fabric store chain. It was there that I learned to tat. But I had only just cast off from the dock as far as the seas of textile construction were concerned, and the farther I paddled from the shores of its more commonplace forms, the deeper the waters became. At some point in my twenties, I reached the island of weaving, and was so taken with the plentiful fruits thereon that I established myself firmly in its community, having found my true home. Oh, I still visit all those other places: bobbin lace, smocking, macramé, marlinespike work, kumihimo, or anything which can be executed in thread, yarn or cord, but it is weaving which is my primary passion: passing a shuttle to and fro, watching a cloth develop beneath my hands, entranced by the simple, magical act of taking one thread across another to become fabric.

Warping Into 2024

Day 78: As far as I'm concerned, Warp 10 isn't fast enough to get out of 2023. Of course there are no guarantees 2024 will be any better, but we can hope so. That said, I'm weaving my way toward the limits of several current warps, and have two measured and waiting in the wings to replace Pippin's band (top right, will be done by evening) and the King's Flower overshot (bottom left, still about three feet to go). Jutta's band (top left) is going much faster than anticipated, given the finer threads, and I'm enjoying weaving it so much that I really wished I'd hung a longer warp. The wildly colourful "log cabin" runner on the rigid heddle (lower right) is also nearly done, but I have nothing planned to replace it at the moment, so I'm dragging my feet a little until inspiration strikes me. Pippin's next project will be a real challenge because the pattern will be worked on a ground of sewing thread. While that's not the finest thread I've ever used in a weaving (I once wove fine linen napkins at 52 ends per inch), it will be the finest I've ever used for a band. With the projects I have lined up, I'm heading into 2024 at warp speed.

Loom Types

Day 112: Gosh, here I am, rambling on about heddles and sheds, and I haven't shown you the most important part: the looms themselves! And forgive me, I had finished assembling the collage before realizing that I'd left out backstrap, so you'll just have to imagine a simple warp attached to a hook on one end and my waist on the other.

When I'm ready to engage in a serious weaving project which requires a long warp and a time commitment of several weeks or even months, I set it up on my four-foot floor loom (top left). This beast occupies the better part of my crafts room which, despite the name, is not a room where I do crafts, but rather the space in which all my supplies are kept. A floor loom needs a home of its own. It's not the type of thing you put in your living room for several reasons. One, it won't leave much room for guests and two, the act of weaving generates an uncommon amount of lint as the fibers rub against each other and against the parts of the loom. If you are thinking about getting a floor loom, you might want to ask yourself what it would be like to have a St. Bernard in the house. Right. Moving on, then.

A far more reasonable consideration for the casual hobbyist weaver would be a table loom. The distinction between it and a floor loom is somewhat loosely defined because many table looms can be mounted on floor stands, and kits are available for some to convert from jack operation (hand levers) to treadles, essentially turning the "table" model into a floor loom. Better to think of it as a matter of size. A table loom fits on a table. A floor loom does not. My table loom is shown center bottom, currently unwarped because I have a project on the floor loom. You can see the jack levers at the center top, two up and two down.

Rigid heddle looms (left and right bottom) are very portable and a good place for a novice weaver to begin. They are built to be used on a table-top, but can also be mounted in a floor stand. Table space being at something of a premium around here, both of mine are on stands. Although the one on the left is being used in the customary fashion while I weave a scarf, the one on the right holds a tablet-weaving project, its warps weighted with water-filled Gatorade bottles (the same warp-stretching method I use to warp my floor and table looms by myself). A major difference between standard weaving looms and rigid-heddle looms is in the heddles. Metal straps, wires or strings are used to hold the warp threads in sequence on a standard loom. These heddles slide along bars in the harness frame, permitting the weaver to use almost any size thread which will pass through the eye. On the other hand, a rigid heddle is exactly that: rigid, i.e., a piece of plastic with a set number of eyes and slots per inch. To change the number of threads per inch, the weaver has to swap out one rigid heddle for another of a different size. However, when using a floor/table loom, the number of threads per inch is determined by the reed, a slotted metal guide which is held in the beater bar. Weaver argot for this is "dents per inch," i.e., the number of slots in an inch of reed. It is important to note here that sometimes more than one warp thread is drawn through each dent. For example, I once wove a linen piece at 45 threads per inch, but since my finest reed was a 15-dent reed, each dent carried three warp threads.

Last in the collage is the inkle loom (upper right). Inkle looms are designed to make narrow bands for use as trims, straps or belts. The resulting product is similar to that produced by tablet-weaving, although generally not as thick. The warp threads are manipulated by hand on an inkle loom to form the shed through which the shuttle passes.