End Results

Day 107: For an experiment to be considered successful, it has to be repeatable. Can I achieve this twice in succession? I have two motifs left to weave before I take this band off the loom, and I have not had any issues with slack threads. As you can see on the right, where the threads tie onto the warp ribbon, there are no loops of excess. Each time as I have advanced the warp, I've smoothed out the slack and locked it in place behind the bag clips. Over the course of the band, it's evened out. For the record, this band has a narrow border (2 white outer threads and 4 green for a stripe, using 10/2 cotton), and 7 dark blue pattern threads (8/2) on a basket-weave ground (10/2). For the next experiment, I will make the border slightly wider and will add two more pattern threads, but I will probably weave the same length (i.e., on a warp twice the length of the loom and across a card table). Obviously, I don't have a measurement for the finished band yet, but it should be somewhere between 7-9 feet if my calculations are correct, guessing the actual working area.

Try, Try Again

Day 100: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." Those seem to be the words to live by when warping a Leksand loom. The bag clips rescued my last band in the end, but what I really need to figure out is how to put a warp on with even tension which can be maintained through the weaving process. I decided to experiment with bag clips in place of choke ties, and as I wound on, I used them to move any slack in the warp toward the cloth roller. This is not a long warp by any means, but neither is it the minimum the loom can accommodate. I butted the loom up against a card table with a peg on the far side, effectively doubling the length to give myself roughly 9-10 feet of workable warp using seven pattern threads for the design. The pattern threads are where the slack comes in, so we'll see how it goes.

Solving the Tension Issue

Day 85: A Leksand loom is not the easiest thing to warp with even tension due to the fact that the threads go from the roller, wrap around the posts, pass through a rigid heddle, go over a separator or through string heddles before being attached to the cloth roller. I've tried several different methods, but even using the best of them, I still wind up with major tension issues. We're talking random threads sagging by inches, not just a few which aren't tight enough. Well, I finally hit on a solution. Every time I advance the warp, I loosen the warp roller and work the slack back toward it until I have even tension all the way across, then snap on a couple of bag clips...yep, the kind you use to close the potato chip sack...before winding the warp back on with a few twists in it to hold the threads securely against the roller. I use two clips for added security, and it's working perfectly.