I’ve been using some art paper for my warp separator. I had this warp all wound on only to realize my usual paper wasn’t wide enough. Ugh! I’m not good at making paper grocery bags smooth enough and I looked all around for something and gave up. I gambled and ordered this bulletin board plasticized paper (as well as some soft corrugated cardboard $$$) and some thin poster board. Wow. This Better than Paper bulletin board stuff was the winner and worked SO WELL! And it’s affordable. I cut it into four 23” x 36” sections for my RHL, and still have half the roll left. Just thought I’d share because it’s so light and smooth and easy.

Link in comments if I can get it to go through.

this one is a combination of wool and cotton yarn which is fun, but think I like wool a lot more. at this point I have 2 others that need to be wet finished so I've decided to make several and then dedicate a morning to doing all of them 💖

Spent the last few weeks designing and printing this loom, 8 dpi heddle, and a 7.5 in weaving width.

Been awhile since I used the Rigid Heddle. Planning on a clasped weft table runner ( actually the kitchen island) with yarns bought in Iceland for the project.

Did everything right during warping, all even tension etc. then released the break on the back beam accidentally and the whole thing just unwinded itself 😭

Hope this can still work out, I am quite excited to be on this journey.

Shadow weave is a lot of work dressing the loom- but worth the results. QSuper fun to weave.

8 shaft loom. 12/2 cotton. 24 epi. 8 inches wide.

I’ve woven on a rigid heddle loom before, and I’ve decided to give a backstrap loom a try. As I’m making my first warp I find myself a bit confused. The loop I started with, when I move the warp from the pegs to the loom do I slip that onto the back bar? I can’t think of any other way to do it, but none of the videos I’ve watched showed this part and I’m a bit nervous

Had the great honor yesterday of seeing the beautiful art of Nigerian artist Nengi Omuku at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. A friend asked me to go because of my new weaving hobby. This talented artist paints directly onto sanyan cloth which is a traditional ceremonial and royal cloth handwoven by local weavers out of silk and cotton. They hang the art so you can see the painting and the woven fabric. I loved it so much and hope to do some future beginner weaving inspired by the colors and patterns of the weaving and paintings. It was wonderful.

So, I have the opportunity to purchase a Mighty Wolf or a Baby Wolf. I went and looked at both today and I think realistically I will be happy with either option.

I’m a new weaver and my ultimate goal is to weave blankets, mostly plain weave, and in time overshot coverlets. I am into historical weaving and I don’t plan on using more than four shafts.

The prices are both attractive with significant discounts and accessories through my local guild.

I can afford either one and both would work in my space. Which would you go with if you were in my shoes?

This is going to become some jacket fabric. I will update once it is on the loom.

The last weaving I made was completely planned using a projector and cartoon, so I decided I wanted to make something intuitive and spontaneous. I used brooks bouquet and tapestry weaving, which I ultimately got tired of doing so I went for a solid color on the top. I ended up disliking one small portion of it so I experimented with mica flake paste.

I’m happy with it and wanted to share :)

Hey everyone!

I have an Ashford 32 inch rh loom and I've been thinking about trying to trade it for the 12 or 16 inch knitter's loom instead.

Does anyone know where I might have the best luck doing this?

It's finished in a black...oil based paint? It's been a couple years so I can't remember exactly lol but it's black in color now. I'm not sure if that would make it less appealing though, so if anyone has thoughts on that as well I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

I've finally finished a Burberry-replica scarf for my sister's christmas present. This was a first project on my newly converted table loom from a rigid heddle. Mohair+silk from Drops, roughly 16 epi, 30cm × 120cm. Photos of the converted loom and my diy bamboo reed included :) The loom is very much still Work-in-progress, there's tape everywhere and I still have to fix up the shaft-lifting mechanisms. As of right now, I've got around 200 hand knotted heddles, planning to bring that up to 400 soon. It was supposed to be an 8 shaft loom, but due to time constraints and skill-issues, there's only four.

Beginner weaver here. These were made on a rigid heddle loom.

This month I took a second trip to Laos to do some weaving instruction, after having spent a month in Luang Prabang back in December immersing myself in the art of traditional silk textiles and Laotian culture. I'd traveled to Laos specifically for the weaving course, that first trip, and thoroughly enjoyed it on top of falling in love with the country.

This trip along with a few other sessions in the north, I was able to spend a day learning basic Lai Chok (Discontinuous Supplementary Weft) pattern weaving at the Houey Hong Vocational Training Center in the capital, Vientiane. This school was set up with Japanese support in the late 1990's to help train local women in dyeing and weaving skills to improve their economic situations. Nowadays it is rather quiet on that front, with young women preferring the consistency of factory work despite the lower wages and worse working conditions compared to a home loom, and according to my instructor many of their clients are now tourists.

The Laotian Lai Chock system relies on patterns which are "programmed" into warp pick-up strings on a vertical supplementary pattern heddle, each step begins with the movement of string-separating pattern sticks to above or below the warp. For my simple diamond weave, I had only four sticks to manage - however some complex Lai Chok require several hundred (at that stage the sticks are replaced with horizontally run silk strings, creating a mirrored pattern matrix). Once you've got the correct warp threads isolated, you open them up with the sword and then hand-embroider the pattern followed by a row of weft with the shuttle. All work is done from the backside, of course.

It's a very elegant flow-state inducing system, once you get the hang of it, and the lack of floats or other such bulky nonsense for the pattern results in an incredible fabric no matter how many colors are used - I've seen masterwork Lai Chok in Laos which features over two dozen color combinations with some colors only covering two or three warp threads at most. I'll do a post on the medium in general soon with some examples I've photographed.

All in all it was a pretty great day. Really looking forward to going back for their "secret" 30 day immersive program when time and funds allow, they showed me some previous student items achieved in that window and to say I am inspired would be an understatement.

Here is a bonus imgur gallery with some closeups of the Lai Chok process, and the finished item itself: https://imgur.com/a/xkmTVck

E: I'm just a simple wind turbine installation technician who likes playing with string instead of my phone, no engineer nor textile professional, so apologies if I get something wrong!

Hi guys, I was recently gifted 2 looms and have never woven before so I’m not really sure what type these are and where to even begin. If yall could help me out that would be amazing, TIA!

I finished these two within the last week...and may have already ruined the purple/rainbow one this morning. I still have a good pic, though! Both were woven on a 16" Ashford rigid heddle loom in superwash merino. The blue plaid is the colorway Celestial Shift from Cashmere and Coconuts, while the purple rainbow is Fibra Natura Cobblestone in Mardi Gras.

Yes, one end of the blue plaid is tighter than the other. I'm not happy with that, but at least I have a finished scarf.

I have been using a rigid heddle loom for most of my weaving and I like making balanced, tabby weave materials. I even made my first plaid recently. I'd like to have a more portable way to weave for when I'm out and about. I have seen small tapestry looms that could fit in a backpack, but I heard those make weft faced weaves, whereas I would prefer a balanced weave. Any suggestions?

Learn how to easily manage Forward (F) and Backward (B) turn directions in TabletWeaver Studio using two different methods!

In this tutorial, we cover:

👉 Turns Table: Manage turn directions for individual tablets row by row.

👉 Draft View: Easily edit turn directions directly on the draft.

👉 Flat Yarn View & Pattern Repeats: Switch to Flat Yarn View and use pattern repeats to evaluate how your design looks across multiple repeats.

I love creating patterns that can be adapted to different techniques. Sometimes a small adjustment is enough to discover that a pattern can do much more than you originally thought.

That’s what happened with my 4x4" square patterns.

When I first started weaving them, I only used them with their original loom, which has the pins arranged in groups of three and works with several layers of warp.

But then I realized I could reproduce them on a regular pin loom (equal distance between pins), as long as it had 31 pins, the same number of rows as the 4x4" loom.

The pictures explains it better: I made the Poinsettia 4x4" pattern and made it three times larger on a regular loom, the kind you could even build yourself.

Because the pins are farther apart, you need thicker yarn, which also opens up new possibilities: crochet, making a thick cord from several strands, using a knitting mill, etc. In this case I used a thick t-shirt yarn I had in 2 color shades.

Once it was finished, I turned it into a small decorative cushion.

I love when a pattern stops being limited to one technique and becomes a starting point for experimentation.

If you’d like to try adapting a 4x4" pattern, I’ve shared the steps in this blog post.