How to choose the best reed (and sleying order) when the perfect reed is not available
Many weavers have a limited number of reeds available to them. If you have a 12 dent reed, and the project you are working on has a 24 epi Sett, you simply sley 2 ends in each dent. Easy peasy! What happens if you DON’T have the perfect reed available? Example 1: Anne Hiemstra ran […]
How can I fix twill floats that are too long?
When a twill’s floats are too long, the solution is to change the float lengths in its tie-up. “But tie-ups don’t have floats!” you say? You’re quite right: a tie-up doesn’t have actual floats. A tie-up is the connections between the shafts and treadles that make the sheds required while weaving, and those connections don’t […]
What to do when you haven’t got enough heddles on a shaft
A question came up in a Facebook group from a weaver who wanted to use a huck threading like this… …but she didn’t have enough heddles on Shafts 1 and 4. If she was working with a four shaft loom, she would be limited to either moving heddles, or adding repair heddles to Shafts 1 […]
Making and Fixing Spaghetti
No matter what the actual topic of my in-person weaving classes happens to be, there’s always someone who says that some random, unrelated tip is the best thing they’ve learned that day. It’s usually a tip for fixing a problem that they’ve struggled with several times, and more often than not it’s this simple trick […]
Design with me: Kathy’s Snow Dyed Warp, Part 2
Last week, I explained my dye process and showed the warp I’ll be working with. This week I beamed the warp, so follow along with me and learn: First I needed to decide what order I wanted the chains in. Because I “winged it” for this warp, without much planning, I did not take the […]
Colour your Heddles!
Have you ever started threading a project, and JUUUUST before you finish, you realise that you don’t have enough heddles on one or more shafts? This can happen for a few reasons. You might have made a mistake in your threading, or an error in your calculations. Most likely though, you made an error in […]
Using a Trapeze
This blog was written by Sue Willingham. Each year, about this time, I’m preparing the looms in my studio for a three day class that Janet and I call “Towelapalooza”. All ten looms in my studio are pre-warped with ten different drafts, checked, and ready to weave on when folks arrive. Since we have up […]
No Fuss Floating Selvedges
I’m not a fan of floating selvedges. Moving their weights, separating them from the threaded ends they’re next to, lifting them up to go under or pushing them down to go over – that all detracts from my weaving experience. Anything that slows me down and interrupts my weaving zen irritates me every single time. […]
Save your selvedges!
It isn’t unusual to hear a weaver say “My selvedge(s) keep fraying and breaking!” This is an issue that often is caused by a combination of yarn/weave/threading that results in the outermost thread on one side of the warp slowly unplying, while the twin thread on the other side of the warp is slowly plying […]
Fixing your floats
At some point in your weaving life, you will take a piece of fabric from the loom, then sigh when you notice that there is an error in it in the form of a float that shouldn’t be there. Don’t be too worried about it, it happens to the best of us, and for some, […]
