From a favorite recipe or your own idea…

Weave the cloth you imagine

Learn why color, structure, and yarn choices work, so you can plan your next project with confidence.

Fourth Anniversary Sale!
Save $50 on your first year
Offer ends Saturday, November 21.

“I thought I was always going to be mediocre…I can go beyond what I thought I could”

“I thought I was always going to be a mediocre weaver. … But your classes have given me confidence to say I can produce something that is stunning, because I have the skills now and the knowledge to be able to apply it.”

– Cass Markovich

Change a recipe?
Start from scratch?
You're designing.

Maybe you changed the colors in a towel recipe, made a scarf wider, or wove your project in linen instead of cotton. If so, you’re designing! Every one of those is a design change.

Or maybe you already design your own projects, starting from a photo, a yarn in your stash, or a gift idea.

Either way, the same principles determine how the cloth comes out.

“I changed the draft, dimensions, and design. By the time I made all the changes I had learned how to do in the Academy, it looked nothing like the original designer’s piece and sure was one of a kind.”

– Joy Hogg

Why so many dream projects stay on the shelf

Sometimes your changes come out great. Other times…not so much.

A failed project can feel discouraging, especially when you don’t know what went wrong.

So a lot of weavers go back to recipes and weave them exactly as written, while their dream project stays on the shelf. For years.

It's not a lack of talent. It's the missing half of weaving

Books, videos, and recipes teach technique, the first half of weaving, and they do it well.

The design half is the part that’s rarely taught. Why a change works, so you can make it deliberately and predict the results. What changes to make in order to create a project you love.

That’s what the Handweaving Academy teaches: the why behind color, structure, and cloth design.

We’re the only school that teaches the design half of weaving and helps you with your own projects.

Fourth Anniversary Sale!
Save $50 on your first year

Offer ends November 21

“Lots of ‘Aha!’ moments”

“The lessons are clear and filled with lots of aha moments, including things I didn’t know and things that I thought I already understood.”

– Jacey Boggs
Publisher, WEFT Magazine

Know how your colors will blend before you wind the warp

Lissa Pestolesi’s hairdresser asked for a shawl inspired by Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. Lissa didn’t want a literal interpretation, so she decided to capture the shimmering movement of the painting instead.

After some experimenting, she found a draft from Handwoven that she liked: Advancing Waves, by Barbara Goudsmit.

To figure out how the colors would blend, she tried her colors in our Color Blend Predictor, a tool from our class Color Mixing 2. It shows the color range achievable with any two yarn colors.

Lissa found the perfect color combinations, wove a sample, and produced this beautiful shawl. Her hairdresser loves it!

Starry Starry Night shawl by Lissa Pestolesi

Why you can predict a blend before you see it

When two colors mix in woven cloth, the new color falls somewhere on a straight line between them on the color wheel. Where it lands depends on the proportion of each color in the mix. The Color Blend Predictor shows the range of possible colors in the blend.

You can let the tool do the prediction, like Lissa did. Or you can learn the principles behind it in our class Color Mixing 2, and visualize it yourself.

Either way, you’ll know what you’ll get before you wind a single thread.

Weavers like you are designing cloth they love

(two were featured on the cover of Handwoven!)

Photos by Matt Graves. Courtesy of Long Thread Media

Handweaving Academy members designed both these Handwoven cover projects.

Joy Pate created Shoreline Shawl, and Tina Glassenbury wove the Hawk Moth Towels.

Neither of them designed their own work until they joined the Handweaving Academy.

Shimmering silk scarves, created from stash yarns

A friend gifted Chrystal de Freitas with lots of small balls of silk yarn. Chrystal designed the colors using what she learned in our Color Gradients class.

When her selvedges wouldn’t behave, the weavers at Peer Support, our live members’ meetings, helped her fix them.

She gave one scarf to her friend, who loves it.

How Teresa went from six years of recipes to designing her dream coverlet

"I want to be brave and jump out of a recipe"

Since she started weaving, Teresa Horne knew what she wanted to weave: an overshot coverlet for her bed.

For six years, she wove from recipes instead. Some were ambitious, like a many-colored butterfly shawl from Handwoven.

But she kept her changes small. “I was just altering what was already in a recipe, maybe changing the colors.”

She tried to learn design on her own. She worked through a drafting workbook, and asked her guild for advice. But the one time she went further, changing a towel recipe to twill, the towels came off the loom so dense that she uses them to scrub pots. “After all that work, that was disappointing,” she said, “so I went back to recipes.”

The coverlet stayed in her head. She didn’t know how to design it.

Her first design: a Tetris blanket

This summer, Teresa joined the Handweaving Academy. Then her son asked her for a Tetris blanket for his cat.

She dove into our classes on profile drafting, and sketched out the blanket as a profile draft.

But one row of her design had four colors, and that meant juggling five shuttles.

In the discussion forums, Janet showed her a simpler way, and even recorded a video for her on how to do it. Thread one summer and winter block all the way across, and lay each color in by hand. Boom!

The cat was ecstatic.

"The whole world opened up"

Drawing her own design changed what Teresa thought she could do. Janet’s profile drafting class had shown her how to turn a drawing into a threading and treadling.

“Then the whole world opened up,” she said. “I felt like I could design anything.”

By October, she was designing her dream coverlet. She’ll weave it in three panels, using her own handspun, hand-dyed yarn as weft. She’s designing it in our Draft Editor, so she can see the design before winding the warp.

“I dreamed of this coverlet forever. And now, thanks to the Handweaving Academy, it’s coming true.”

– Teresa Horne

Do you have a project like Teresa’s coverlet, waiting for the day you know enough?

Here’s how we can help.

Everything you need to design your next project

60+ classes on designing color, weave structure, and your cloth

Learn why a design works, so you can make your own designs and predict how they’ll turn out.

Every lesson is self-paced, so you can read or watch it as often as you like.

“Classes are amazing and more in-depth than other courses I have done. I love the encouragement to think for ourselves, to plan and organise. I truly have discovered my love for colour and design!”

– Dayamitra Blenman

Live help with your own project, every month

Bring your project to Design Sessions or Office Hours, where Tien and Janet help members with their projects live.

There are also live Q&As and live lectures, all recorded, captioned, and transcribed.

You don’t have to bring a project to learn from these sessions. When Tien and Janet work through another member’s project, you get to see why they suggest each change, and you can use the same thinking on your own.

Or bring a sketch, a draft, or a sample that didn’t turn out the way you hoped. We’ll look at it with you and talk through what to try next.

“All kinds of questions come in – totally off the wall. People will be asking about turned taqueté, and deflected double weave, and all this really cool stuff. It’s like I have my own personal mentor.”

– Jan Haverty

Friendly answers whenever something surprises you

Puzzled by something?

Post in the forums, or hold a sample up to the camera at Peer Support and ask.

Tien, Janet, and your fellow members are standing by to help!

“I’ve never felt like a question was unwarranted or stupid, although I’ve probably asked a few of those!”

– Courtney Mitchell

Design tools that take the guesswork out of planning

Create your design and see how it will weave before you wind a warp. The Weaver’s Toolbox adds 220+ reference items for the questions that come up along the way.

Teresa is designing her coverlet in the Draft Editor, our online drafting program (provided by Handweaving.net).

Fourth Anniversary Sale!

~~$199~~ $149

for your first year of annual membership

Renews at $199 a year. Stop renewals any time.

$149 is about what you’d spend on yarn for two projects. It’s about $12 a month.

Unlike yarn, what you learn stays with you forever.

(Don’t worry, we’ll email you reminders before your free week ends!)

Offer ends Saturday, November 21, at midnight Pacific Time.

“For less than the price of a workshop, you get an entire year of all kinds of different learning experiences.
It’s like ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’.”

– Joy Pate, Handwoven cover weaver

Try everything free for 7 days

Click Try us free for 7 days and enter your card at checkout.

Explore the classes, live sessions, forums, and tools for 7 days.

Your first year of annual membership starts after 7 days, at $149. Cancel before day 8 and you won’t be charged. (Renews at $199/year after the first year.)

To get the most from your free week, read through the first lessons of one class, come to one live session, and ask one question.
(Want feedback on a project? Ask for it!)

Learn from Tien Chiu and Janet Dawson, who have taught many thousands of weavers

I’m Janet Dawson. My expertise is designing good, functional cloth.

Over the last two decades, I’ve taught thousands of students about the physical and structural aspects of designing cloth, as well as techniques for actually weaving it. I’ve got a deep understanding of weave structures and a knack for explaining them.

I live for the moment when a student’s eyes light up with understanding.

I’m Tien Chiu. My wheelhouse is color and visual design.

I’ve studied color for the last decade, weaving and dyeing thousands of swatches to develop deep color expertise.

You may have seen my articles in Handwoven, Shuttle, Spindle, & Dyepot, and Complex Weavers Journal. Or perhaps you’ve taken some of my online classes – I’ve taught over 10,000 weavers online.

I love helping other weavers by demystifying color.

Between us, we’ve taught many thousands of students how to design and create their own handwoven projects.

Your questions, answered

I'm a recipe type of person. Can I really design?

Yes! If you’ve ever changed the colors, the size, or the yarn in a recipe, you’re already designing.

Keep starting from recipes you love, and we’ll show you how to “chef them up” to produce projects that delight you.

And if someday you want to design a project “from scratch,” we’ll help you do that too.

I already design my own projects. Is the Academy for me?

Yes! Our classes dive deep into how color, structure, and yarn interact to form cloth. Even experienced designers will find them useful.

As long-time member Miriam put it, “I have always done some of my own design work, but Tien’s classes have given me the freedom and confidence to explore color and design on a whole new level, especially when using computer software. I also want to understand how a weave structure works and with Janet’s explanations and demonstrations I have a technical understanding I never had before.”

Can't I learn this from books or videos?

Books and videos are wonderful for learning technique. Teresa worked through some books when trying to learn design. But when she changed a towel recipe to twill on her own, the towels came out so dense that she now uses them to scrub pots.

A book or video can’t look at your project and tell you what to change. At the Academy, you can bring your project to us and ask.

60+ classes sounds overwhelming. Where do I start?

Don’t worry! We have suggestions for starter classes in each of our course categories, and we’ll make suggestions during your free week as well.

If you’d rather just dive in, start with the project you want to weave next. Tell us about it in the forum, and we’ll point you to the classes that will help most.

What if I don't have much time?

Everything is self-paced. Member Teresa Horne (her story is above) fits in a lesson or two a day when she can, sometimes one or two a week.

There’s no “falling behind”. Work at your own pace, on your own schedule. And all the live sessions are recorded, so you can watch them later.

Do I need a big loom, or weaving software?

Nope! Our members weave on floor, table, and rigid heddle looms, and we have classes especially for rigid heddle weavers. The Draft Editor runs in your web browser.

Our courses typically have examples and drafts for 4- or 8-shaft looms. However, we also include ways to extend the concepts to looms with more than eight shafts, so weavers with lots of shafts will find plenty here.

Do I have to show my work or participate in the live sessions?

Not at all. Lots of members just watch at first, or catch the recordings later. When you’re ready, you can ask in the forum or ask questions at a live session – whatever feels most comfortable to you.

Does the sale price apply to quarterly membership?

No. The $50 off is for your first year of annual membership only. Quarterly memberships are at full price.

What does it cost after the first year? How do I cancel?

Annual membership renews at $199/year. You can cancel any time before your renewal date, either from your account page or by emailing us.

(We send several reminders before you renew – we hate surprises too!)

Still have questions? Email us at [email protected].

Start your someday project this winter, with help

You can keep weaving from recipes. It’s a fun way to weave. But another year of recipes won’t put your someday project on the loom.

Or you can spend this year learning to chef up your recipes (or design from scratch!), with people to answer your questions along the way.

Teresa wove from recipes for six years. A few months after she joined, she was designing her dream coverlet.

Bring the project you’ve been saving for when you “know enough.” We’d love to help you start it.

For $149, you get a full year: 60+ classes, live help from Tien and Janet every month, the forums and Peer Support, and the Draft Editor and Toolbox. And your first week is free.

Offer ends Saturday, November 21, at midnight Pacific Time.

“I want to weave things that my relatives will say, 50 years from now, ‘Oh! That was Grandma’s work.’ With singers and musicians, you can always tell a person who has put a piece of their soul into their music. It comes out in the music.

The Academy teaches us how to put that piece of our soul into our weaving. To not be like everybody else.“