This post is for all of you DIYers that are interested in building a nice, portable, standing weaving loom. This is the same loom I use for darn near everything I weave. It costs less than $50 to make. The pdf file is free to download. You can sell all of the looms you want. DO NOT sell my pattern.
The following pictures are merely for reference while you’re building your loom. Please, if you have any questions, contact me and I’ll do the best I can to help. (And yes, the little folding loom on the floor, to the left of the standing loom, is a tapestry loom that I also made. When time permits, I will do up the instructions for this one as well.)
The above photo of the loom has a rug on the front side of it and I turned it around to start a card weaving (it’s the dog leash I currently walk Princess Vanity with)!!
I wanted very badly to weave a twill fabric for practice because someday I want to weave blankets and maybe a wee bit of tweed cloth for sewing. I had already bought the second heddle kit for my loom, but was sent the wrong heddle and waited too long to send it back. Besides that, I discovered that 7.5dpi and 12.5dpi were very much to my liking.
I didn’t want to spend any kind of extra money, so I started researching what I wanted to do online, after I read “Learning to Weave” by Debbie Redding. This is a very nice and very thorough book. My research led me to Marla Mallet’s website and that’s what got me started doing something I can now truly do.
I’ve written all of this for people who already know how to warp a loom and have done some successful weaving. If you need more weaving practice, please do so before you attempt to experiment with string heddles.
First, go to this web site: http://www.marlamallett.com/loom.htm and scroll down the page for a bit of primitive weaving and loom building education!! It also provides lessons on how to build a picture frame loom; warping your loom; twining; how to make and use a shed stick; how to do weft-faced plain weave; how to make string heddles and construct a heddle bar; and how to make further refinements to your loom with foot pedals to operate your heddle bar(s). I highly recommend printing and/or saving all of the info.
Now that you’ve done some reading, let’s get started!!!
The following photos are of the string heddles I made.
Pound two nails about 5 inches apart (I know the site says 7″, but 5″ will do.), straight across from each other, into a piece of wood that’s at least 8″ long and 4″ wide. I tied 4 different colors because I don’t like using a shed stick.
You’re going to use your heddle as a reed. When you sley it, do not use the little holes in the center as this will make raising your other sheds very difficult. I’ve done that already, so consider yourself warned.
Now your warp is tied on. Slide a shed stick under every 1 of 4 warp threads. Basically you’re lifting the 1st thread onto the stick and skipping three, the lifting the next 1 onto the stick. When you’ve got them on the stick, tip it up sideways and follow the instructions (http://www.marlamallett.com/loom.htm at about the middle of the page) for looping the heddle around the warp thread and onto the harness. The picture below is the first harness (blue string heddles) finished and the number 2 warp threads raised up to have the pink heddles looped around them.
The following picture shows all of the heddles looped and on their respective harnesses.
You’re ready to begin weaving. What you do next is start with a plain weave by raising the blue and red heddles; pass the shuttle through, followed by the pink and yellow heddles; pass the shuttle through. Weave plain weave for about 1/2 inch of weaving.
It will be good if you can find a weaving chart for a 2 by 2 twill with what looks like a woven zigzag effect (I’ll reference one later). Otherwise, begin by raising the heddles for 1&2 (blue&pink), then 2&3 (pink&yellow), then 3&4 (yellow&red), then 1&4 (blue&red), 3&4 (yellow&red), then 2&3 (pink&yellow), then 1&2 (blue&pink) making sure to repeat the following until finished: 1&2, 2&3, 3&4, 1&4, 3&4, 2&3, 1&2, 2&3, 3&4, 1&4, 3&4, 2&3, 1&2, 2&3, 3&4, 1&4, 3&4, 2&3, 1&2 (I made a card of this repeat so I could just move a paperclip along until I got it right in my head.).
Here’s what it looks like so far:
This is what happens when someone tells me I can’t do something, without spending a lot of money, for ‘the right tools for the job’. Practice, practice, practice! Make your own tools! Create your own solutions!! That’s all I can say.
Weaving was originally done with primitive tools, made from whatever was at hand. When the more conventional looms were invented, we slowly dumped the old ways and forgot how to invent. The primitive tools have been around a lot longer than the modern, so I say all you can do is try. If you fail, try again until you get what you’re looking for.
originally posted on the FreakyFiberFanaticBlog: 10/08/2008 03:14 PM. Where’s yours??
I will be republishing old blog posts that were written by me in the last decade. I’ve had a few people requesting info that I covered back then and I figure it’s time to get them out there once again.
The one that I’ll be publishing as soon as I figure out what I’m doing concerns using a simple table loom as a 4-harness loom for weaving more interesting fabrics.
Wait for it. It’ll be there before you know it. (For starters, here is the monster that started it all (aka: blogspot): http://www.shastadaisy3000.blogspot.com/)
There’s a lot of talk and publicizing of card weaving and tablet weaving right now. This is something I’ve been doing for the past 4 or 5 years and I knew it wouldn’t be long before it would be swinging its circle back to being popular again. I’m always amazed at how cyclic the trends are and how everything old and suddenly becomes ‘new’ again.
All that said, I figured I’d just do up another blog post, with all the pictures of nearly all of my card weaving endeavors, including my hand-made cards. I’ve also shared a couple of tutorials I’ve published in the past.
This is the first guitar strap I made for a friend in Milwaukee. It measured 6 feet long by 3 inches wide when it was finished. He requested acrylic yarns only because he didn’t know much about wool yet. I originally started out with playing cards cut into weaving tablets.
This was a 2-sided (exactly the same on both sides) Anglo-Saxon braid card weaving that I did next. It became an adjustable belt. It’s 100% from my hand spun, hand dyed wool yarns! All of it is Suffolk from the Ahrens’ Suffolk sheep!
At this point, I considered buying some weaving tablets/cards because the playing cards pretty much wore out after about 5 weavings. I made another set of playing card tablets and then I started playing around with all of the plastic containers we had around the house. A year after I perfected something I liked, I created this Instructable for them (http://www.instructables.com/id/Card-weaving-how-to-make-your-own-cards-from-rec/). Cat litter jugs and milk jugs work the best!
As you can see, I use a rug loom to do my card weaving. I prefer standing and I prefer weaving top down. The skinny ones became dog leashes and the wide ones became belts or guitar straps. The last one, on the triangle weaving cards was acrylic (another special request).
I also discovered that I love triangle weaving. That patterns that can be created are unfathomable, but that will have to be for another post while I learn more with the triangle cards. Both of these became dog leashes also. The first one is acrylic. The 2nd and 3rd ones are my hand dyed, hand spun wool yarns.
During all the madness, I decided I needed a more portable way to card weave, so I made a back strap loom and designed and built a wooden, portable card weaving loom.
This first one didn’t work out so well because I realized I needed to be able to pass the shuttle back and forth, unimpeded.
This ‘minor’ modification, using a jigsaw, turned out just right (and yes, I still use playing cards to weave with because it seems I end up selling off my recycled plastic ones.
Here is the video of me demonstrating triangle card weaving. I did all of the editing with help from my friend, Azharuddin Khan!
Also, a special thanks goes out to Guntram for creating awesome, free software to design all of those designs you want to create. His software comes with a bazillion preprogrammed patterns, but also allows you to design your own and save them all. The software is called, Guntram’s Card Weaving Thingy!
As always, if this prompts you to want to start card weaving and you’d like some nice, slippery cards that don’t tip over while you’re weaving (unless you want them to), see my etsy listing for them.
