How tight should my tapestry warp be?
I wrote the first blog post of this title in August of 2023. Two years later, things haven’t changed a whole lot, but I wanted to bring this blog post back up because I still get this question from students a lot: How tight should my tapestry warp be?
It is very hard to gauge how tight a warp is in a video and it is an easy thing for teachers to forget to tell students! I’ve gone to teach beginning tapestry classes in person and been astounded at how loose some of the warps are just because the weavers are new and don’t understand how much easier it can be to weave tapestry on a tighter warp.
If you aren’t able to go take a class in person with a tapestry instructor and feel the warp tightness for yourself, this post and video should help you find the right tightness.
I want to add one thought to the video. I talk about not using the wrenches that Mirrix sends with their looms any more. While it is true that I rarely use them, they are still needed for wider warps. Since I weave my large format tapestries on big floor looms, I’m not generally doing anything on a Mirrix wider than about 8 inches. Narrower warps can be tightened by hand on these looms. When weaving something wider than this, I do use the wrench as my hands aren’t strong enough to get enough tension in that case.
The video below reviews various kinds of looms and how they hold tension. There is some good information there about various kinds of looms you can use for tapestry weaving. When I was talking about jack looms not being good for tapestry I failed to mention that Macomber looms are an exception. Their heavy hardware and the way the jacks interact with the warp allows a very high tension while still getting a nice shed.
Warp tension and avoiding bloody fingers
When I got my first Mirrix loom I was thrilled with how tight I could make the tension. The looms come with a little wrench that you can use to tighten the wing nuts beyond what you can do with just your hands. I use a cotton seine twine warp which is very strong and can take a huge amount of tension. So I’d tighten that Mirrix warp very very tight. It was far tighter than I can get the tension on my beefy rug loom.
A Mirrix loom with one of the tapestry examples from my book, The Art of Tapestry Weaving in progress.
I loved how stable those warps felt at that high tension but I did not love how my fingers started bleeding around the cuticles from putting my fingers through the warp. I soon learned to back off the tension. My skin is happier and the weaving is still delightful.
Other looms have varying abilities to achieve a moderately high tension. Warping a frame or peg loom that doesn’t have tensioning will almost always result in a lower tension. You can improve your results by using a cotton seine twine warp. This warp is gives just a little bit so you can put it on tightly and it’ll give you a nice tension especially on smaller sized looms.
The problem with non-tensioned looms in this case is that when the warp gets looser due to humidity changes, you don’t have a lot of options to tighten it up. You can weave in some little sticks at the top of the loom to tighten the warp a bit but this makes your loom length even shorter. And if as you weave it gets tighter because your loom is quite short, there really is no way to make it looser and you’ll just have to struggle with a tighter warp.
How tight is just right?
A firm tension is important. It makes the weaving easier as the warps are more likely to stay put with the weft changes you’re making. But there is definitely such a thing as warp tension that is too tight. I don’t play the harp, but I’d say that if your warp sounds like a harp when you pluck it, you have too much tension on it!
The good news is that you can play with the warp tension. If you have a loom with adjustable tensioning, try loosening it a bit and see how it weaves for you. You won’t hurt the tapestry by very slight changes in tension but you will find the sweet spot for you by doing some playing with warp tension. I give you tips for doing this in the video just below.
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This video discusses how tight your tapestry warp should be and how different looms and materials influence this!
Need a copy of my book? You can find it HERE or anywhere books are sold. If you want a signed copy, you can get that in the shop right here on my website.
Do you like a tight warp tension? I mention tapestry weavers who love a floppy tension in the video. For some people, that is the right answer. Where do you fall on the floppy to tight continuum? Let us know in the comments.
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