Looms

The satisfaction of making your own simple weaving equipment

The satisfaction of making your own simple weaving equipment

I come from a family of makers, so the idea of making my own loom is not totally foreign to me. However, my stash of woodshop tools is pretty limited. I have a mitre box and saw for making tapestry hanging bars, a few small wrenches and screwdrivers, and a motley collection of screws and wire.* Oh, and not long ago I added a big pipe wrench. If your guess is that I bought it to make pipe looms, you'd be wrong. It had something to do with a dye stove and a propane tank... I do occasionally use it to tighten or loosen the galvanized threaded pipe on my small loom and one day I'll make a large pipe loom and use it to tighten large nuts.

Fringeless and other four selvedge adventures

Fringeless and other four selvedge adventures

Making the Fringeless four selvedge warping class has been an adventure. A new online class always is. I totally love curriculum development. I like editing videos especially if I pick up some new skills for each class. And then the best part is when the class goes live and I see people's reactions to it. This class was extra special for me because I got to work with Sarah Swett who is always inspiring and a fantastic teacher. Also, the fact that she regularly makes me laugh is a big plus.

Sett: Looms and tools

Sett: Looms and tools

How does sett happen on various looms and what does this have to do with the equipment I choose? This post continues a series of articles about sett and tapestry weaving. The complete list is at the bottom of this post.

Low-warp floor looms and sett

I don't talk about weaving tapestry on floor looms nearly enough. When you're just starting out, finding space for a large loom may not be in the cards. But once you've decided this thing is for you, a floor loom can be a fantastic friend for your work.

My very first loom: Union Loom

My very first loom: Union Loom

The very first loom I ever owned was a piece of junk. Literally. Judge for yourself.

This loom was found in a my partner's family barn in New England where I suspect it had been for about 100 years. I can hardly believe Uncle Les paid shipping to send this to Nevada, but there it was. It was missing a lot of parts but it was clear it used to be a two-harness counterbalance loom.

Continuous warping for tapestry: the Mirrix example

Continuous warping for tapestry: the Mirrix example

I've been teaching people to warp a Mirrix and other pipe-like looms with a continuous warp for years now. There are people who immediately understand how it works and don't have a problem with the pattern the warp must follow as you warp. There are other people who struggle with this a lot.

I believe this stems from a particular spatial ability some of us have and some of us don't. (Don't worry, if this isn't your skill, you can still learn to warp a loom. You undoubtedly have many skills the rest of us don't.) I have particularly good spatial abilities. In fact I'd say that my memory is very spatially oriented. I am especially good at remembering places and paths. I hiked the 500-mile Colorado Trail from Denver to Durango in 2003 and can still tell you details about all parts of the trail just by positioning myself there in my memory. When I have re-hiked hundreds of miles of the trail recently, I realized my memory from 2003 was quite accurate. But I most likely can't tell you the plot of a movie or TV show I watched last week and I'll never be able to tell you the name of the actors. I remember books that put me someplace in my imagination and I won't remember much about a book that doesn't--even if I really enjoyed reading it... unless I hold the book in my hands again and can somehow dredge up the sensory experience of the place I was while reading it or can flip through it as an object and see comments I wrote in it.

When it comes to warping, I think this ability to imagine things in space is very helpful. But there are many people who don't have this sort of brain.

The Christmas Loom

The Christmas Loom

I made a new holiday video this year of the Christmas Loom being decorated. There was a little problem when we moved into this house that involved two spatially incompetent and rather scrawny college movers, my very heavy 40 inch Macomber, and a set of stairs to the studio that turn on a small landing. The loom now lives in the living room and is a pretty good stand-in for a Christmas Tree.