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
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
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
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
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
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.