A taste of hand weaving part 5

Time to make the warp for (and on) the loom!

My first weaving teacher, Mrs Bannister of South Landing Craft Centre at that time located in an old hotel on the banks of the Niagara river in Queenston, Ontario, started us young ones out just weaving. Weaving in pattern on a counter balance loom. We made runners for the dresser, I remember following a pattern she called sumac. Then a pattern creating a line of little people, in various dress, made with rug wool in a variation of rosepath. called boundweave. I was enchanted. My hope is that this taste of hand weaving imparts a little of that enchantment to you. My granddaughters sure enjoyed it.

Mrs. Bannister's iron rule for making a warp is:

• make the warp 
• all in the one day (or hour)
• in the same mood 
• by only one person 

I found through not following the rule once, she was absolutely right. Your hand holds the yarn at a different tension depending on your emotional state, happy or sad, and can cause a slight but troublesome difference in both the weaving 

and the finished product.

Using 2 colours of cotton yarn, light and dark, blue and purple for example, makes understanding the structure of simple weaving easier.

Tie the two colours together with a simple overhand knot and pull them into the top slot of the loom, lump on the back side of the card.

Put each ball of yarn in a box or bowl, allowing the yarn,

 as much as possible to flow freely. 

If you sew by machine you will know how important it is for the sewing thread to flow, the same principle applies here.

Holding the warp threads, keeping one colour to the left and one to the right, continue wrapping, as evenly spaced as possible, with a firm and friendly hand around the loom, until you have 12 to 15 vertical lines of yarn on the loom.

On the last wrap, with the right side of the loom facing, pull the yarn into the bottom slot. Clip the yarn about 2 inches long and tie close to the slit on the back side of the card with a square knot.

If the wraps look too unevenly spaced, skootch the warp threads along the top and bottom so they more to your liking, but no need to fuss too much. As you weave there will be a bit of shifting plus the fabric you are creating 

and the lease sticks will add stability to the warp.

The edges of the mat board are toothy enough to hold the warp in place without making snips in the card all along the top 

as we tried in the former version of the sample loom.

Using one of the 7 inch skewer sticks, weave over one thread and

 under the next all across the warp.

Using the other stick weave under one thread and over the next. 

Push the pair of sticks to the top of the loom. 

The lease sticks that help keep the warp in order. Feel free to slide them down to the last woven row (fell) if you want to check your weaving.

now we are ready to weave, on to part 6!