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Weaving on a warp weighted loom…. An exploration into what not to do. By Marion le Red
Warp weighted looms were one of the earliest looms documented in history. They were used in Egyptian and Roman weaving and in Latvia they were used until the 1920s. The warp weighted loom was the standard house hold loom in the Baltic Iron Age in the Baltic for most large textiles. Smaller textiles could be made on a tubular loom.
The warp weighted loom allows you to weave from the top of your fabric to the bottom. It allows for different lengths of cloth because the length of cloth is based on the amount of warp, not the size of the frame of the loom. Additionally, the warp weighted loom was easy to assemble and break down.
The basic parts of the loom are: 1) the fabric bar where the header is tied to the loom; 2) 2 uprights that hold the heddle rod(s); and 3) a shed rod that creates the base of the loom. The heddle rod(s) are supported out from the uprights and the fabric bar is supported at the top of the loom. The loom may or may not have an additional bar above the fabric bar for stability. The tension on the warp strings is created by loom weights.
Process overview:
Research and buy materials
Build the loom
Start the fabric header
Build a warping board
Hang the fabric header
Separate the header
Put the weights on
Tie the heddles
Weave
Refine
1. Research and development:
I started this project the summer of 2015 by researching the process of weaving on a warp weighted loom. I decided to take a class at Pennsic before proceeding. I took Fiadnata O Gleann Alainn’s warp weighted loom class where she put us through the process of setting up the loom in two, 2 hours classes. She used table top looms with cotton crochet thread.
My goal was to weave the fabric for the outer dress for my Baltic outfit. So I needed to have a 38” wide X 42” long piece of fabric. My plan was create a light weight wool fabric that was soft and period. I choose to use 2/16 lamb’s wool single ply. This was mistake number one. This is very thin yarn, lighter than lace weight, and is prone to breakage. It is also a sticky yarn and likes to hold on to itself and creating knots.
2. Building the loom:
I came home and decide to scale up from the Pennsic loom. I wanted to make the loom so I could do 4 sheds and make a twill fabric. For this purpose, I used 2x4’s and closet rods and dowels for most of the construction of the loom. Although, there was also some scrap wood used.
We started by laying out the loom using 2 x 4s for the uprights, the shed bar, and a bracer bar at the top. Then we used closet rods for the heddle locations and the fabric bar. I then started working on the heddle braces to hold the heddle rods and the braces to hole the fabric bar.
My husband helped me cut the mordest holes for the heddle braces. Out of the 8 braces, he did 5 and I did 3. It was harder working on the 2 x4s with the chisel than I expected.
Then we laid the frame out again and pinned it together with pegs.
Final pictures from the build of the loom are below. There are a few issues I should have noticed right off but didn’t. The 1st problem is that the loom is about 8 feet tall. However, I am a little under 6 foot tall. So my loom is too tall! I could never reach the heddle bar.
The 2nd thing is the pitch it is leaning at a large angle, too long for my arms to beat the threads back and forward to create the sheds.
I also made the loom weights, please see other documentation.
3. Start the Fabric header
I started the fabric header with all blue and not adding a pattern, so that it was simple card woven header. I decided not to put it on a loom so I could travel with it while I worked on it. I had 14 cards in the fabric header to make it about a ½ inch wide.
The first thing I wrapped the warp around while I was weaving was the bottom of an outdoor table, with 5 passes around the table legs. This made me have to un-tangle the warp after I finished 5 turns of the cards and clean up the warp
.
The pink plastic table was not really period looking so I then thought I would use a camp stool at an event. That caused more tangles and made the process very slow (because of all the untangling).
4. Making the Warping Board:
Finally I got smart and worked with my husband to make a warping board. I patterned this from a dig I saw where there were 2 uprights with holes through it. It was thought to have had pegs which created a warping board that would hold the warp while you wove the header. This completely took away the untangling part of this process.
Now I could finish in an evening, what originally took me an entire Saturday. I also went from doing 5 threads every time I cleaned up and bundled my warp to doing 10 threads each time.
This process still was one of the longer parts of is project. I started in September and finished in January. Although I will admit that Christmas time took a huge chunk of my time away from this project as I made other things that had to be done.
5. Hanging the fabric header on the loom.
Once the loom was assembled where it was going to remain, I started to tie the fabric header on the loom. It was at this point I noticed that loom was taller than I thought, so I moved the header bar until it was at eye level. I started by tying the excess from the card weaving to one side and the belt I used to help tension the card weaving to the other side of the loom.
I then used thread and a needle to whip stich the fabric header to the loom. I tied the beginning thread to the fabric bar as well. This took more thread than I expected as I ended up using about 5 pieces of thread to get it tied. I started only going through the fabric header in one place but then changed to going through it in two places as that held it tighter to the fabric bar. In the future, going through 2 places is what I would recommend since as you weave it puts tension on the piece.
6. Separating the sheds.
Once the fabric bar was hung I started to separate the shed. This process began with undoing the warp and figuring out which part was up and which part was down in the weaving. It should have ended up with every other thread going to one side or the other. This process took much longer than it should have because first I had to get all my earlier knots out and then figure out the top from the bottom. It took me days to separate the shed. Once I separated it I hung it on the fabric bar so that one side was different from the other.
7. Tying on the loom weights.
I figured that each weight would have would have 20 strands on it since I had about 570 threads total or 285 per shed. One shed would have 25 instead of 20 and I tried to put that one in the middle. I then laid out my weights so I had 2 rows of 14 weights, putting the bigger ones on the outside and the smaller/ lighter ones on the inside the line.
To tie on the weights I used a slip knot through the hole so I had to put a loop through the hole in the weight and then flip the weight over. This allowed me to slide the weight so they could move higher or lower as I wove. I did a chain of finger crochet between every 2 strands of each shed so the sheds moved together. This is another place where I made a mistake; I did not pull on the warp enough to straighten it while I was doing this so I ended up crossing some of the threads around.
While tying the weights on I noticed that I would need a shed bar between them, so I rigged one that was attached to the bottom two heddle support (since my shed bar was not close enough because my loom was too tall).
8. Tying Heddles
I used a double clove hitch knot to tie the heddles. Since my shed bar is not solid, it took some doing to keep the back shed from going too far forward and to keep good tension. In the end my tension could have been tighter and I could have tied the whole thing tighter.
As I got started and pulled the shed though with the heddle, I somehow created nasty creases at the top of the fabric, near the fabric bar. However, when I paid attention to the top, I got nasty creasing at the bottom. I finally decided to pay attention to the top and hope I got the best product rather than going back and restarting splitting my shed.
9. The Actual Weaving
This is where you start to see all the little mistakes I made.
Any place there was a crossed thread or a thread on the wrong shed was suddenly very apparent. Another issue that came up was that I did not have a beater so I was using a comb. The comb worked very well for getting the weft to the correct point in the weaving and pushing it up but it did not compact the weaving, so my weaving was loose. The fabric bar also had some inconsistencies which pushed down on my weaving. The ends started to pull in on the salvages so I had to keep trying to keep them loose.
As stated this project is still in progress. I have learned a lot doing this one and want to complete it. I can say that there will definitely be changes in the next one.
Refine
Since I had to remove the fabric and heddle bars to pack for this event we decied to shorten the loom and make the angle sharper. We cut about a foot of the loom and moved the shed bar to inbetween the 3 and 4 heddle rest. I will not see how this works until I am at the event.
The next thing I weave on this loom may be closer to a blanket with thick yarn to help get the process down a little better.
References:
Table-top Loom Plans email from fiadnata@dnaco.net on Aug 15 2015
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