Dressing the loom.

It has been a few days, and I have tried to take photos of the method that I used on this warp. Bear with me as I go through it in detail. Keep in mind that this is not the only/right/best way to do this, just the method that I happened to use on this warp. I often try out new techniques, and mix and match the parts of each that seem appropriate for whatever I am working on.

Now, we left off with the spools of warp yarn being wound.

My house is not large, and I have a pile of kids, so things are….crowded in the house sometimes. The first step in beaming the warp (not surprisingly, this term describes getting the warp onto the warp beam) is to move the living room furniture around.

I promise that my house isn’t always this messy, but it never looks good when you pile thing up to get them out of the way! (hence the unicorn pillow on the chair).

First step is to clear the needed space.

The spool rack is rather large, 72″ tall, and almost 60″ wide when completely opened up. It isn’t pretty, because it is a DIY that I made in order to have the capacity that I wanted, not to mention the fact that building it myself saved me over $200. It lives in the basement, so every time I use it, I need to bring it upstairs.

Here is a “pretty” picture of my new rack!

The spool rack is positioned behind the loom.

I have all my filled spools in a bin next to the rack, ready to go on in order. They are numbered, because I have the short term memory of a gnat and would absolutely mess up the order otherwise.

The spools are filled, and numbered so they stay in the correct order.

I then spend some quality time with the loom and the spools. I put the tension box track on the loom, then put each spool on the loom, and thread each end first through a screw eye, then through the two reeds and multiple bars of the tension box. Once this is done, I attach the tension box to the track, grab  coffee, and am ready to beam.

The track for the tension box is installed.

Each spool is placed on the rack, and the yarn is threaded through the screw eye.

The threads from the spools are all threaded into the tension box in the correct order.

I then progress from one side of the beam to the other (thinking VERY carefully about which end I need to start on, based on how I wound my spools) and fill each section. The warp shown is just over 30 yards in length, and each section takes me 5-7 minutes to wind and secure.

Each section is wound, then secured on the beam.

Once all the sections are complete, and I have secured the threads to a yard stick, I remove the track, put it, and the spool rack away, and replace the furniture.

Furniture (and unicorn) back in place.

I then move the yardstick (and the warp secured to it) to the front of the loom. This keeps everything in order for me, as I rarely have the luxury of threading an entire warp in one sitting.

I then take the warp, and thread by thread (all 816 in this case) put each end through a heddle, hopefully in the correct order. I have a few tricks to keep things in order, but that is for another day.

Threading is complete.

I then put the beater assembly back on the loom (I took it off before i started threading, as it is not comfortable for me to lean over it while I thread), and sley the reed. This means that I take each of those ends that I threaded (remember, 816 of them) and pull them through the slots (dents) of the reed. While I do this, I am also looking for threading errors, of which there are inevitably a few. I fix those as I see them, and hope that I don’t miss any! It is then time to put the front beam on.

The reed is sleyed, and the front beam is replaced on the loom.

See that weird looking beam? It is my frenemy. I LOVE the sandpaper beam on my AVL, it takes the fear out of the phrase “tying on”, but it also tends to rip up my forearms if I am not paying attention.

The last step to dressing the loom is to take all of those ends, again, and place them on that beam. I take care to place them so the yarn runs in a straight line from the back beam through the heddles and reed, to the front beam. Once I have them all in place, I turn into a fusspot, and adjust the tension on the threads, so it is as even as possible. I have been known to work my way across a warp, one thread at a time, and to readjust portions of the warp multiple times.

The threads are straightened, and place on the front beam in order.

Now it looks all pretty (well, it did a few minutes after this photo was taken, and the loose threads were all tightened), and the loom is officially dressed.

Now the fun starts! I wind my pirns, and am ready to weave.

Pirns are wound, ready for weaving.

I usually weave a “header”, often using up some leftover yarn, generally in a colour that strongly contrasts the warp, in order to look for any threading errors. I also use the header to fix any sleying errors that I become aware of while I weave the header.

After all of that (about 2-4 days in my life, but more like 10 hours in “real time”) I am ready to start weaving.

Ooooo……pretty fabric!

I love my job, even though there is a LOT of repetition, I get to make beautiful fabric out of yarn.

An end to the slacking…..

hmm….Somehow 5 months have gone by, without a single post here. How did that happen???

Oh yes, spring showed up and the crazy busy season blended into summer (in which I have crap internet access, and tend to be outside more than inside), and suddenly it is fall, and we are back in the winter house.

How was your summer? I hope it was fantastic, with lots of fun, friends, and laughter to go with good weather.

I did a bit of weaving over July and August, 15 yds of teatowels, 5 yds of baby blankets, about 25 yds of plain weave samples (which was actually a LOT of fun, even though they will remain samples), and a 12 yard warp for the fall “Competition of Weavers” that is held on the Loom to Wrap facebook group.

Well then, I guess that 50 odd yards over two months is not too shabby a summer, especially when you consider that I also did a ton of knitting (mostly while sitting in the shade on our beach with a cold beverage, watching the kids play) and a fair amount of fishing.

I am back at the winter house now, the kids are settling into school and the associated routines and activities, and I have sorted out my weaving area, as well as several other parts of our home that are stripped down for the summer season.

I am happy to be reweaving (this is unusual, as I tend to have too many new and exciting things to try to go back to old drafts/designs, with the exception of a couple of towel projects) the barcode warp. This one is dark and moody, and based on a magical story of a young boy who doesn’t know who he is, but quickly finds out the strength wtihin himself, with a little (OK, a LOT) of help from his friends

I thought you might like to see how and where I work (especially as it is particularly tidy at this moment), so I am going to try and take you through the process with this warp, from start to finish, if I can remember to take the needed photos.

Because this warp is a reweave, I already had the design saved on the computer, along with my winding chart. I changed a few threads to give a little differentiation between this warp and the last one, and got down to work.

There are many ways to warp a loom, and this is just my version (which is by no means perfect, so please don’t take any of this as finite instructions).

In the photo below, you can see my winding station. the drawers hold all manner of useful things, although most are sewing related. On top of that is my AVL double ended bobbin winder, I use this to wind bobbins and pirns for my shuttles, as well as spools for sectional warping. I LOVE this tool, and use it regularly.

On the left of the winder, I have a small folding table that holds yarn spools, as well as completed spools. They are numbered to make sure that I keep the threads in the correct order and I use the winding chart (on the wall to the right) to tell me which yarn to wind on which spool in which order. (PHEW! That is a lot of “which”-es!)

Winding the spools will take me a couple of days, but the beaming is quick fast once it is all set up, which for me is a bonus because it means that I can wind warps that are quite long, without having to move my living room furniture multiple times a day, for several days.

The next step in warping is to set up the spool rack (I have a brand spankin’ new one, that I am super excited to tell you all about) and the tension box, but we will get to that in a few days.

Working on winding spools, which will take me several days.