When I left off last week, I had just finished sleying the reed on the loom. This week we’ll pick up at the next step, threading the heddles.

I now move around to the back part of the loom. My loom has bars that allow me to take out a couple of screws and I can drop the back beam to the floor. I can then sit basically “in” the loom and very close to the heddles so that its not uncomfortable.

This is my view from my seat at the back of the loom. For this project, since it’s plain weave, you thread one thread through each heddle starting with the first shaft, then the second, third and fourth. Then you start back over at one. (I hope that makes sense)

The heddle hook is used to help pull the yarn through each heddle eye. 

Once I thread 12 heddles I knot that bunch behind the heddles to keep them from pulling out and move on to the next bunch. I always start threading from the center and do one on each side until its all done.

When the threading is done, it’s time to start beaming the warp. Starting in the middle of the warp, I take a knotted bundle and tie it on to the apron rod.

When all the ends are tied on, its time to start cranking. I untie all the warp chains at the front and spread out the warp as best I can, and pull the beater bar forward. I then turn the crank on the back beam until the beater bar falls back.

This is where you need help the most. Since the yarns will stick together if there’s nothing between them, someone needs to insert paper, or sticks or something in the warp as it’s wound on the back beam. I have sheets of brown wrapping paper.(I’m sorry I didn’t get any photos of this as it took the both of us to do it.)

I keep cranking and adjusting the warp until its all wound onto the back and the knots from the front end of the warp are at the beater bar. Then I tie onto the front apron rod.

When its all tied on in the front…the Loom is WARPED!

Next time we’ll talk a bit about weaving and show how important it is to check the threading of your heddles for mistakes (I’m calling it a design element thankyouverymuch!)

(No ..that’s not a typo. Read further to find out why) This post is probably going to be pretty photo intensive (You’ll need to click them all to enlarge them to get the full effect).

For the second installment of Warped Wednesdays we’re going to talk about sleying the reed. Sleying the reed is when you thread each of the ends of yarn you warped on the warping board, through the reed. The reed is the metal peice inserted in the beater bar of the loom. It has spaces set certain distances apart. The reed that I am using for this project is called a 12 dent reed. That is because the spaces are set at 12 ends per inch (epi).

But first….here’s what you need to get started warping the loom.

(click to embiggen and read the caption)

Remember I showed you my yarn on the warping board? Well, the next step is to take it off the loom and make warp chains.  This are my warp chains wrapped around the cloth beam and ready to be sleyed.

The next thing to do is to get one of the chains and start in the middle of the loom and start sleying the reed. When you wind the warp on the warping board you create what is called a cross. This is to help in sleying the reed and keeping the yarn neat and tidy. This photo shows the cross pretty well. 

At this point, I’ve not cut the ends of the yarn yet. To me, this is the scariest part of warping a loom.

Next up, after cutting the loop end of the warp chain is to begin sleying. I reach over my beater bar and pull the yarn through from the back with my sley hook.

You use the cross and take the first thread from the stack and pull it through the reed.

(yeah…we had fun with the macro setting on the camera!)

Anywho, this is repeated the width of the project (in this case the full width of the reed). I knot the back of mine so that they don’t pull back out of the reed before I’m ready to thread the heddles. Well.. in this case I had a helper.

She helped me speed this up by knotting after I had done a bit so that I could keep on going.

Here is a shot of the loom with the reed sleyed.

I think since this is so photo heavy, I’ll just stop here for this week and next week I’ll tell you about threading the heddles and finishing up the warp.  I hope you’re enjoying this new feature on my blog. I’m a fairly new weaver and writing this all out helps with my learning process as well as informing non-weavers of a really fun craft! (come on…you know you wanna. I can help you get started!)

See you next time!

First the last thing I took off the loom. I had warped the loom with some 3/2 cotton. I don’t remember now what the sett was (120 I think?) I just wove on this trying to get good selvages and to get my weaving more even. I ended up cutting these into roughly squares and hemming them. They’ll either be washcloths or kitchen cloths. One of them is larger than the others, because I couldn’t cut it in half or it would have been too small.

I was using the gold for the warp (except on the edges) and the teal for the weft, until I ran out of the teal and i finished up the last bit with the rest of the gold as the weft. Here’s a couple of closeups.

They really softened up when I washed them. I’m fairly proud of my selvages also. By the end of this I was getting them fairly even and straight. I am definitely a beginner and have a long way to go, but I’m learning a lot about the technical aspects of how weaving comes together and I find it fascinating. It is also hard for me since I learned Inkle and Tablet weaving first, because they are warped faced weavings and you do your weft and selvages a bit differently. I have to unlearn that for using the big loom, but still remember it for when I go back to the small looms.

Now..onto the current project. I had it in mind to actually weave some yardage to sew something from. I want to make a woven 14th Century Hood with Liripipe. My lovely friend Kae had sent me some yarn a while back that I think is going to be just perfect.

This is my warp yarn. It’s a 6/2 wool. It’s marked Donnegal Tweed. Yes..that’s a HUGE cone of yarn.

This is my weft yarn. Yep..same yarn different color.

My loom is a 36″ 4 harness 4 treadle loom. I am warping the full width of the loom and using my 12 dent reed. 12X36 = 432 + 4 extra for doubled selvages = 436 ends. I figured I needed 4 yards or so to make the hood and figuring in loom waste, I’d need to warp a 5 yard length.

This is how I wind the warp for the loom. This is a 14 yard warping board that the manperson built me. You can see that I have my 5ish yard warp started on this. I start at the bottom peg and go up..make the cross and then come back down. Repeat 436 times. I am actually doing my warp chains in 100 end bundles because that’s about all my pegs will hold before it wants to sneak off the edges. I have completed 336 and only have 100 more to go. Hopefully in the next day or two. I hope to start warping the loom on Saturday. I’ll try to get photos as I’m warping and share the process with you.

I want to try to post more often and I’m trying to give myself categories on certain days for ideas to post. I’m declaring Wednesdays to be “Warped Wednesdays” on my blog. I hope to share my weaving, and quite possibly other things I fin about weaving. Since I’m not very fast (yet) I don’t think you’d want me to talk about the same project week after week, but I think I can find some old thing’s I’ve not talked about and find other things of interest about weaving.