I bring my warp over to the loom, as instructed.

It looks to me like this loom would be easier to thread front to back, because it’s easier to identify where the center is, and the reed doesn’t move around everywhere like the heddles do. But what do I know? Nothing. Literally nothing. I’m just going on vibes.

You Can Weave has no advice for threading it front to back, (which is backwards, maybe?) and my loom has different bits than most modern looms that show up in how-tos, so I have to wing it a bit, with the help from another YouTube tutorial.

The process involves first passing some 200-odd threads through each tooth of the reed, starting from the centre, and moving outward.

Then, I need to pass every thread through the heddles. Each heddle is a a strand of twisted wire with a hole halfway up. The heddles are mounted on one of the four cards, on a pair of metal runners, that lets them slide around, left and right. The cards are responsible for moving the warp up and down. and the heddles hold them in place.

For my basic plain weave, I need to thread it in a repeating 1-2-3-4 pattern (1 thread per card, over and over again), otherwise I’ll end up with a different weave pattern than I was planning.

When that’s done, I tie everything onto the back rod and gently wind the back, so I don’t have too much excess yarn in front, but also don’t risk pulling any of the yarn through the heddles. (Spoiler: I do, in fact, pull some of the yarn through some of the heddles.)

Then I tie my warp threads to the rod in front, after quite a lot of puzzling over which way the crank is meant to turn. And Penelope stops by to make sure I’m doing it right / plan how to turn the dressed loom into a cat toy.

With everything nicely tied off, I examine the reed and, after a lot of squinting, notice I’ve missed a few slots. I curse my decision to use dishwater grey thread. Some of the heddles are a bit warped or sticky (sticky as in the metal is rough, so there’s friction, not like covered-in-honey sticky), and I’ve also botched the 1-2-3-4 pattern in places. Counting to four is harder than you might expect.

A few days later, once my frustration and fury subside, I take it all apart and put it back together again, in the right order, with nothing missing. It’s pleasingly orderly. You Can Weave kindly asks me to insert 1″ cardboard strips at the head of my warp. This will preserve some thread to use as tassels.

I test the tension of my threads by pressing gently on it with a finger crossing several threads at once. It all needs to have equal tension, or the result will be messy. I retie my knots to improve tension as necessary. Then I notice that one side of the warp threads are harder to keep tensioned than the other, which I assume means my Frankenloom is not level (are you surprised? I am shocked. LOLOLOL.) I give up trying to compensate for it with knots, and just jam a pile of cardboard strips between the warp and the backbeam. That seems to take care of it.

We’re not done yet! We still need to get thread onto a bobbin, to put into the shuttle, so we can weave our weft thread back and forth. I notice that you can spend a lot of money on a bobbin winder if you want to. It should come as a surprise to no one, that I don’t. I’m also not interested in winding anything by hand, ever. Luckily, I try popping the bobbin on the end of a drill bit and it fits perfectly. DeWalt to the rescue.

And that’s it! We’re ready to go!

About a week and a half has passed from the time I make my warp, to when the loom is dressed and ready to begin weaving. But Frankie Loom and I are sticking with this. We’re going to get it done.

Just not right now, ’cause I’m exhausted.

The post Getting Dressed appeared first on Jill Murray.

As I mentioned in my introductory post, You Can Weave has no advice on choosing a loom. It just says, quite suddenly on page 24, “Carry the warp to the loom carefully.”

Step 1: I need a loom.

There are many different types of looms. The one pictured in the book is a table loom. Table looms have the advantage of functioning like a big floor loom, but they take up less space, and are less expensive. They have multiple shafts for raising and lowering the yarns, which allows for weaving different patterns. Because they’re smaller, the fabric they produce is not as wide as the product of a floor loom.

When I say a table loom is less expensive, I don’t mean it’s not expensive. A brand new, 16-inch wide, 4-shaft table loom will run you somewhere between $700 and $1200 CAD with tax. At this price, you can count on a nice wooden device with well-functioning modern mechanics. At that width, you’ll be all set to weave things like scarves, kitchen towels, and placemats.

$700 is a hefty price for my current mood of “can I weave tho?” I balk.

Time to look at secondhand listings– which I prefer anyway. Why bring more new Stuff into the world when good old things are right there?

A perusal of the local offerings reveal that if you can find one, a secondhand table loom of mysterious quality and origin might run you about $400 CAD. It might be wider or narrower, have two or four or eight cards, be missing bits or not, and be of almost any age. They seem to sell fast, but if you can find one that suits you, you will be paying around $400 for whatever it is.

I’m feeling the urgency of this project, and don’t really understand much about looms yet, so I’m not terribly picky. After messaging a few people and striking out a couple of times, I manage to secure a 24″ loom with no brand name, that the seller assures me was ancient and falling apart, so she remounted most of it on a heavy plywood frame. She’s selling it because she doesn’t have room to keep it. Newer table looms fold away for storage. This one is permanently the size and shape that it is.

I have the benefit of:

• not relying on on modern instructions and expectations, but on the hand-drawn 1970s loom of You Can Weave
• Like most people in my family, believing without evidence that I can alter or fix anything

The Frankenloom I’m looking at is similar enough to the drawings. I decide it will be Fine.

I happen to be borrowing my mom’s car for the holidays, so I take advantage, to drive up to Ahuntsic, to a community bike repair clinic where, among the bike parts and tools, in a workshop only faintly smelling of metal, grease, and rubber, I meet the seller, Quaterine, and her grandmother’s loom. She points out many things about it– how it works, what it’s missing, how I could improve it, that it needs an oiling from time to time to keep the extremely old, dry wood cooperative. I understand almost nothing of what she tells me, as I do not yet Can Weave.

Truth be known, I’m a hands-on learner, so I usually need to do a thing to really understand it. There are many pertinent questions I should probably ask, but since i haven’t done the thing yet, I don’t know how to. Quaterine tells me the 24-inch loom is cool because you can juuust get wide enough fabric out of it to make a t-shirt, skirt, or some dresses. I’m excited, and convinced enough that she has really worked with this thing, and that I will, somehow, be able to Can Weave on it, as well.

I trade her the story of my own grandmother’s weaving, and promise to send her photos from the book. She decides to let me have the loom for an even $300, and helps me carry it down the snowy half block to the car. As we walk we laugh about how as cyclists, neither of us is in the habit of thinking about parking. It’s a miracle I found a good spot in the snow. This whole morning feels like a miracle. I’m having a great time.

I get the loom home and lug it upstairs and into my office.

Cool. Now what? I have no idea how this thing works. The instructions in You Can Weave do not exactly match the construction of this loom. Some things are different, some things are missing, and I’m not knowledgeable enough yet to tell the difference. I don’t even know what kind of yarn I need, or where to get it.

I accept that I’ll probably need to deviate from the plan of just relying on the book, and bust out all the tutorials and videos The Internet has to offer. I begin to search. I wonder what Bessie would have thought of The Internet? As the president of the weaver’s guild, she probably would have used it to connect with weavers around Nova Scotia. If she was managing a weaving shop today, she would have needed a social media strategy. I imagine an Instagram feed where my toddler father shows up every few posts, cranking the handle of the loom, yards of Nova Scotia tartan spilling into Stories and Reels and videos, the influencer weirdness of today melding with the so-what-child-labour weirdness of yesteryear.

The loom, looms back at me. I have my work cut out.

You Can Weave – archives

• April 2025 (2)
• January 2025 (3)

The post You Can Weave: It Looms appeared first on Jill Murray.