Weave This || Weaving Without a Loom Part 2

In this next part, I have a lot of “learnings” to share with you. Any by that I mean, I made incorrect assumptions about weaving without a loom. But that’s ok, I’ve learned and now have things to share with all of you so that you don’t have to make the same mistakes.

So in part 1, we set up our warp threads for weaving. What I did next was secure my weave to a clipboard. This really helps hold your strings while you work on your weave.

I clipped the top of the strings to the board and then taped the bottom, making sure that all my strings were laid flat in the order that I knotted them. If you don’t have a clipboard handy, then you can tape both the top and bottom of your strings to a sturdy object like a table or thick cardboard.

I had this all set up and then encountered my first problem. Even with the strings taped down at the bottom, there was too much movement for me to weave well. One thing you definitely don’t want is your warp threads moving away from each other while you try to weave. It makes for a messy and un-uniform weave. To fix this problem, I ended up tying double half hitch knots across where I wanted the bottom of my weave. This helped secure my warp threads so that they didn’t move around and spread apart.

My second issue came up next. I have never woven where my warp threads are thicker then my weft threads. In hindsight it makes sense, but when I tried to do a plain weave across the warp strings, they ended up staying in the foreground instead of laying behind the weft threads. This could be a great design idea, but it wasn’t what I was looking to make in this weave.

It was especially funny to find that I couldn’t even push the weft threads together and make them more prominent over the warp strings. The strings were just too bulky. So my solution was to weave using the soumak stitch. This worked really well, because instead of fighting the warp thread’s bulk, the soumak weave just wraps around it and allows the weft threads to be prominent.

Using the soumak weave, I was able to make organic shapes with my weft threads and weave up a cute little weave. I started with some rows of the neutral pencil roving across the top. Then added some rows of colored yarn, where I wove one way then turned back the other and continued changing direction until I had a design I liked. I then filled in the rest of the space with my neutral pencil roving.

It’s not done yet, I’m going to continue adding to the design so stay tuned for the next post.

This is why I love trying new techniques. You can learn a lot by trying out a new idea and use what you learned to add to the techniques that you love and use often. Is there a technique that you tried out recently? Did you run into any unexpected issues? I’d love to hear about it.

Happy Weaving!

Kate

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