My standard advice for managing selvedges is, whenever possible, place selvedges in a slot. This puts less strain on the selvedge threads and allows you more freedom to pick them up with your shuttle. If necessary, you can weight them using an S-hook or similar object. By placing the ends in a slot, you are …
At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post about the four quadrants of a draft. It is valuable to wrap your head around what each quadrant is communicating before you start digging into the details. Most drafts aren’t written for rigid-heddle weavers, they are written for looms that have shafts, and even then …
A few weeks ago, a member of the school’s Patreon community posted this question: “I’m excited about the latest study group. At the same time, I’m learning about shaft looms, and I’m wondering how your brain works, knowing both systems. Do you think about rigid heddle and shaft looms in separate compartments, like the way …
There are two primary ways to warp a rigid-heddle loom—direct and indirect—with lots of variations of each method. Before I embraced rigid-heddle weaving, there was just “warping”. Granted, there were still many variations, but primarily it involved using a board or pegs to wind the warp independently of the loom. In the rigid-heddle world, we …
As you explore more weave structures and dive deeper into sett, you will begin to hear the word “density” a lot. This can relate to how you calculate the sett or how you think about the relationships between structure and your materials. Note: This blog post was updated in August 2023 to clarify the different …
Over the next couple of posts we will look at the threading quadrant in a rigid-heddle environment. One of the challenges of writing a clear-eyed approach to structures for the rigid-heddle loom is that you can arrive at the same structure with many different setups. This is true of many looms, but especially true for …
I’ve been thinking a lot about drafts lately. As many of you know, I am in the process of writing a new guide to the wonderful world of weave structure with the rigid-heddle weaver in mind. It is humbling and overwhelming work and I am eternally grateful to the Yarnworker Patreon community for giving me …
In November, my desktop started giving me trouble. I couldn’t tell if it wasn’t happy with the latest operating system upgrade, or if I was dealing with a corrupt file. My bluetooth was cycling on and off, which made me think it was a hardware issue, but I wanted to rule out software or file issues. …
Swatching may seem to imply that you are striving to make a perfect thing. For me it is about bringing more joy to the process. A chance to stroll through the what-ifs without the worry. Will I like this color combination or that combination? Will this yarn finish the way I hoped it will? Will …
I was reading an online article about the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden Mean, and I was once again reminded what a powerhouse these two systems are for weavers. Before I even knew what they were, I discovered I was using them completely unintentionally. My “clever” stripes turned out to be Fibonacci. My asymmetrical blocks …
