Weaving 🧣🧶
A Weekend of Warps and Wefts
Before this past weekend, I had no idea what a warp or a weft was, nor about a dozen other weaving-related terms. My previous weaving experience only consisted of making potholders on a small square loom I had as a child, so when I saw a weekend weaving class available in my area, I signed up without knowing really anything about what this weaving weekend would consist of except that I would likely be making a scarf. I spent the first full day setting up the loom (a Structo Artcraft Loom) which was a very involved process. I picked a bright pink perle cotton thread to work with without really thinking about how this first material (the warp) was going to be used. Luckily, my class instructor, Ellen Hess, has an enormous amount of patience, especially since several students in our small class were brand new to weaving.
On day 2, the fun part began, and we were able to start weaving. I still really had no idea how this whole thing would work, and this is definitely something I can’t imagine trying to learn without doing. I didn’t want to try anything complicated for my first attempt, so I picked a plain weave and started playing around. It definitely got easier the more the day went on.
I made many mistakes, but as my teacher Ellen said, the process and not the product is what is important at this stage, and I agree 100%. My mistakes are big enough that I wouldn’t give this scarf to anyone else but minor enough that I may still wear the scarf myself.
Overall, I really enjoyed learning to weave on this loom and would do it again, but I would prefer to do a few hours at a time over a few weeks instead of two full days (it was hard work!) There is a lot of equipment involved, so I would also prefer to do this in an art center or other location where the equipment (and great instruction and supervision) is available.
Have you tried weaving on a loom of any kind? I’d love to know.
Try to weave something simple (like a potholder) or something more challenging like constructing a cardboard loom.
Ebru (Turkish Marbling) - related because it also involves patterns
