Learning to Weave - Part 2 - Making the Warp

So after kitty chewed on my warping board I grabbed my yarn and started the sometimes tedious but essential step of creating a warp to put on the loom.

Now there seem to be a few ways of warping a loom; front-to-back, back-to-front, directly off the warping board etc. I just followed what was in the Ashford Weaving book I got. It is important to figure which way you are going to warp your loom as it will impact the way you tie up your warp. The way suggested to me by the book has one cross over section.

A full warp like this = 2 ends

The cross I have heard multiple times is super, super important for keeping the threads in order. So for each colour I had to tie up 52 ends. This was 312 ends....My board couldn't cope with it so I divided the colours into two sections. 

I wasn't concerned about length as I only need about 25cm, but wanted more to practice so I just eyeballed a decent length beyond a meter and just did that. 

Rio colours?

You might notice the white thread on the bottom right? This is my counter thread. Every 10 thread I put a tie in there. As my warp colours were 52 ends it got a bit funny so my second warp I just threw those last 2 in the final pile so I had piles of 10,10,10,10, 12

Hard to tell the difference but there is a dark blue in there as well as purple. 

 Once every end is on then I put a million ties in several areas to make sure nothing went bad! I tied the entire warp at each point on the peg, I also tied the cross areas several times so that the cross was kept separate and easy to find. Then off the loom it comes and put in a simple hand-crochet single chain like thing. This allows it to be stored for later.

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What did I learn at this step? This is where your maths in Part 1 is crucial and planning your colour. As I am doing a simple colour gamp I chose to put the colours in the order they are mentioned on the rainbow.

Another thing I noted was that with 312 ends I will need to thread 312 heddles. In the standard Ashford 60cm 8 Shaft comes with 480 heddles to divide between 8 shafts. Now I didn't set up mine, but one would anticipate 60 heddles per shaft. I will be using 4 shafts to do a basic weave pattern (can be done on 8 but that is insane). So that leaves 240 heddles in my 4 shafts but I need 312...... and need 78 per shaft. So I picked up 3 packs of extra texsolv heddles (100 per pack). So I will add at least 50 more to each of the first 4 shafts and have pack spare.

To do basic weave on a 4 shaft I have to lift 1&3 then 2&4 (if I did it on 8 I would need 1&3&5&7 for one shot and then 2&4&6&8 - too easy confuse). I could do it on just 2 shafts but then I run into even more problems with not enough heddles. As I would be doing way more 4 shaft patterns it makes more sense to fill up the first 4 shafts. I was told this is a common problem, especially when stores set up the looms for people about where to distribute the heddles. I also got told I will never have enough heddles lol.

http://dustbunniesundermyloom.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/comedy-of-errors.html

So now my warp is wound Part 3 will be putting it on the loom without crying....Hopefully my auto ered denter will be in by that time to make this easier :)

Posted in: Weaving 101