Meet My Heddle Jig

What's a heddle, you ask? And why does it need a jig? Is it going to dance?

I needed to make a new set of heddles for my little table loom. The ones I had were probably original to my loom, probably older than me, and in serious need of updating.


Here are the new heddles installed on the 2 harnesses of my loom. The warp strings will eventually run through the center loop and can then be pulled up or down via the harnesses, and thereby "program" the weave pattern on the resulting cloth.


Here's a single heddle on the jig [top view]. Oh yeah, my sweetie made this jig for me out of scrap cherry wood. ;-)

The heddle jig allows me to tie new heddles and get the square knots in uniform places--so that all the heddles are more-or-less the same. 120 heddles with 3 square knots each equals 360 knots (not counting the accidental granny knots I had to re-do).

The hardest part has been remembering how to make the square knots. They seemed much easier back in my 4-H macrame project days in grade school. Enter the surgical knot tying guide from the 1960s:



Yeah--I know I could have just googled square knots, but isn't a source like this just as interesting? And it was at hand ...