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 ...

First Attempts at Weaving

I'm weaving!

I finished warping my little table loom last night. After attending the open workshop at Yarns by Design, the book Learning to Weave by Deborah Chandler makes a lot more sense.

I figured out how to attach the warp to the front roller, adjusted the tension. Loaded the stick shuttle with yarn, tested the heddle harnesses--and I was weaving! It IS fun--and it seems to go pretty fast. I was able to do about a yard in not very much time. It took longer to warp it, than it did to do the weaving.

I used a medium acrylic yarn above. It has a nice soft feel to it. I filled up the stick shuttle 3 times. A boat shuttle would probably be too thick to use on this little loom. The shed wouldn't open wide enough to use a boat shuttle easily, so it's a good thing I bought the stick shuttle.


The last round of yarn is the red wool above. This is the first batch of yarn I ever spun myself in a spinning class about 10 years ago. It was a nice cream-colored roving. The teacher taught us how to dye it with Kool-Aid back then. It was pretty rough and ugly stuff, I thought. I never would have kept it--I'm a much better spinner now. However, it's a nice record of how far I've come with these crafts. My husband had the foresight to save that red ball of yarn all these years--for just such an occasion as now--my first attempt at weaving.

At this point, I'm out of warp. At the workshop the other night, the teacher only had me put on about 1-1/2 yards of warp--just enough to learn the process. Next time, I'll put on 5-6 yards so I can do a few more things with it. Now I'll have to make sure I can attend the next open workshop so she can show me how to fix the problems (uneven tension in the warp strings, uneven edges ...) and how to remove the newly minted fabric from the loom.

I think the next warp might be black or dark purple. I want to see what a dark warp does for the weave ... So many possibilities! I may have to move up to a larger sized loom someday. I think it's safe to say--I'm hooked!

Warp Speed!

Good News! The little table loom I acquired (a friend found it on a trash heap) is in good working order. With a few minor repairs here and there and replacing all the tired and dusty warp and heddle and other strings, I've got myself a decent starter loom!

I took a lesson at Yarns by Design in Neenah last night. This summer they are offering several drop-in sessions for weavers. Last night there were two students--both of us absolute beginners. The teacher, Cheryl Stegert, was very knowledgeable and I got answers to my initial questions :

1) Is this loom usable? Yes.
Are there parts missing? No.
Does it need any repairs? Just minor repairs.
2) How to get started?
I was kind of hoping not to have to do the warping, that I'd be able to use the tired strings still on it. But no--like a good teacher, she had me start at the beginning with the warping board--and we cut off the old warp and turned them into "thrums" (pieces of string too short to save--actually, they are useful for all sorts of things!)

AND the little loom didn't break apart when we put tension on the warping strings!

Eventually, I'll have to replace the string heddles and she explained how to make a jig to make uniform heddles. But I'll be able to do a small project once I get the warps re-strung. ;-)

Here's a close-up of the heddles that will eventually need to be replaced. Here you can see I'm in the process of warping the loom. After the warp strings run through the heddles, I then run them through the reed (not shown) before tieing them off on the bar in front of the loom.

There's a lot of work to do before I can even get to the "meditation" and rhythm of weaving.

The other thing I wanted to know : Will this shuttle work (the one at the top of the picture below)?



CL's grandfather in France lived in a town with several wollen mills. He had the job of setting the patterns on the industrial looms. He had several of these old shuttles in the back shed. For my purposes on this little loom, however, this shuttle would be overkill. I'd need some special tool just to wind the bobbin. And see all those little holes--where is the yarn supposed to come out? I guess this goes back to being an interesting and antique knick-knack.

So I bought this little stick shuttle (middle item in photo) instead. Maybe later, I'll get a nice boat shuttle with the rebate from W ... I also bought the little hook for threading the warp through the heddles and reed : an essential tool!

I have some homework to do before the next session! I'm almost weaving!