Franken-Inkle Loom

I have a home made inkle loom that I have loved.  Sadly, it was too small.  I couldn't even weave a full yard of band on it!  So, we franken-ized it.  I found a piece of the original board, we cut apart the little loom, inserted the board, made some connection points, and viola!  Now I can weave over two yards of inkle bands!  Yay!

(And the loom looks much better now that I have sanded it....much less "franken")

PS.  After two hours in the shop with my husband as we planned and he milled the slots, etc, we decided that it would have been easier to just buy a new board and dowel and make a new loom.  On the positive side, this little baby works just fine!

Band Weaving Blues

My oldest child needs a new belt.  As a weaver and a spinner I figured that I could make her a cool belt.  Ha!  Some things in life are more challenging than I think they should be!

Thing #1:  Hardware constraints.  The buckle for the belt was ~1 1/4" wide and was salvaged from a belt whose vinyl strap was coming apart.

Thing #2:  Yarn.  I have lots of yarn.  Unfortunately, I do not have lots of yarn in the black & silver color scheme desired by my daughter.  However, I did have some very fine yarn in the right color.  Out came the spinning wheel and I added twist and plied the available yarns so that I could work with something I felt was the right diameter.

Thing #3:  Structure.  Why, oh why did I think I would like double weave pickup on an inkle band?  I have done this before and have not liked it.  It looks so good when it is done well...and so sloppy with my beginning attempts!  (Even my photo of that section of the band didn't turn out well!  Argh!)

After a foot or two of double weave pick up exploration, I shifted to just weaving the band.  The piece was threaded on four shafts on my Mighty Wolf--two shafts of black threads, two shafts of silver.  As I wove, I used one shaft of black and one of silver to make the sheds.

And check out what I discovered:  The section on the left of the photo shows a uniform fabric with black and silver threads showing.  The section on the right shows alternating stripes of silver and then of black.   What happened here?

Different sections of one band.

I know that my tension on the piece varied during weaving and that the band is slightly more narrow in the striped sections (7/8" vs. 1 1/8").  I'll be looking into this.  Leave me a comment if you know what makes the band change!

Weaving Around Christmastime

 It's Christmastime!

This big (oh, dear.  It's true.  A five yard warp can be very big for me!) project finally got cut off the avl!  I switched to a different weft near the end and got a visible pattern: 

The fabric was sewn, cut apart (two blue sections, one yellow-ish), washed and put into use! The invisible pattern in the blue on blue section becomes visible when the sun shines through the window where it is being used as a curtain!

And look what I got to play with!  It's Anne Dixon's Inkle Pattern Directory book.  At the left is my little inkle loom warped in 5/2 cotton and a rayon.  The pattern is one of the early ones in the book.  My goal is to weave a new belt strap.  I'm not sure that this is going to be stiff enough to work, but I'll weave it up and give it a test run.  I'm looking forward to trying the Baltic patterns in the book!

Double Weave Bands

I've been inspired by Laverne Waddington's blog about backstrap weaving. She has some nice tutorials on the blog and a great article on WeaveZine. I wanted to try the double weave technique, but didn't want to figure out a backstrap set-up, so I wound the warp on my inkle loom. It took a few tries, but by the end I had an idea of what I was doing and was enjoying the process!














My inkle/backstrap double weave band lead to the desire for more band work. Out came my pattern book for double weave tablet woven bands by Linda Hendrickson. I started with a 48 card pattern, got lost, and decided to back up a step or two. The squiggles (they look a bit like blades of grass) are the hair from KokoPele's head. The upsidedown triangle thing in the dark green rectangle was the "something more simple" that I created on the fly. I think I'll be making a few more "simple somethings" before I try the charted patterns again. I'm still excited about this. It's taken me months and months to even try these patterns and I'm finally getting there!









And, last but not least, I am making progress on my grey dots fabric. I'm over the halfway point in the warp. I get 4-12" woven each day. I've added a weighted binder clip temple like this paper clip one due to the loss of four warp threads on the left side (I've only lost one on the right). I decided not to repair the broken warp threads since they are in the selvage...and I expect they would just break again if I repaired them. Inch by inch I'm moving along!

Experiments with Brocade

I'm working on odds and ends these days. Quite some time ago I put this dark blue cotton warp on my small loom. It didn't work the way I had hoped, so I let it sit for a while. --Now it's being used for a bit of brocade.

Helene Bress' Inkle Weaving has a few pages on brocade. It's a pick-up technique that is weft dependent. Most inkle weaving pick-up patterns require the color to be threaded in the warp. With brocade it's only the weft that matters--perfect for my solid color warp!

These patterns are my very first ones....I think I'll need to do quite a few more to decide what patterns look good and what works best with this warp.

warp: dark blue, unmercerized cotton (4/2?)
weft: binder-dark blue sewing thread. pattern-3/2 variegated mercerized cotton.

Finishing Details

Check out my new curtain ties! I made these on the inkle loom. They are the same yarns as the curtains -5/2 mercerized cotton- and are roughly twenty threads wide.

WWBBBBBBBBWW Open
WWWWBBWWWW Heddles


I like these so much better than the twisted yarn ties I had made! They are more elegant, more finished...I like my curtains even better now!

New Toys

I'm such a happy camper right now! My husband took my inkle loom plans and turned them into reality! Look at this little guy! The maximum warp is about 40", the minimum somewhere around 20". I think this will work great! (That's my test band on it from last night!)

There's a good you-tube video out that starts with the phrase, "When I first started weaving although I had no room, I got me a second hand loom." Well, I am adding to my collection one loom at a time. This one is cool 'cause it was built for me! (Here' the "Twelve Days of Weaving: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyaE_3k8fN8)


And here's a photo of another project--pj's for the entire family. Whew! I think I finished just in time!