Melitastitches4fun's Blog

Learn to Weave Class

Daryl Lancaster, her daughter, and the Jockey Hollow Weavers Guild sponsored a Learn to Weave class Saturday in Mendham, NJ. Thanks to Dee L who kept me posted about this beginner class and to her and other guild members who floated around helping the students throughout the day.

There were 15 students and we were each working on a 4 huddle shaft loom. Daryl has collected 30 of them! Learning terms started at 9:30 am and several set up steps took us into the afternoon with a lunch break.

We passed the yarn through the Reed one at a time. That’s 90 strands!

You turn the machine around. . .

Then, you feed each strand though the eye on a Heddle, a metal wire that reaches top to bottom on each of the 4 shafts/ harness/ frames. This holds the warp threads. Each shaft (1-4) moves up and down using levers which shift the threads allowing the weft/horizontal threads to interlace with the warp threads in different patterns.

The ends got tied to the front and back beams to create tension – this is when I forget to get photos until I was done! It was around 2:30 pm with 2 hours left, when we got to the fun part and started weaving!

We wove (from top to bottom): Plain weave (1+3 2+4), 2/2 Twill (1+2 2+3 3+4 4+1), 2/2 Reversed Twill (4+1 3+4 2+3 1+2), Lightening Twill (1+2 2+3 3+4 4+1 3+4 2+3 1+2 4+1), 1/3 Twill (1 2 3 4), 3/1 Twill (2+3+4 3+4+1 4+1+2 1+2+3), Rib Weave (Color A: 1 Color B: 2+3+4), Basketweave (1+2 two times 3+4 two times), Color and Weave (same color as your warp Color A: 1+3 2+4 Color B: 1+3 2+4).

As you can see, it is a very mathematically inclined craft which is appealing to me and I would try another class but I don’t see buying a loom in my future. The teacher’s work is incredibly beautiful. Check Daryl’s work out at weaversew (.com, /wordblog, and on YouTube).

The set up involved 3 warp patterns shown in vertical columns and we created 8 weft patterns resulting in the final sample:

My neighbor, Alisa, made much more even width of the various patterns and had better tension throughout and gave me permission to post hers (her last two patterns are in reversed order from mine).

Fray check can be applied to the top and bottom ends or tassels tied off as desired.

I can’t thank Sue C enough for dinners and letting me arrive Friday night and stay over Saturday night. That was a long class day sitting in an unnatural position to work (chairs should adjust to height of the loom). My back felt it and I was too tired to drive 1 hour 45 minutes home. We enjoyed chatting, mysteries and stitching both evenings!

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