WEAVING INSTRUCTIONS - PART 1 - wool, tools, set up for sheds & tips

Hi Crafty Patty here. I have been busy publishing weaving tutorials and so far you can watch a video on how to make your frame loom and how to make your own weaving tools just for the go and how to actually add the warp to your frame loom. The next videos I'm going to take you through the weaving process. I had so much to share with you that it could have been an hour and a half video so I've broken the videos into parts. Now you can watch what you want to learn but it is important to watch this video which is part one. I will talk about the wool to use, the tools that you will need, and how to set up your frame to create sheds. There is a lot of info in the first video and it's important that you watch how to set up your loom after you have added the warp threads. Then the weaving process will be so much easier for you and it will be making much more sense. Once you have watched the first video part one then we can get going with the actual weaving. The next videos to come will show you different weaving techniques like the tabby weave or the sumac weave and how to form triangles and much more. Part one will continue to part two and so on and so on and the last video that you will have will have a whole completed beautiful loom that you have completed. I will have all these weaving tutorials in my playlist called weaving instructions so they're easy for you to find. So stay with me and continue watching part one. I'm choosing the whites and greys for my weaving and I've picked up different types of wool and different textures and different feels and different weights and that's what's going to make the weaving look interesting. You can use wool roving and that comes out and makes a really nice effect in the weaving. You'll probably have to split it in half and split it in quarters again but it's a little bit finicky to to use with the weaving. You have to be a little bit more careful with it. So instead of using the wool roving I found this wool called Loops and Threads Biggie and it comes in a weave like this so when you pull that apart you get two pieces like so. That's going to work up really nicely in the weaving so I'll be using a lot of that and then I've just picked up some different types of wool that I liked. This one here has got a little bit of a sheen to it and that's going to look really pretty in the fringe. I liked the texture of this one and again I think that's going to look really fun in the weaving. So just find pieces of wool or scrap what you've got at home or whatever you like and the colors of your choice. Here are some tools that you will be needing to complete your weaving project. You will be needing a piece of wood doweling and this wood doweling is 7 16 in diameter and it'll probably come at 48 inches so you just need to bring it home and cut it down so it fits inside your weaving loom. You will need to have a shed stick and you'll need it with a nice point on the end because this is going to be used to go in and out of your warp threads. You'll also need weaving shuttles and we'll be wrapping the yarn around here and I'll show you later how we do that. If you want to know how to make these wood shed sticks and the weaving shuttles just check out my video on how to make weaving tools. They're really easy to make and it's an enjoyable little project and you've made them yourself so give that a try. You'll need a darning needle with a large hole or a weaving needle. This weaving needle has a nice big hole for the eye and a bend on the end easy to go in and out of your warp threads. This particular one is made from plastic and I got that at my local wool shop. The all-time best weaving tapestry beader is an afro pick or a hair pick. This will work beautifully so give this one a try. It's cheap to buy and it works great and of course scissors to cut your yarn. These are just strips of cardboard that I've cut and we'll be using these to wrap our yarn around so we can make our fringe with the ryanots. Now we're going to show you how to properly wrap your weaving shuttle. Take your yarn and we're going to go one two and three and cut that off and that's going to give you approximately enough wool to do about eight to nine rows of weaving. So you'll take the end of your yarn and just hold it on with your thumb start to wrap in the middle and you want to keep it so it's not overlapping too much because you don't want a lot of bulk inside so you can pass that through your warp threads and now once you've your middle section full you can come and you can start making come over to your edge and make figure eights and then come over to the other side to finish off the piece of yarn with more figure eights. I'll just come back and finish the last part off and that makes it stay nice and flat to go through your warp threads. We'll be leaving two to three inches on the top here without being woven so we can use our strands or threads to tie around our either piece of copper or wood or down whatever you're hanging it to and I've already decided to be 16 inches in width approximately and I'm going to come down I would say about to here and I'm going to be adding rya knots so this is going to add to the length of the hanging. So what I'm going to do is I've actually cut a piece of cardboard that's six inches wide and I'm going to insert that into my warp threads and then all my first rows of weaving will butt up against this one piece of cardboard. This is just a piece of cardboard it could be from a cereal box or whatever scrap cardboard you've got around and if you've watched my previous video I made some of these weaving shed sticks from bosswood so I'm going to use this tool I've made and I'm going to start by going over two and under two. On the bottom end of my loom I have my one strand that ends on a single. All the other nails have got the strands looped around one nail and on this end you'll see that my yarn is coming around each nail so I've already got a set of two on each nail so I'm going to use my shed stick to come in here because it'll make it really easy to to pick up two go under two pick up two go under two so we'll start on this end to put our shed stick in. So we're going to work on the two so push down on two come up on two down on two up on two down and up down and up down and up and continue all the way across. The first thing we did was we brought our shed stick through to raise these pieces of yarn to form a shed so I'm just going to lift that up I'm going to insert my dowel through there and I can bring it back down and now I've got these strands already ready to go so next time I come to put my shed stick through it'll be a lot easier it'll save me a little bit of time. So for those that have watched my previous video on how to place the warp on your loom this is the finished product weaving with your warp threads at about a quarter inch apart is great for fine yarn or thinner yarn this will make a really beautiful finer wahine but if you want to use a thicker yarn and roving then what I would choose to do is only put your yarn around your inside nails. This is the beauty of this loom because then you can make one for fine work you can make one for heavier work you can make it a longer weaving a shorter weaving whatever you choose. So if you wanted to make do your warp again or if you haven't started your warp you could come up you would go to the other end when you come down again you would then wrap around this nail and then don't pick up your outside nails but just wrap around those nails so then you would have your warp threads sitting all at a half inch apart and that will work wonderfully for larger wool and because I've already nicely put the warp on this loom I will make use of it. So what I will be doing is I will be using two strands to go up and down and that will give me my half inch spacing. So to insert my piece of cardboard I'm going to bring down my shed stick I will raise it to form my opening of my shed and then just slide your cardboard in and bring it down to the end and you can lift it up right to butt up against your nails and then you can lower your shed stick and now you have a nice straight edge to work your weaving up to and it'll be nice and straight and you've now got the desired length of your wall hanging. So remember that piece of dowel that we put in is nicely holding these pieces of yarn up for this shed. So now we're going to take out our shed stick and we're going to reverse it because we want our first weaving or first strand of weaving to be reversed from where our cardboard is so it has a nice hold. So I'm going to go this one is up so now this these two first ones will have to be up so we want to go up on these ones and down up and down and catch two threads every time and then down up and down up and down okay so continue that across the whole row. Well that's the end of part one and part two is when we get to start weaving yay and you will learn how to do the plain weave or what they call the So watch part two and there's more to come.