backstrap loom weaving | Finch's Creative Endeavors

Handspun 🙂 mostly wool, with the occasional silk/wool blend. I find handspinning, whether at the wheel or on the spindle, very meditative and calming. There’s a rhythm, and a sense of creation and accomplishment. It is a wonderful thing to keep my restless hands busy with.

Frosting decorations on cookies! Having a single line of design and multiple repeats was EXACTLY THE SAME as quilting 🙂

Strap for my choir binder so my hand doesn’t have to do so much work to hold it open. Backstrap loom, handspun wool blend

I put together an embroidery kit for a friend, it was so fun to plan an entire project and *not* have to do it 🙂

Embroidered gay and trans pride bolo tie pendant 🙂 I made this for an event at the Capitol

I do visible mending on my clothes, so I decided to do an embroidered/woven patch inspired by my work in twill 🙂

My first ever project on my loom was a twill sampler, which is now a bag strap

Ah, weaving. One of the last textile arts on my learn list. 🙂 Weaving is all about patterns. And I like playing with the color blending with different patterns, and it also satisfies my mathematical side in a similar way to quilting. It’s a grid, but it’s a soft, colorful, fun grid. 🙂

I started small – backstrap rigid heddle and a hexagon loom. I saw this video about band weaving and just couldn’t get it out of my head. So I made some shoelaces and a little strap for my music binder to help me hold it open.

And then I broke my watch strap and I was like… wait, I could weave myself a new one.

And of course, made my own little frame tapestry loom so I could start doing larger things and testing this whole thing out (to see if I wanted to invest in an upgrade).

I ended up taking a weaving class to see what a different loom would be, and to make a bigger project – we made plain weave (under over, under over) scarves on a rigid heddle loom. The heddle has holes and slots in it, and you move the heddle up and down to lift and lower the threads in the holes. The threads in the slots stay at the same elevation, so as you pass the weft thread through the opening between the threads, you’re alternating going over or under each set of threads.

Threads in the holes are lifted, weft is passed under the hole-threads and over the slot-threads. When the heddle is moved down, the hole-threads go down, and the weft passes over the hole-threads and under the slot-threads.

I used the opportunity of having a rigid heddle loom in my house for a week to do some additional weaving, including the tapestry weaving for the Teton Extravaganza. It was a wonderful proof of concept and convinced me I would really enjoy a loom with more abilities.

Tapestry weaving on a rigid heddle loom – totally possible and a huge upgrade from the frame loom

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