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.

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.

Main inspirations and resources:

• Youtube: Kelly Casanova
• YouTube: Durham Weaver
• YouTube: Pipyr Harris
• YouTube: Textile Indie
• The Art of Tapestry Weaving by Rebecca Mezoff and her YouTube
• YouTube: Acton Creative