yay, another project to ward off winter blues 

thanks for posting.

Timothy Potter wrote on Mar 7^th, 2011 at 5:17pm:

Very! And maybe some advice on how to tighten the weft threads without breaking them.

Yeah but let me get this one done first.

Marc Adkins

Timothy Potter wrote on Mar 7^th, 2011 at 5:17pm:

Masiakasaurus wrote on Mar 7^th, 2011 at 6:08pm:


I assume you mean the warp threads, since those are the ones that are tightened after the weaving is finished. I'm not sure what advice to give, since I've never had the threads break on me, but it might depend on the material. I've made this type of pouch with linen and wool, but both were strong enough not to break; perhaps a thinner thread or yarn would, though. One problem I've encountered when weaving these pouches is to accidentally sew the weft through a warp thread, splitting the plys. When weaving with a needle without the aid of a loom with heddles, this is an easy mistake to make. This causes problems when you go to tighten the warp, because the warp won't be able to pull past the place where the weft is sewn through it. Once, I had to cut the warp of of the weft in this situation. Happily I was using a thick wool yarn, and there was enough strength in the part of the warp that wasn't cut to hold together, but I can envision the warp breaking in a similar situation. I know that this might be confusing since I don't have pictures to show what I mean, so if it doesn't make sense,  I can try to clarify it.

-Timothy Potter

Masiakasaurus wrote on Mar 8^th, 2011 at 7:56pm:


I'm pretty sure that warp is the term what's put on the loom and weft is what's woven through it, but whichever it is, the problem is obviously how to avoid breaking it. One thing that I recently tried that might help a little is to tighten the thread from the middle, and work out to both ends, tightening a little on one side and then the other. This means that you have half as much slack to pull through at one time, and maybe that would help some by not putting as much stress on the thread. If nothing else, it seemed like an easier way to keep both halves of the pouch even. When I did this I used two separate threads for the warp and tied each onto the loom dowels, instead of starting the warp from the middle of a single thread like the tutorial shows.

-Timothy Potter

Masiakasaurus wrote on Mar 9^th, 2011 at 2:23pm:


What kind of thread is it?

One other idea I had would be to try weaving a little looser, so there would be less friction on the thread that is being tightened, but you may have already tried that.

-Timothy Potter

Oh Crud that was what I was going to use.

Still a moot point until I can get the loom finshed. Real hard to build one when all of your hand tools are at the bottom of a stoarage shed. . but with a little redneck engineering I managed to at least get the body built

Marc Adkins

Masiakasaurus wrote on Mar 9^th, 2011 at 9:00pm: