Ah, this is the week that I dressed the floor loom. I’ve never used a floor loom before – it’s quite a bit more complicated to use than my rigid heddle loom. There were many steps; I’ll do my best to explain what I did to get the loom ready to weave.
First – I had to get the loom into my craft room. For the past six months it’s been waiting patiently in my front room for the day I would be ready to use it. I had originally planned to use it in the front room, but my partner and I realized this would have made our lives very complicated. Moving the loom wasn’t easy. For starters, it’s probably about 100 pounds. Also, we learned that it was just a bit too wide to fit through the door frame, so I had to figure out how to remove the pedals in order for the loom to fit. Once it was in the craft room, it needed a bit of cleaning and maintenance. The brake on the back beam is quite rusted and wouldn’t move, but luckily the oil I use for my spinning wheel helped loosen the brake and allowed me to rotate the back beam. I also had to reorganize the heddles, as they weren’t evenly divided up among the four shafts and some were damaged. Organizing the heddles meant removing the shafts, which took me a bit to figure out how to do so. Right – I had no manual to the loom and the online instructions the company that produces this particular loom gives look and read like the were created in the 1970s or ’80s. It was interesting having to figure out how to use the loom all on my own, to say the least. I got there in the end, though!
Once the loom was ready, I had my partner help wind the warp onto the back beam. This is a very important and crucial step, as not only does this start the process of dressing the loom, but it also requires that the warp winds on to the back beam at an even tension. Uneven tension can and will cause issues as you weave – I unfortunately have first-hand experience. My partner rotated the back beam for me while I held onto the warp. Once the warp was on the back beam, the next step was to thread the heddles. Even though I’m doing plain weave (weft goes over one warp thread, then goes under one warp thread, rinse and repeat), I’m using all four shaft in order to distribute the weight – if I had 165 heddles and warp threads going through one shaft, it might make raising the shaft a bit difficult or require more effort for me when I step on the peddles. I threaded the warp threads where the first thread went through a heddle on shaft one, the second thread through a heddle on shaft two, etc.
This. Took. Hours. It was tedious and painful because I had to sit awkwardly at the loom, leaning over and hunching at the same time. Just this part took nearly six hours, and once I threaded all 330 warp strings in the heddles I had to thread the warp again, this time through the reed; this part is usually called sleighing the reed.
Sleighing didn’t take as long, but it was still about another three hours. Once I finished that, I could finally tie the warp threads onto the front beam, which sounds simple, but can also cause tension problems if not done well. All in all, it took me about three days to get the loom ready to weave.
I have to admit, I was pretty proud of myself. I also can see why, long ago, weaving was a group activity. I would have had a much harder time with some of the steps if I didn’t have my partner to help me. Threading the heddles and sleighing the reed would have gone much quicker if I had someone else doing it, too. If this had been a group activity, we could have taken turns threading the heddles, which would have lead to nobody being in much pain because we could rest. Instead I ached for days. I could have taken my time, I suppose, but I’m also on a time limit to finish my chiton. Now that I’ve dressed a floor loom, hopefully when I have to do it again later this quarter it will go faster.