How to Nurture a Relationship that Lasts (with your Rigid Heddle) PT 3
We’re continuing my series on How to Nurture a Relationship that Lasts (with your Rigid Heddle). This week we are going to look at attitude and the first thing I want to say is that weaving on a rigid heddle is real weaving! I hear many people say that they have “just” a rigid heddle, like they are somehow “lesser” weavers. This is absolutely not true! A rigid heddle is a real loom that real weavers use to produce real weaving. Never put yourself or your loom down! Now, let’s look at some truths about rigid heddle looms.
We’re continuing my series on How to Nurture a Relationship that Lasts (with your Rigid Heddle). This week we are going to look at attitude and the first thing I want to say is that weaving on a rigid heddle is real weaving! I hear many people say that they have “just” a rigid heddle, like they are somehow “lesser” weavers. This is absolutely not true! A rigid heddle is a real loom that real weavers use to produce real weaving. Never put yourself or your loom down! Now, let’s look at some truths about rigid heddle looms.
1. A Rigid Heddle loom is not a “beginner” loom (although it is perfect for beginners)
While weaving on a rigid heddle may result in you also acquiring a floor loom, getting a rigid heddle because you can’t afford/don’t have the space/want to try weaving before making the investment in a floor loom/ will leave you with a desire that your rigid heddle will never be able to satisfy. Rigid heddles and shaft looms are as different as knitting and crochet. You may love one and hate the other. If a floor loom is what you really want, get one, there is one for every budget and space constraint.
I use both my 32” rigid heddle and my 36” floor loom in a 9’x8’ space.
2. Expect great things from your rigid heddle and it will deliver
This is a double weave using a pick up on the top layer, plain weave on the bottom
Rigid heddles can do far more than plain weave. Add in pick up sticks, string heddles, multiple heddles and varident reeds and the possibilities are endless. A rigid heddle can do patterning that just can’t be done even with a multi-shaft loom as well as twill, deflected double weave, overshot krokbragd, and even tapestry weaving. Additionally, yarns that aren’t suitable for the high tension of a floor loom can work very well on the rigid heddle. Rigid heddles are perfect for single skeins of hand painted yarns as there is so little waste. And you can weave yardage to sew with! Weaving can sometimes take more time than on a floor loom but the ease and speed of warping more than make up for it.
3. Don’t expect the loom to do what you should be doing
Fixing a threading error
It is rarely the fault of the loom when projects don’t turn out as expected. Warped well a rigid heddle has a good shed (big enough to use a boat shuttle with plain weave, though I don’t always recommend using one). Be sure to use the right reed for the yarn (a floor loom allows for flexibility using the reed substitution chart, but not a rigid heddle). If you want nice selvages you will have to practice. Tension is important. Poor tension results in a less than fun weaving experience. As mentioned in a previous post, use the best fibre you can afford…a bad fibre cannot produce good fabric. I’ve only cut off projects before completion twice. Once because I used yarn with too much stretch to get a good tension (because it was cheap enough to experiment with and I didn’t know better) and the second because I had poor tension due to mistakes I made warping. Nothing that has ever gone wrong (fabric too dense, too loose, ugly etc) has ever been the fault of my loom.
To sum up, love your rigid heddle loom for what it is, not what you wish it was. Don’t overlook its’ potential: challenge it and yourself, experiment, and have fun! Below, from left to right: double weave log cabin, plain weave sewn into a shirt, twill sampler using two heddles and rosepath twill using two heddles
Colour
One of my biggest challenges when it comes to weaving is choosing colours. I know the basics of colour theory. Ok, I know about the colour wheel and how to mix the primaries to create the secondary colours. I even know a tiny bit about putting colours together. Weaving however, adds a whole new element. If my warp is red and my weft is blue, those colours will blend when my eyes see them and it will look purple. My two colours give birth to a new colour. And I’m not always sure how it will look , so I play it safe: I use the same colour way for both warp and weft or pick a variegated and pair it with a solid colour that is in the variegated or I stick to neutrals.
One of my biggest challenges when it comes to weaving is choosing colours. I know the basics of colour theory. Ok, I know about the colour wheel and how to mix the primaries to create the secondary colours. I even know a tiny bit about putting colours together. Weaving however, adds a whole new element. If my warp is red and my weft is blue, those colours will blend when my eyes see them and it will look purple. My two colours give birth to a new colour. And I’m not always sure how it will look , so I play it safe: I use the same colour way for both warp and weft or pick a variegated and pair it with a solid colour that is in the variegated or I stick to neutrals.
I recently tried to be a little more adventurous. Rowan Yarns has a lovely yarn called Felted Tweed. The green, yellow and orange were calling my name. I think it had to do with it being the height of fall and all the trees were yellow and green and orange. If nature can pull off those colours, so can I !
At the same time as getting adventurous with colour I decided to figure out how to use two heddles to create double weave only in certain parts of my weaving. And how to bring different colours to the front. And use an extra pick up stick in double weave to add more pattern. Have I told you I never start easy?
I ended up with fabric that holds together, so I guess that is some success. The rest really didn’t come together well. I'll stick to the colour issue for this post. A few things happened.
First, I used tweed. When a tweed yarn is spun, little bits of other fibers in contrasting colours are added to the wool. So my colours weren’t pure colours, they all had flecks of other colours mixed in. I experienced first hand what it means to have “muddy" colours.
Then, some of my patches have all three colours together. It’s not that using three colours is a bad thing, but add the tweed and it really doesn’t work so well. On the orange, the strongest colour, it works pretty well but using only 1 colour, or 2, works even better.
Proportions are important too. Using 3 colours in equal amounts might be ok for some projects, but using 1 colour sparingly can change ok to fabulous. Note in the first picture the primary colour is green, then yellow, and finally just a little bit of orange. All the colours look more distinct and the orange draws the eye. But use mostly orange (second pic) and it over powers the other colours.
I know that sampling is (part of) the solution to my problem but we all know how I feel about sampling! (Actually, this was a sample! I had no plans for the finished product and was ok if it didn’t work!)
Knowledge is also power. I just received a book about colour. It's not specifically a weaving book, but it tells me about colour, colour theory, gives numerous colour combinations and gives proportions as well as grouping them into families (soothing, neutral, bold, dynamic, powerful etc.). I'm looking forward to experimenting with new colour combinations!
Enjoying Every Moment
I spent many years rushing through life, anticipating the next stage when the current stage had barely begun. Many things got done and accomplished but I don’t ever remember standing back and admiring what I had just completed. Before I had time to catch my breath I was onto the next task. I felt like I was living in fast-forward…some days I even felt like I was eating in fast-forward! And I get it, it was a busy time with 2 young children, a husband and a hobby farm. Life was full and tasks had to be completed.
I spent many years rushing through life, anticipating the next stage when the current stage had barely begun. Many things got done and accomplished but I don’t ever remember standing back and admiring what I had just completed. Before I had time to catch my breath I was onto the next task. I felt like I was living in fast-forward…some days I even felt like I was eating in fast-forward! And I get it, it was a busy time with 2 young children, a husband and a hobby farm. Life was full and tasks had to be completed.
When I started weaving I made a conscious decision to take my time and to enjoy every step…including the learning. This is contrary to my nature. I am impatient, eager to see the finished product, notice every mistake, fear making mistakes and therefore am very cautious. At the same time, I’m too impatient to wait to work up to complicated. I never start simple and I’m not much for slowing down and taking the time to learn slowly. This picture is a double-weave blanket after only 3 months of weaving!
I’ve partially succeeded. I do enjoy every step. I love the feel of yarn running through my hands. Seeing all those orderly lines of yarn and winding them onto the back beam is quite satisfying. Threading the heddle allows me to check for mistakes, think about what will be created and catch issues before they happen. It’s slow and rhythmical. Winding a tightly-packed shuttle. A neat, tidy hemstitch. Then finally, the weaving. Side to side with the shuttle, back and forth with the heddle. Many times, the actual weaving time is dwarfed by the time spent preparing the loom and finishing after the project is removed from the loom. A twisted fringe can take hours. (It’s the one part I haven’t convinced myself to love).
This deliberate decision to enjoy every moment weaving has spilled over into the rest of my life. Life is meant to be lived, enjoyed, savoured. I’ve begun to approach life more slowly, with a deliberate decision to enjoy every moment of it. Even the boring bits…laundry (it’s pretty satisfying to see a pile of neatly-folded laundry, or how about the warmth fresh from the dryer, or the smell when it comes in from the line). Or I look at my coffee table, overflowing with books and appreciated the variety (accounting textbooks, cookbooks, carpentry books, Puritan books, Bibles and philosophy books all mingled together!) I still want things tidied up occasionally but what interesting children I have! Even driving has taken on a new meaning. It’s not just about getting from point A to point B it’s a chance to see the glorious world we live in. (And the speed limit forces me to slow down and enjoy it for jut a little bit longer!)
Even a snowy drive becomes something to exclaim over
Sometimes we need to rush. And some stages will be enjoyed more than others. But your weaving is for you. Enjoy it. Stop every so often and just admire what your hands are creating. Take a deep breath and savour the rhythmic thumps and clicks of your loom. And let that peace and satisfaction permeate your whole life!
My Craft Room
I dream of a ‘ real’ craft room. I think all crafters do. I dream of a big airy space filled with giant windows and sunshine. And sky lights! My dream room has a big center work table, my 32” rigid heddle, room for a 60” 8 shaft loom, a wall of shelves to keep all my skeins and cones and fibres for spinning in view and easy reach. A corner for spinning and a corner for planning, drinking tea and dreaming.
I dream of a ‘ real’ craft room. I think all crafters do. I dream of a big airy space filled with giant windows and sunshine. And sky lights! My dream room has a big center work table, my 32” rigid heddle, room for a 60” 8 shaft loom, a wall of shelves to keep all my skeins and cones and fibres for spinning in view and easy reach. A corner for spinning and a corner for planning, drinking tea and dreaming.
The Rigid Heddle Corner
I’ll bet you also have a dream craft room. But so much can be done without it. I am fortunate enough to have a craft room. It’s pretty tiny, an 8’ x 9’ basement room. (One small window, no sun) Until recently it held a 36” 4-shaft floor loom, a 32” rigid heddle loom, a dresser that acted as storage and sewing station, a warping station, a spinning wheel and a dressmaker’s dummy. I really couldn’t move in it. Both the spinning wheel and the rigid heddle loom needed to move out to be used. So they moved into the rec room. (Come on, be honest, your craft stuff is quietly taking over your house too!) The rec room worked well until my husband’s office moved into it. I may have shed a tear. Then I pulled myself together and redirected my takeover. My rigid heddle temporarily moved into the living room (along with all my rec room furniture, it was a mess!) I didn’t have room to warp so it moved into the kitchen or to the back deck for the warping process.
In the office moving process, we freed up a room in the house (the old office). I seriously considered just taking over that room (in addition to the one I already have) but decided that wasn’t really fair (my kids think they need space too) so I took over the closet instead. It isn’t very wide but it is quite deep. I moved my dresser/sewing station, dressmaker’s dummy and spinning wheel into it. I can close the door and we have a lovely sitting room. I can open up the closet and have a lovely sewing station or pull out my wheel to spin. And my rigid heddle moved back down to the basement craft room. Except when I’m doing a longer warp, then it moves to the kitchen, or I’m using the full width, then it’s back in the living room.
Warping in the kitchen
So don’t let lack of space stop you from weaving. If it weren’t for the floor loom I could quite easily manage without a room altogether. If my house were more open I wouldn’t need a room even with the floor loom. If you really want to do something you can make it happen in the space you have. You get creative, find solutions and weave on.
Do you have a dream craft room? Or have you found ways to manage in small spaces? I’d love to hear about them!