DIY Cardboard Box Inkle Loom Tutorial PART 3!

GUESS WHAT TIME IT IS!

 

 Remember this?

I know it's been a long time coming.  It turns out maintaining an acreage in the summertime while wrangling a 4 year old and a baby and keeping up a blog is---whaaaaaaaaaaaat?! People do this!???  I seriously NEED more hours in a day.  :) 

Thank you for following along, and for staying energized excited about this project. I hope that you will join along with me and thread up that cardboard loom so we can take it for a little test drive!

First you created an inkle loom out of a cardboard box (totally rad) and then you made some string heddles for it...now you are ready for part 3! Let's learn how to thread up that loom and start weaving an inkle!

For this you'll need your loom, 20 heddles, a pair of sharp scissors, an extra piece of cardboard to make a shuttle, a plastic ruler you get inside a geometry kit, and 4 different colours of mercerized cotton string in a uniform size (thicker is better).  I used Lily brand 8 strand cable cotton yarn from the thrift store.  Size 5 crochet thread would also work.  I DO NOT recommend you use wool, or acrylic or novelty yarns of any kind for your first few attempts.  Acrylic yarn stretches, novelty yarn catches on everything and wool will usually bind and felt a little around the heddles.  Smooth, tightly spun cotton is best. I also don't recommend using that thick baby cotton or the kind used to knit/crochet dishcloths, as that stuff is softer and loosely spun.  It will pill and fray with friction.

The tutorial is split up into six video segments. The first one is about warping the loom, and rest are a five part series about weaving your band, start to finish! 

I hope you find them helpful!  My tools were limited, but I tried the best I could to give you a good start!  Special credit goes to my loving and patient husband Justin Keller, who filmed all the segments and helped me figure out how to edit them.

Some images to help:

Threading:

This is your pattern draft.  It's done on brick layout graph paper.

You can find all kinds of graph paper, including brick layout free online.  I get my graph paper here:  http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/ .  I like it because you can set the scale and everything.  Some of the other graph papers found on that site are helpful for drafting more advance structures like basketweave pick up and horizontal bar pick-up.

And this is how you read it, left to right, according to the numbers.

 Thread 1 is royal blue and open, thread 2 is royal blue and heddled, thread 3 is white and open, etc.  You can substitute any 4 colours in this pattern, or if you are feeling even more adventurous you can mess around with several colours, just be sure you keep EACH SET of colours. So all 3 greens in the first cluster need to be the same colour, both whites that come after it need to be the same colour, then all 3 purples should be all the same colour, etc. below is one example of how youc an switch up the colour sets:

I would keep the two sets of border threads the same colour.  You can also sub colours in the white areas.  

The possibilities are endless--just with one pattern draft!

 What threading looks like from the side:

How an open thread looks on the loom

How a heddled thread looks on the loom

Weaving:

Position (shed) one.  The open threads are above the heddled threads.

Position (shed) two.  The open threads are below the heddled threads.

If you have any questions please email me at:
heartsonfibreblog (at) gmail (dot) com

Best wishes on your inkle weaving journey!
Happy Creating!
♥
JQ

DIY CARDBOARD INKLE LOOM TUTORIAL PART 1
DIY CARDBOARD INKLE LOOM TUTORIAL PART 2: MAKING YOUR HEDDLES