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

Celtic Braid Inkle

I finally finished this! I often find pick-up and overshot patterns too tedious and still love the act of plain-jane tabby the best...but IT'S SO PRETTY.

I hand dyed the dishcloth cotton that was used for the pattern threads with short colour changes, using those sponge brushes. Then I lined up the colours as best I could on my inkle loom. There is always a little ikat-like push and pull because of the way the string heddles influence the yarn. On a separate note, I've found that if I do horizontal bar pattern using variegated for one stripe and solid for the other I get a comparatively smooth-looking transition. So if you have a pick-up pattern that calls for the horizontal bar structure as a base, variegated can be ultra sharp.

If anyone is curious about my technique for hand painting my cotton for inkles, just buzz me a note and I will set up a little picture tutorial!

I've been busy prepping for a weekend workshop on basic inkle weaving. It's going to be so much fun! I love teaching, and sharing in creativity with other people! I hope one day soon to have a large studio space on an acreage outside the city, where I can host retreats for all kinds of wonderful fiber related adventures. It's been my dream since I graduated from ACAD, and it might be within my reach sooner than I ever imagined!

I hope everyone is having a lovely weekend! Are you celebrating St patty's tonight? If so, please have a green beer or an Irish Car Bomb for me! I'm going to have to settle for some green candies or perhaps do some rolled dough clover cookies! At least the morning sickness is passing! :)

Happy creating!

♥
JQ

128 Hours! My Deadline is Set!

Hi everyone!

Well after tons of landscaping, company and a trip to my family reunion, I am back with an update! I hope you have had as much fun so far this summer as I have been having!

Here is the rose tapestry at 128 hours:


You can see the center of the rose now in the cartoon behind! I have set my deadline for the end of September 2011. I hope to have the warp for my next one threaded, tensioned and twined by mid October.

The image of my cartoon, with the past 18 hours worth of progress in blue:


Detail (left):


Detail (right):


A little closer...


And this is my not so itsy bitsy weaver friend:


She is a common Barn spider or Araneus cavaticus. Charlotte A. Cavatica from the book Charlotte's web is named after this bad girl. She made her summer home in my back porch doorway and has been hanging around for 2 months now.

♥ ♥ ♥ SHE IS ENORMOUS AND HIDEOUS AND I LOVE HER. ♥ ♥ ♥

A few other things I got up to before the family reunion. Would you believe I never took any pictures of the pretty blue and green hand spun, hand dyed, handwoven scarf I made for my auntie??? I have to get her to send me a picture.

Some inkle shoe laces I made for to match Miss Naomi's pretty new sneakers:


Two pretty mauve, plum and teal ruffled scarves for the November Sale:


A pretty red "kelp scarf", also for the November sale. I have several warps made for scarves like this. Some of them are asymmetrical! I'm excited!


Here's a few of the warps one pink and grey with a pink ruffled center as well as ruffles at the edge, and one gold and rust with the ruffle on one side over twice the width as the other side:


Thanks for taking a peek! It gets to this time of year and I just have to embrace the manic panic and ride it, tresses to the wind until Christmas.

Then FULL STOP and movie marathon my way through January and February. :P

Cheers!
♥
JQ