How to Weave
How to weave on a frame
Weaving is used in thousands of ways across the globe. Here, we explain how to weave using an old picture frame as a loom.
These instructions might look complicated but please give it a go - the results are truely stunning!
Materials
- Old picture frame (at least A4)
- Weaving wool
- Tapestry needle (optional – you may prefer to work with your fingers)
- Scissors
Setting up the frame
1 Take the glass and back off the picture frame. This will be the frame for your weaving.
2 Tie the end of the wool around the bottom of the frame with a strong knot.
3 Wrap the wool round and round the frame, moving along as you go until you have about twenty loops.
4 Stretching the wool as tightly as possible, tie the other end to the frame. Now you have created the warp – the threads into which you will weave.
5 Work along the ‘warp’ to make the tension even all along.
6 Weave (under one string, over the next) a line of wool (any colour) along the frame at the bottom and tie it to the frame on either side. This is your ‘guiding line’.
7 Take a strip of wood or dowling and weave through the top of the warp. This is called the shed.
Start Weaving
1 The basic principle of weaving is to take the wool under one thread and over the next, and in the following row, to take the wool under and over in the opposite way to the previous row.
2 It’s best to start and finish any piece of wool in the middle of a row, and to leave the end of the thread loose behind. You don’t need to tie knots to start or finish as the threads will be held in place by the rows above and below.
3 Regularly push your weaving (the threads you weave across are known as the ‘weft’) down to make it tight – you can use the shed stick to help with this.
4 There are no rules! Don’t be afraid to make mistakes – they may turn into a completely different and completely beautiful pattern.
5 These are a few things you might like to try:
Weave half way along the row and then go back, so that you create areas of colour on one side of the weaving – you can fill in the other side with a different colour.
In the same way, create ‘hills’ and ‘waves’ by weaving more rows in one area than another – don’t worry about making straight lines.
Leave a space in the warp where you don’t weave so that it becomes a hole.
Tie short pieces of wool around the warp threads so they hang loose. This can be good for texture.
Finishing off
1 When you have finished your weaving, the easiest way to take it off the frame is to cut two neighbouring warp threads at a time and tie them together.
2 Then cut the next two. If you have an odd number of threads, the extra thread need not be knotted, but can be sewn back in.
3 Once the warp threads are knotted to their neighbours, they need to be threaded back into the weaving using an ordinary (short) wool needle, so that they disappear.
4 You may like to leave the bottom threads long and loose, or to plait them, to make a hanging.