Weavemaster loom

updated 14/04/2022 

I expect it is normal for new weavers to start with a simple loom, maybe a small second hand 4 shaft table loom, or a rigid heddle loom, just to get the idea of what weaving is and see if they like it. I started with an 8 shaft Toika floor loom, after a couple of years added a table loom to the collection (8 shaft Leclerc Voyageur) and now I have bought my first dinky little 2 shaft loom, a dear little vintage Weavemaster. Why? Because I wanted a truly portable loom that works like any shaft loom and can be used to explain weaving to people who have never seen handweaving before - and I meet many of them! A rigid heddle loom may be fun to weave on, but not as versatile as this little shaft loom. I also have the thought in mind of all those 2 shaft weaving possibilities I've never tried out, from saori weaving with interlocking weft to simple hand manipulated lace, and the many combinations of different thread types and colour & weave interactions. Somehow trying these has never been a priority on the 8 shaft floor loom! The Weavemaster loom has simple twisted steel wire heddles, set in steel frames. It has a choice of two positions for the beater & reed (see the slot on the side of the loom here, with two round rest points): There are simple levers on the side to lower the shafts (rest position for them is raised) sorry this photo has somehow got in upside down, just imagine you're leaning over the top of the loom from the other side and looking down from above... The front and rear cloth beams have a simple ratchet and pawl on one side, with a wooden knob on the other: The shed on this little loom is a good couple of inches, but as there is little space between the heddles and beater I shall probably carry on using the little stick shuttles it came to me with, although I can get a small Leclerc boat shuttle through without problem. It came with a "colour and weave" pattern set up and the weaving started, so for now I'm continuing with this. How small is this little loom? 17 1/2 inches (44 cm) total width, 15 1/2 inches (39.5 cm) front to back, 13 1/4 inches (33.5 cm) tall. It weighs 7 lb (3.17 kg).

EDITED 14th April 2022 to add the following in response to a query in the comments about how to fit extra heddles to a Weavemaster Loom

I don't have this loom anymore, so cannot inspect the shafts to see if they can be taken apart to put new wire heddles on the rods that carry them within the frame. However, I believe what I would do myself is fit string heddles. With this in mind, I recommend the following resources created by Andrew Kieran, who I knew as a fellow Weave Ring blogger, one of the links on the left is for his blog, Weave4fun.  Andrew studied Design for Textiles at Herriot-Watt University as a mature student and then worked for a while as a loom technician at the university, so he really knows and understands looms and weaving. (Hi Andrew! Maybe you will come across this, hope life is treating you well.)

Andrew created some excellent Youtube videos, and I recommend two in particular to Weavemaster owners. The first shows how to create string heddles. I've done this on my own loom when I found I needed an extra due to a threading error. Once you have located / sourced a suitable fine smooth yarn they are simple to make. The second is Weavemaster Loom Basics.

Close up Colour and Weave

Here at last are the pictures of my colour and weave sampler. I didn't take one of the whole thing, but dimensions are approx 30" wide and a bit over five feet long.

There are 16 different colour repeats across the width - see my earlier post for details - and the same colour repeat patterns are repeated in the treadling, first in plain weave and then in twill. Pattern & treadling sections are separated by a couple of green threads. At the finish I tried a few weft rib patterns and Bedford cord.

I've taken a the photos with the aim of giving you some idea of the diversity of patterns and the usefulness of having a sampler like this for reference.

When you look at it, bear in mind some possibilities for using these patterns again:

they might another time be woven in high or low colour contrast,
more than two colours,
possibly in textured or tweed yarn,
maybe just as a contrast stripe of pattern against plain colour.

And... all the plain weave patterns can be woven with only two shafts. So they could be woven on a simple rigid heddle loom.

Plain weave:

Plain weave:

Plain weave:

Plain weave:

Diagonal twill (4 shafts):

Diagonal twill (4 shafts):

Plain weave at top, Diagonal twill (4 shafts) below:

Plain weave:

Plain weave:

Rib patterns: (using 3-1 and 1-3 twill tie-up)

(Just a note here to add the words "color and weave" for anyone doing a U.S. English search on the subject.)

Setting up for colour and weave.

Still no colour and weave blanket photos. If you read my last post, you will know that it is at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, Cheshire (England) this week in the annual exhibition of the Alsager Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. I'll get it back next Sunday evening (14th) and photos will follow thereafter. So, as consolation, here's a gallery of photos of getting the colour and weave warp on the loom. Here's the collection of chained warp sections. You can see one of the tie on labels that I used to distinguish the different sections. And here are the sections of warp going on to an apron rod, all carefully ordered. The I used the green threads to divide each section and for selvedges.

Next - warp on the back apron rod, lease sticks in and onto the loom.

(Yes, I did get a bit carried away with the photos... I've deleted lots as I don't know why I took them! Only 11 posted here, but maybe this series of pictures will be some use to someone? If not, skip to the end, last photo is of my charming little weaving assistant.)

Weighted warp ready to wind on. This is my current favourite method. The weights are over the front beam and start resting on the floor, then I wind till the reach the beam, take each off and re-tie. I know there are other means of tensioning the warp, but this worked well especially as there were tension problems in this warp caused by having lots of knots tied to change thread colours. The loose threads looked a bit scary at one stage, but I the tension seems to even up at the lease sticks as I wind and it was beautifully even for weaving. Apart from the selvedges getting slack. But that's another story.

The photo above means more to me than you might expect. This is the widest warp I have put on my loom and it took ages. I had a few new problems arise. For the first time I had to move heddles around, I needed extra in the middle and for the first time I needed heddles past the outer lam ties (those ones at each end that the top bar of the shafts hang from). And, at the back of the loom there were 4 shafts I wasn't using. I removed most of the heddles from these so they would not get in the way, but left a small bundle at the end of each shaft. Why did I leave these? Well, as I discovered (oops, slip, bang, crash ....etc all rude words here deleted...) remove the heddles and the bottom shaft bar drops to the floor!!! (Note: this is a countermarch loom.) I love this reed sleying method, it's so easy and quick that I've given up using my autodenter.

Key equipment are a couple of boxes to rest the reed on and a little plastic Ashford reed hook.

I tied on to the front apron rod with larks head knots. I find this the easiest method to use if I think I might need to adjust any section of the warp. It's very quick to undo, adjust, re-tie.

On this occasion I got the tension beautiful first go, and wove a neat header. However, with so many different colour and weave patterns across the width of the peice, I wove a few more inches before I spotted a few errors. There were three places where I had to correct errors. Here's one of them, just about centre of the picture:

I'm getting quite adept now at the cut off, re-thread and sley and sew ends back in:

With this fixed, I was ready to weave. The colour order for weft followed the same patterns as the warp - see my earlier post giving the thread order. I wove through the list for plain weave (except I skipped a bit - 3 white, 4 blue repeated is so similar to 4 white 3 blue it didn't seem worthwhile) then I started again using diagonal 2-2 twill. I finished up with Bedford cord and a weft rib. I spent about a week of spare moments getting the warp on the loom, and most of the next week weaving. 

So, where is it then?

I hope that's the question on your mind - where is that colour and weave sampler?

Not here, is the answer. I've not got it.

It was off the loom last week, washed, I ironed it Thursday night, but before I'd taken any photos it became an exhibit for the Alsager Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers 2008 exhibition. As did my Janet Phillip's sample blanket and the chenille sampler.

The exhibition runs from 6th to 14th September at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, Cheshire, England. It's a super place for us to have the exhibition as this is a large working Georgian cotton mill, powered by a huge waterwheel that is turned by water from the River Bollin, and the mill is also a museum dedicated to a history of the cotton industry. This is the National Trust web site about the property, but there's a better write up on Wikipedia.

Here's the tale of how I got separated from my new sampler. I had prepared an exhibit of a box of wool rolags that are all dyed with natural dyes from garden plants and weeds. I picked out a good range of different colours (couldn't get all my samples in one box!). I spent a couple of evenings last week getting it together. So my exhibit was all beautifully organised and labelled, and I put it in the car to take to Alsager after work, and I just took the weave samplers along because I'd promised to show them to one of my weaving friends.

Maybe it's the 5 hours unpaid overtime I'd worked (must fix that, I'm only paid for 11 hours total in that job), or the long drive in heavy Friday p.m. traffic, but my brain was a bit dim by the time I got to Alsager, and when asked "why not put those in the exhibition too" I thought there was some reason to hang on to the colour and weave, but couldn't remember what it was! So, I said yes, why not?

Of course, as soon as I got home I realised I'd not taken photos for my blog! Never mind, I'll have it back in two weeks.

It's worth mentioning that another weaver also had a Janet Phillip's sampler with her which she'd woven in a finer cotton (10/2?), and mercerised instead of plain. I think the colours were pink and slate (blue/grey). It was very pretty, looked rather different but it had worked well. So, anyone who's been worrying about not having the specified yarn, please don't worry anymore, just use what you have.

Meanwhile, if you're in the area, I (and spinning wheel) will be at the exhibition in Styal on Sunday 14th.

And also just now... I'm knitting socks, spinning yarn from wool dyed with nettles, and winding a warp for a colour sampler. (Or should it be called a colour "gamp"? Must look that word up.)

Colour and Weave

... or Color and Weave for those of you over the Atlantic.

I'm just taking a break from sleying my reed. My latest sampler which is a colour and weave experiment takes nearly the full loom width. It occured to me that it's a good idea going out to maximum width on a sampler before I try it for something special, so that's something extra that I'm getting out of this project.

I wanted to stop and write about what colour and weave is, before I start telling you about the sampler. I kept hearing the phrase "colour and weave" and people saying things about "colour and weave sampler" but I really didn't know what it meant. It didn't seem to come into the books I was reading, and I hadn't seen anything on the internet to help.

Then I picked up a book I'd neglected for months, Ann Sutton's "Color and Weave Design - A Practical Reference Book" and it dawned on me that this book is mostly photographs of a colour and weave sampler. I took that as my starting point. I have followed the same colour pattern she uses.

It goes, in two inch sections:

1 white / 1 blue
1 white / 2 blue
1 white / 3 blue
1 white / 4 blue

2 white / 1 blue
2 white / 2 blue
2 white / 3 blue
2 white / 4 blue

3 white / 1 blue
3 white / 2 blue
3 white / 3 blue
3 white / 4 blue

4 white / 1 blue
4 white / 2 blue
4 white / 3 blue
4 white / 4 blue

I've threaded in a straight 1-2-3-4 pattern. I'm using plain green selvedges and a couple of green threads between each section. My selvedges are "crammed" as per Janet Phillip's sample blanket, from shafts 1-4: alternate threads are doubled in the heddles, 2-1-2-1 on one side and 1-2-1-2 on the other.

I had started preparing this sampler before I got to reading all my other books. I dug into the bookshelf again this week as I was thinking about where to start writing about colour and weave.

A good start is a definition, so here's one from "A Textile Terminology" by Dorothy K. Burnham:

Colour and weave effect - The form or pattern produced by a weave in combination with the order in which two or more colours are used for warp and weft.

And a useful phrase from "Handweaving and Cloth Design" by Marianne Straub:

"When weaving with contrasting colours, the relationship between the weave construction and the warping and picking plan forms the basis from which many strongly patterned cloths can be designed."

Marianne Straub has only a short section on the subject, but interesting, as she shows the same alternate one black and one white thread order with three different threading and treadling patterns producing three very different results.

The new "Handweaver's Pattern Book" by Anne Dixon (a.k.a Handweavers Pattern Directory) doesn't have a separate colour and weave section, as the different possible colour effects are shown for every pattern on every page. Super book!

I was planning to weave my sampler with 16 different thread patterns in two colours across the warp, and then the same 16 colour patterns in the weft in first plain weave and the 2/2 twill. This is what Anne Sutton shows in her book. But now I have discovered another sampler plan in "Designing on the Loom" by Mary Kirby and I'm wondering how far I can adapt my plans to include more patterns. Wish I'd put a longer warp on!

Mary Kirby has 8 different threading sections, using light and dark warp, and 23 different treadling patterns, including chevron, herringbone, hopsack, 1/3 and 3/1 twills, Bedford cord, tabby and twill combined. Maybe I'll have to wind another warp to try this out!

However, by far and away the most comprehensive study of colour and weave, although not a "how to weave your sampler" book, is William Watson's "Textile Design and Colour". This is a classic text book, first published in 1912 (I have a 6th edition copy, from 1954). If you can cope with reading pdf files you maybe able to download a copy from the Online Archive (see my list of web site links) having said this, I can't access the archive today, I do hope this is a temporary internet problem.

William Watson has written a long chapter on colour and weave, which starts simple and gets more and more complex. I can't read right through it yet, it moves beyond my mental grasp for now. But this is good stuff and it is a very well written book.

So, back to where I started again, why weave this sampler?

Ann Sutton says:

"... colour-and-weave effects are some of the most important and accessible in the weaving world. The fashion cloth industry uses them extensively.... "

"Handweavers, concerned with the restrictions on the numbers of shafts (harnesses) available to them for patterning, can make great use of these effects... and can produce thousands of dynamic cloths and colour mixes."

However, she goes on to say:

"Many beginner weavers are set the task of weaving a colour-and-weave sampler at the start of their training. It is tedious work for a beginner, and although it should build up an understanding of the way in which colour order in warp and weft can relate to the weave structure, it is often abandoned, unfinished, in favour of other projects."

Hmm. Give up half way? Not me! So must get back to sleying that reed....

And for those of you who couldn't face such a large project, here's a link to a very pretty and useful colour and weave sample woven by Judy.