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Looms come in many shapes and sizes and each style has it’s own
practical reason for having been designed in the first place, but they
all have two things in common:
- The first being that every loom is only a mechanical means of raising
and lowering fibers to make weaving easier and
- the second is that only a "‘looming idiot" would find
setting one up and using it to be a relaxing hobby. (That being a given,
it explains why men made up the majority of the Weaving Guilds in the
Middle Ages….)
Terminology associated with weaving can frequently be confusing to those
who have never woven and don’t associate with the ‘looming idiots’
(like myself) who enjoy this hobby. After all, who would think that being
‘warped’ is a good thing?
Warp threads are used to determine the length of a woven piece of fabric.
When a weaver is setting up the loom prior to weaving, they are ‘warping
the loom’. Ergo, when setup is completed, the loom (and the weaver)
is ‘warped’.
Each warp thread must be threaded through a heddle which is the mechanical
means of separating threads into 2 distinct levels called a ‘shed’.
Typically heddles are fastened to a wood or metal rod running the width
of the fabric that can move all heddles at the same time.
On larger looms the rigid rod running the width of the fabric which is
used to raise or lower heddles is called a ‘harness’. The number
of harnesses on a loom can vary widely from simple 2-harness construction
to much more complex looms which make use of 30 or more harnesses. In
general, the more harnesses on a loom, the more complex the patterns that
can be woven.
Different type of looms were designed for different purposes.
- Inkle looms are small simple looms intended to weave fairly
narrow pieces of a fixed length which are generally used as either trim
or sturdy straps. Easy to transport, this small loom can produce extremely
complex designs when cards or ‘tablets’ are used as heddles.
- Backstrap looms and warp-weighted looms are used to weave long
lengths of fabric that are wide enough to be used to fashion clothing.
Backstrap looms can be easily wrapped up and carried to a new location
while the warp-weighted loom requires little more than a level beam
and simple weights. At this time, I have no practical experience with
either loom and am willing to take advice and construction notes from
anyone who does.
- Frame looms are used to weave a piece of cloth in a specific
shape and/or size. To my knowledge, this is the only way to weave a
triangular piece of fabric. It is also the most commonly used type of
loom to create/weave tapestry pieces. A typical frame loom would be
the simple rectangular rug looms used to weave Navaho rugs.
- Floor looms are the largest looms and typically are the most
frequently thought of by individuals who are un-initiated in the art
of weaving. The weaving surface is horizontally mounted on a framework
of legs similar in manner to a table. Unwoven warp threads of nearly
any length are wound onto a beam at the back of the loom. As the weaving
progresses, the completed cloth is then rolled forward around a beam
at the front of the loom as the back beam is rotated to unwind more
thread. Most non-industrial floor looms have harnesses which are operated
by the use of foot pedals, so these looms are also known as ‘foot-powered’
looms.
- Table looms are constructed very similar to floor looms except
on a smaller scale and with the ability to raise and lower harnesses
by hand.
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