I think that the key to successful weaving is to be completely methodical. Don’t let a thread loose until you’re ready to do something with it immediately.
“A thread under tension is a thread under control.”
“There’s no need to untangle if you never let the threads tangle in the first place.”
“Threads aren’t alive. If they aren’t behaving, it’s because you need to change something that you’re doing.”
This beam is separated into two inch sections. Each section had masking tape applied while it was being beamed. This masking tape holds all the threads in their correct order for threading and weaving. A fabric with this many stripes doesn’t need every thread to be in the perfect location, but if the threads twist around each other or go too far away from their intended positions, there will be tangles and curses later on.
I unwind one section at a time and pull it around the roller to the front of the loom. I then trim the tape so I can pull individual threads out easily, and attach the whole section to the beater.
You can see here that I’ve threaded half of this section already.
I hold the threads in my left hand, find the next four, pull them loose, and thread them.
Since I prefer to hold the hook in my right hand, I thread from right to left. This means that there’s a bit of finagling to get the heddles in the correct positions. By putting heddles into groups of 4, I can easily check for threading consistency and count threads as I go. It’s far easier if I can catch my mistakes now!
When each section is threaded, I tie it into an overhand knot so that an accident can’t yank them out of the heddles. It also makes it easier when I need to keep count of my threads during sleying.
Pretty, isn’t it? I wish I could take credit for the colors.
That’s all there is to it. I’ll be repeating these steps for another 23 sections and a total of 1200 threads. With any luck, I’ll be weaving by Sunday.
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