How I spent my Saturday -- weaving a market basket

My weavers guild meets on occasional Saturdays for what we call Cheap Sheep Therapy.  Yesterday was such a day and we met at the river-canyon-side home of member Joanne.  Joanne patiently taught us yet another wonderful basket -- this time a Market Basket.  Check out our guild's blog   http://delorospinnersandweaversguild.blogspot.com/   for more in-progress pictures.

Here is my completed basket and me enjoying the sunny winter day:

Post Victorian weaving looms

This is a clip fromthe BBC.   These looms all date from post-Victorian Europe -- highly mechanized, but still some are small enough that you could have one in your front room for cottage weaving.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26179200

 The Newcombe Rug Loom, one of the first looms with mechanized shuttles utilized a spring to shoot it through the shed.  Unfortunately, there was no shuttle cage at the receiving end, and it frequently caused serious injuries to the young children that were working in the industry.  In this clip, you can see a closeup of the shuttle-capturing cage -- a big improvement in safety.

Below is the Newcombe:

Bow Loom Weaving

Bow Loom Weaving

Each month, my spinners and weavers guild puts on an educational segment.  At  January's meeting, one of our members gave a program on bow loom weaving.  Above is my completed band, made with 5/2 (?) perle cotton and #6 glass beads.  Crochet cotton will work, too -- just use smaller beads.

Bow looms have been around since ancient times.  The "bow" part of the loom would typically be a flexible tree branch, with the warp threads stretched between the ends of the branch, flexing the branch somewhat to give some tension to the warp threads.  Warp threads were spread with a piece of hide or wood.  The nature of this loom best produces narrow bands -- probably less than 4 inches wide.

For our guild project, we had 48 inch dowels, about 3/8 inch diameter.  Nice and flexy.  A blunt tapestry needle makes a good shuttle.  Our project used a common kitchen sponge for the warp thread spreader and as a device to hold the beads back until ready.  We had 5 warp threads, so the sponge had 3 evenly spaced slices in the sponge to hold the center 3 warp threads, with the selvage threads running free against each outer edge of the sponge.  To hold the warp threads at each end, open up a paper clip and use another closed paperclip that has been duct-taped to the end.  At the lower end of the dowel, do the same.  Be sure your warp threads are 3-4 inches shorter than the dowel, so when stretched between the two ends, your warp threads are under tension.

We threaded about 100 beads on each of the outer "selvedge" warps, slid them all the way to the top by the paperclip, and then slipped that kitchen sponge below the beads, inserting 1 warp thread in each slice of the sponge, with each selvedge thread running alongside the outer sponge edges.  The sponge should provide sufficient friction to hold the beads away from the working area.  Google Images of bow looms for good visuals.

There are some great pictures here:   http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues02/Co07272002/CO_07272002_Loom_2.htm

Many cultures have used this type of loom, and you have to wonder what came first:  the hunting bow or the weaving bow loom.  Here is a nice example from McCord Museum in Montreal

Here's a nice wood engraving from a German book on medieval fiber arts:
http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/scripts/viewobject.php?Lang=1&section=false&accessnumber=ACC6090&imageID=309300&pageMulti=1