The following is a photo tutorial I have put together. There are not a whole lot of online tutorials for weaving (although this is quickly changing) so I have added a lot of weaving terminology to help my buddies looking to solve this same problem. The majority of my readers are non-weavers, but I hope you all enjoy these photos just the same. It’s an inside look at what handweaving is all about! For a basic photo identifying the parts of loom, please visit this site and scroll down.
As I mentioned the other day, I ran across a little problem with my current set of scarves. The width was too narrow! But with nearly 9 yards of warp on the loom and a deadline on the horizon, I did not want to cut everything off and start over. Surely there is a way to add width without starting over. But could it be done without taking anything off that was already on the loom? Could it be done without having to re-thread (much)? The answer is YES.
First I determined that I wanted to add 2 inches to both sides of the warp. (A total of 4 inches.) I measured out two separate warps at 2 inches wide and 8 yards long. (I estimated that after sampling, I had about 8 yards left on my 9 yard warp.) For clarity in this tutorial, I only photographed one side of my warp, but I actually added warp to both sides simultaneously.
Putting the new warp aside, I tied on the current warp to the cloth beam, as evenly tensioned as possible. (photo 1)
I then proceeded to wind the old warp forward to the cloth beam, using packing paper between the layers as I would on the warp beam. (photo 2) I wound until the end of my warp was even with the warp beam. (photo 3)
Untying just the outer edge of the stick, but not removing it completely from the warp beam, I slipped on the new warp and spaced it as evenly as possible. I then re-tied the outer edge of the stick to the dowel that is attached to my warp beam. I dress my loom back to front ala Peggy Osterkamp so the new warp is reversed on the back beam for “crank and yank”. (photo 3)
Since I couldn’t attach my raddle to the back beam, I laid it on the floor a few feet away and spaced the warp with rubber bands over the prongs to keep the warp from flying out. (photo 4) This actually worked surprisingly well! I still had to fiddle a bit on the back beam, but this was definitely better than nothing.
Yanking the new warp tight, I slowly wound old and new warp together on the warp beam. (photo 5) This took patience and interesting maneuvers as I had to carefully release the brake with my left foot and release the ratchet on the cloth beam with my left hand while cranking the warp beam with my right hand, plus keep everything under tension. Tricky perhaps, but totally doable.
With the old warp now rewound to the warp beam along with the new warp, I proceeded to set up for threading. (photo 6) I inserted lease sticks into the cross, attached it to the castle and threaded the heddles. In my case, I did not need to alter any of the already threaded warp ends, other than reassigning the floating selvedge.
Here is the new warp threaded through the heddles, ready to be sleyed through the reed. (photo 7) The reed has been attached to the beater bar this entire time with the old warp already sleyed and ready to go. While sleying the new threads through the reed, I did have to rearrange a few of the old threads to space things correctly, but I did not have to re-thread everything. I did however, re-tie everything, all ends, to the cloth beam. There was no risking the warp being uneven, so to make sure that the tension was even, I re-tied all the groups of threads.
My warp, on tension, old and new together, evenly spaced since it never left the heddles and reed. My warp is ready to go. Happy weaving!
If you have any questions about this process, please leave it in the comments section and I will be happy to add a response.
