Weaving on a floor loom

Let’s be honest: making placemats on a floor loom is the ultimate sport of fiber gymnastics! Creating the pattern means getting up close and personal with every single thread. In our case, that is a casual 300 to 350 threads to manage individually.

By far the biggest hurdle? Prepping those vertical warp threads and winding them onto the loom. It is an Olympic-level test of endurance, but totally worth it once the weaving magic finally begins!

1. You have to corral those 300+ threads into perfect pairs, using a raddle on top of the loom and a set of cross sticks to keep everyone in their proper lanes.

2. Time for some heavy lifting: you have to use weights to wind those threads onto the warp beam under perfect tension so they stay taut and behaved.

3. To actually create the pattern, you have to thread individual strands through the heddles—those white vertical cords with the tiny openings right in the middle.

4. Next, you have to guide the warp threads through the openings of a reed—which looks a lot like a giant metal comb—before separating them into neat bundles and securing everything with temporary knots.

5. You have to connect the pedals to the correct shafts using cords, mapping out exactly which foot moves which threads.

6. Then you tie those bundles of warp onto the front apron bar and fine-tune the tension until every single thread is perfectly tight and ready for action.

7. Then, the real magic finally happens: to weave your pattern, you press a pedal, slide the shuttle with the weft yarn through the opening, release the pedal, and beat the yarn firmly into place.