Hi, I am Gloria Kenyon Public Programs Coordinator for the Smithsonian American
Art Museum and Renwick Gallery and for today's Handi-hour project we will be
making our own weavings. I have a couple of examples here in different
colors and different tightnesses and these are pretty small so you could use them
for your doll house or, you know, for your Barbie house. These are made on a four
about four loom, which I will show you how to do. If you want to make a bigger one for like a coaster, I
recommend a six-by-six or seven-by-seven loom. If you wanted to do something like a
placemat, I recommended a 13 by 9, or 13 by 10 for that size. To make our loom, as I
mentioned, this is a four-by-four square of cardboard. We just take this, and a pencil,
and a ruler and I'm just going to mark off a half inch on each side.
Then you are just going to draw a line connecting those. Then along that line you're going to
want to mark off every quarter inch. That's going to give us the notches to
create our looming for our weaving.
Once you have marked them off, you are just going to want to take a pair of scissors
and cut them down to the line you drew originally.
You are going to create these little notches where you are going to slide your yard for your weaving.
I've already done this one, so you
can see I've got a whole row of notches set to go. I'm just going to take my yarn, for my base
color, for my weaving. I'm going to start making my loom. You are going to start by
sliding it inside the notch, and you are going to want to leave a little tail. We are going to tape that
down to help keep it taut. We're going to need this tail at the end. We are going to go
down, around the back, so you want to create a loop in the back, back up, around
down, around. You want to be creating loops in the back and a nice taut string in the front.
Then when you're done, just cut all your yarn leaving about an inch or so and we will tape
that down as well. On the front we have a nice taut loom where we are going to create our
weaving. On the back we have a series of loops which we will use at the end.
To take our color for weaving, this one's pretty small so I'm only going to use
one color for it. You can switch up colors if you want. Just a couple of feet
of yarn. This actually takes several feet of yarn, so you will want to make sure you
have enough if you're going to create a larger one, maybe about a half skein for a
placemat. I would say probably five feet actually for a small coaster. You just want to
make sure you've got plenty, because it will tighten up as you go. As you
start your weaving you're just going to go over under over under. Every
other one you are just going to slide it through. Pull it down, but don't go all the way to
your base because at the end you're going to want this extra little
bit of yarn because that'll help you tie your knots at the end. Pull it through and leave
about an inch or so of a tail. We're just going to weave that tail in
as we go, to come back across the other side. We ended on an over and we are going to go
under. So you're going to the reverse of what you did the first time. So if you
went over under you are going to go under over. So under over, under over
under over. Once you get started you'll start to see a rhythm and a
pattern developing so it's pretty simple to keep it going. We don't want to
pull it too tight because we'll start to create some warping. We want to leave it
a little bit loose. I like to take the needle and just kind of push it down to
help tighten it, as we go. We're going to tuck our tail in as we weave. I'm just
going to pull it up and as I weave the yarn, I'll go, slide it in,
so it gets hidden and you won't be able to see it at the end. You just continue like
that, back and forth. Make sure that tails is tucked in there, and pushing it down.
You continue like that, until you get close to the end. Then when you get to the end, this is one I've pretty
much finished. You're just going to finish it off by doing one last row.
You can see it's pretty taut at the end which is what you want, you want your
weaving to be nice and tight so it'll hold together.
Then to tuck that final tail in, weaving it in the needle, we are just going to slide it down into
this edge of the weaving. That will hide it and you won't see any little bits or pieces.
Then I'll just trim off this little extra piece. Then we are going to finish this by
pulling these loops off, and tying them off, to create a little fringe. You just push them
off the tabs. This is why you don't want to push down too far as because you're
going to, to tie them off, you are going to need a couple of inches of space.
If they get hung up, just slide them over.
You can see, we have our series of loops.
We are just going to cut them. Then we will push our weaving down a little bit and
that'll tighten it up. That's also why you want to make sure you keep it
loose as you weave, because you'll tighten it up at the end. Just tie it in a nice little double
knot cause that will hold a little bit better. You will just go down, tying each of them off.
When you are done with this row, you can just take the tape off here and pop all these off and tie them off in the
same way. You end up with your weaving like this, which as you can see is
much smaller than when you started with so keep that in mind when you're making your own.
That's how you make your own weaving.