Trying Weaving Loom and making of weaving pattern designer tool

The beginning

I got to revisit one of my childhood summer camp activities this weekend… and now I know I was a much more patient child than I was led to believe. But I don’t want to skip ahead, because it was a worthwhile experience.

I got a weaving loom kit and was excited about all the possibilities: purse straps, guitar straps, and so on. So I delved into the depths of the web and found a lot of amazing resources and examples of what this little thing can do.

Weaving Pattern Designer

I included the DMC catalog for thread colors, which I had already digitized and organized for TattingCAD. You can also add custom colors.

Back to my adventure

Once I had finished designing my pattern, I was pretty happy with the preview and ready to start threading the loom. I used size 10 crochet thread, and it took much longer than I expected. This was the point when I was ready to take a break. I was genuinely surprised that I had done this as a teenager. Still, I followed my design and successfully finished the ordeal. It was satisfying to see it done.

I thought the actual weaving would be straightforward. Naturally, I blamed something other than my inexperience: it had to be the yarn, definitely! Apparently, maintaining an even, neat weave is an art form in itself. And I had even considered trying card weaving. That is pure black magic, especially when you watch all those people doing it without even looking at what they’re doing…

How it ended up

Anyway, I failed. I didn’t take a picture of my roughly 60-centimeter (2-foot) catastrophe, but it didn’t look much better than what you can see in my first picture.

In the end, I had to throw away about an inch of thread. The rest is happily waiting for future tatting projects.