On Wednesday, I showed you how to make a heddle bead loom from cardboard. Today, lets take a look at how to use the loom.
Tension-loom beadweaving is known as double-weft. The weft thread passes through each bead twice. Heddle loom beading is double-warp – the weft thread passes through each bead only once, but the beads are positioned between pairs of warp threads, which holds the weaving together. The advantage of this is that rather than having to thread your beads one row at a time, weaving each row into place before starting a new row, in heddle weaving you can thread as many beads as you like – the entire pattern if you wish – in one go.
For todays project you’ll need:
- a heddle bead loom
- beads
- thread – ordinary polyester thread is better for heddle beadweaving, you should not use nylon beading thread as the weaving tightens the tension, causing your beads to bunch up when the piece is taken off the loom.
- sewing needle for warping your loom
- beading needle
First, lets warp the loom. Stick a pin or small screw under the comb at the bottom of the loom to anchor your warp threads.
Since heddle bead-weaving is a double-weft technique, you’ll need twice as many warp threads as beads in the width of your pattern, plus two threads. I’m making an eight-bead-wide pattern, so I need 16+2 warp threads.
If you like you can warp one pair of threads at a time, but this can result in differences in tension across the piece. For even tension, it’s better to warp as many threads as you can manage with one continuous thread.
Take a long piece of polyester thread, and tie one end to the pin at the bottom of the loom, and thread the other end through a sewing needle. Pass the thread over the bottom spacer comb, and through a slot in the heddle. Loop the thread round one tooth of the top comb, and, holding it between the fingers of the opposite hand to maintain the tension, thread it through the next hole in the heddle. Take it back down through the bottom comb, and wind round the pin, before repeating the process for the next pair of warp threads. Trying to maintain an even tension by holding on to your warp threads and the heddle while threading with the other hand can feel like you need three hands – I use thumb and forefinger for tensioning the thread, and the other three fingers and the heel of my left hand for the heddle, leaving my right hand free to do the actual warping.
Neighbouring threads should go alternately through the slots and holes of the heddle – an easy way to do it is to have the threads giong away from you go through the slots, and threaded through the holes as they come back toward you.
If you run out of thread, tie off the previous thread to the pin and attach a new thread. Alternatively, you can just tie a new thread directly to the old one, leaving long-is ends which you can weave in later.
Now your loom is warped, you can prepare the weft by threading your beads. When following a pattern, remember that the thread will go back and forth, so if you string the first row of yor pattern reading right-to-left, the second row should be strung reading left-to-right, alternating direction each row. String as much of your pattern as you like and you think will be comfortable to work with. You can do the whole thing now, if you want, or string extra rows or sections as you go.
Tie the end of the thread to the side of your loom, and raise the heddle so that the warp threads that pass through the holes are raised. A shed stick – simply a stick you can put into this space (the ‘shed’) to hold it while you get the beads in place – can be useful if you are working a wide pattern. I just used my finger to hold the shed open.
Click the image for the full pattern
Pass the string of beads through the open shed, arranging them so that there are two warp threads between each bead and two threads at the edge of the pattern. Now push the heddle down, so that the threads through the holes are below the others, opening the opposite shed. Pass the bead string through again, arranging the row of beads directly above the beads of the previous row.
These first two rows are likely to drive you close to demented as you try to get the beads in the right place, but do persevere, as once these two rows are in place, thereby spacing the warp threads properly, the process suddenly gets a lot easier!
Continue in the same manner, raising the heddle when weaving in one direction, lowering it in the other, and using your fingers to slot the beads into place above the previous rows, maintaining a pair of warp threads between beads.
Deal with the loose ends as you would for tension-loom beading, either weaving them in, or tying them off and tucking them away out of sight when sewing your strip to a backing.
