A whole heap of lessons learnt this time, both how tos and what I like.

I bought a "little loom" from Becka Rahn via Etsy and love the idea behind it - one single piece of fibre glass out of which the loom, beater, needles/shed is made. It was just a bit too small for me - I should have read the dimensions clearer, they're listed clear enough.

On it's "little loom"

The good: I used the hemstitching technique to finish off the weaving, and I'm really pleased with how that looks.

The bad: I decided to use the "leave the ends sticking out of the weft and sew them in later" approach, which I just don't like as much as the "double weft a small area" approach. Now it might be that I could make it better if I tried hard enough, but the part where the ends are is very visible.

The major fail: removing it from the loom. The instructions say to use a crochet hook to hook the weft off the loom teeth. I tried this, but my weft was tightly wound and there was no give in it, so the weft broke. And in breaking, one of the weft threads got pulled out of the weaving entirely. (Visible at the right hand edge of the photo below where there is only one thread instead of two). I then cut the rest off with scissors, which made me glad that I'd stopped quite early rather than weaving to fill the available space.

Off loom having lost a warp thread

Key learnings:

  • when getting a new piece of equipment, ALWAYS be prepared to be making something disposable - that was the case here, but I could easily have been attempting to make a Christmas present or something
  • continue with hemstitching - it looks good
  • The little loom, whilst cute, isn't going to suit my purposes for any of my further projects (below)

Further projects:

  • possibly an attempt at a sampler on my picture frame loom to try out different stitches and possibilities
  • still liking the idea of a blanket - but need to have a loom bigger than 10cm square as I'll be spending all of my life sewing squares together - also a bit intimidated by how much effort it would take
  • finding a larger picture frame to make into a loom in the style of my small picture frame loom

Onwards an upwards, lots to be learnt from this particular fail so it's all good.