What should I expect during my first rigid heddle loom lesson?

I know . . . you're at your first lesson and are feeling a mixture of anticipation, excitement and fear. You'd learned that weaving itself wasn't so complicated, but that preparing the loom was. It wasn't so long ago that I felt the very same way, and all I can tell you is that I prepared my loom today to weave a long scarf in about half an hour . No anxiety, no stress. It will take you about two or three times that your first few times, but after, it will be smooth sailing. I'm going to break down what I do in my first 3-hour lesson to take away some of that anxiety.

Before I get close to my loom I have to decide what kind of yarn I'm using. There are many possibilities, many material choices and many prices. You might want to weave something in acrylic at the beginning, because you can find some lovely yarns at very reasonable prices at a place like Michael's. I, in fact, suggest that you use acrylic for your first several runs because it is easy to use and gives lovely results; you also won't regret any mistakes you make or the way it turns out because you have spent so little on the yarn itself. When you get better, you might graduate to wool, cotton, bamboo, silk, mohair, alpaca, but except for wool, which is also easy to weave with, I would stick with some form of acrylic. Most acrylics are a #3 yarn, which means they are a medium weight; that #3 should be evident from the label of the yarn you buy.

So you find the prettiest yarn you can and move on to decide how much of it you need to make what you want to make. There are easy mathematical calulations

(I will give you a worksheet with them) that will tell you how much yarn to use for how wide (your warp) and how long (your weft) you want your weaving to be. After a while you will know without going through those calculations, but I still use them just to be sure. What if you don't have the slightest idea about the standard sizes of say, a scarf, or a dishcloth, or a table runner or a shawl? All those statistics are easily found online or in beginning weaving books. And yes, you can have your warp one color and your weft another, and even use multiple colors in each one. In addition to the weight of the yarn the yarn label will have how many yards of it is in that particular skein or ball or cone.

Next, to choosing a heddle. Most new rigid heddle looms come with an 8-dent heddle, because that is the size most people use the most; that is the size you would usually use with a #3 yarn. How to find out what size heddle to use? An easy way is to wrap your yarn around a small ruler for one inch, with the yarn fairly snug and the individual threads sitting right next to each other with no space in between. Then count the number of threads you have in that inch and divide by 2, and that is the size of the heddle to use.

Finally, to the loom! I would say there are literally dozens if not hundreds of youtube videos that show how to warp (prepare) your loom. We will use the direct method because I think it's the easiest. It is too long to explain in a blog post, but I will break down the various steps for you; you start with your heddle in the neutral position:

Pulling the yarn through the slots in the heddle and attaching it to a post.

Taking the yarn off the post and then rolling it onto the back beam.

Sleying the heddle, that is pulling some of the yarn through the slots in the heddle.

Tie-ing on the yarn to the front dowel and ensuring your tension is even all the way across your warp.

Rolling that onto the front beam.

Positioning an "anchor" to use so that your first picks are stable and straight. I use a thin piece of cardboard, but many people simply use thread.

This probably makes little to no sense to you at this time, but it may help you remember after your initial foray into warping. It took me at least two lessons (initial and one-hour refresher just for warping) before I could even begin to conceptualize exactly what was going on and why I was doing what I was doing.

And now to weaving. Learning how to move the heddle up, down and in neutral; hemstitching to lock in the beginning and end of your weaving (I will show you how if you have never, like me, sewed); finding out how to put the yarn on the shuttle that you will use to weave; changing yarn and what to do with the tails temporarily; how to use the ratchets to keep your tension even and to advance your cloth. How to actually do the weaving and keep your edges (selvedges) straight. And finally, how to know when you are finished weaving your piece, taking it off the loom, and wet-finishing it to set everything in place, followed by cutting off the tails of the yarn made by changing or running out of yarn.

And there you go . . . you have weaved your first.