the pleasures of threading

This is one of my favourite stages in the weaving process. I didn’t expect this to be the case. In fact, I remember going to that beginner’s workshop at Twist Fibre Craft Studio and being horrified at the thought of having to put all those individual threads through all those little eyes… But as soon as I sat down to do it I thought: how simple this is, how miraculous — to think that you can build a piece of cloth one thread at a time. I haven’t yet stopped being delighted by this amazing feat!

It is something that can be very frustrating when it goes wrong, but I am fortunate in that this doesn’t happen to me often. (Or at least it didn’t, but I may have angered the gods by saying so — look out for future frustrations on this topic!) I suspect that, when I indulge in a spot of threading, I am using the part of my brain that likes mathematics and naturally looks for sequences in things, and that therefore I am quite relaxed. And relaxed is always a help, is it not?

I prepare myself for the mental threading zone by preparing the loom:

The warp is wound onto the back beam and the lease sticks are comfortably supported on a couple of apron rods stuck through the sides of the loom. They are perched on the back beam and the base of the beater, since I have lifted off the breast beam and the top of the beater and removed the reed. This gives me better access to the shafts but still leaves me the beater as a place to rest my elbows!

Taped to the castle with masking tape is my threading plan, written out in full. I tend to do this rather than rely on repeats since I like the sense of progress that I get as I tick off the threaded sections. This is a fairly simple twill (I’ll have to say more about it in another post or I’ll be here all day) but I am changing direction every four or eight threads, so I’ll need to keep my eye on those ticks.

Next I have counted out my heddles. I always do this before I start, because the number of heddles I have left unthreaded is the best check I know that things are going to plan. Some weavers mark their heddles with different colours so they know which shaft is which. As I am only using eight shafts I haven’t found this necessary, but something I have done on my table loom is to mark every tenth heddle with a black marker:

This makes it really, really easy to count out the number that I need for my threading and also to make sure that the shafts are balanced by keeping the same number at each end. I haven’t actually done this on the Delta yet (though I frequently mean to) just because it has so much more room and so many more heddles. However, I do keep a rough count to make sure that I am working more or less in the middle.

Then I make myself comfortable — on an adjustable office chair set low rather than on the loom bench — and I’m off. Shame it doesn’t last long… I shall have to weave something a bit wider or a bit finer so that the threading takes longer! I used to weave wider cloth but I’m going through a scarf phase at the moment.

I usually thread about eight to twelve threads in a little group, so I pull off that number of heddles from my prepared set, thread them and then tie the ends into a slip knot. I don’t check every single group unless the threading is really complex, but I do “spot checks” as I go along to reassure myself that I am not dozing off.

In my first year of weaving I went with my mother for a week’s course with David Gurney in Turriff (alas, no longer available) and he suggested checking thus: work backwards through the ends you have just threaded — so that the change of sequence keeps you alert and you don’t just “see what you expect to see” — and check the shaft by looking at the bottom rather than the top. So here’s a picture of me doing just that on my first group of threads:

Anyway, ’tis all done now. And it is 9 a.m. and high time I got on with some work!