Like an Amusement Park. . .

for Weavers!, the Hands on Weaving Demonstration, hosted by The Handweavers’ Guild of Connecticut

was a wonderful way for us to spend a Saturday. Guild members demonstrated about twenty different types of weaving, most of which visitors were welcome to try too.

As always, kids looooved the potholder looms!! Did you have one of these as a kid?

They could also try their hand at weaving on simple cardboard looms,

or a back strap loom.

Or they could make a CD spindle and learn to spin!

Some of the more uncommon types of weaving/looms shown were Card Weaving, which DH had never even heard of before,

Inkle Looms for making belts, handles and tapes,

an 8 Shaft Table Loom, with which you can create complex patterning. . .

by flipping down a different combination of those handles on the top of the loom before each throw of the shuttle,

and a Navajo Tapestry Loom. I love that she’s using an ordinary fork as a beater!

Since I own two, I’m far more familiar with Rigid Heddle Looms than with any of these other ways to weave. Here’s a cute little one called an Easy Weaver.

And that’s me talking about floating warp threads at the selvedges while sitting at a much larger Rigid Heddle Loom, one on a floor stand.

Now I’m seriously thinking about putting one of my Rigid Heddle Looms on a stand! DH says it wouldn’t be hard to build one to fit.

Who knows what I, or rather my hands, were talking about here. lol.

But the photo shows how the loom is attached to the stand and that could be helpful to us later.

DH and I both added a few picks to this twill. This was his first time at a loom,

and my first time using a boat shuttle!

Check out this woman’s shuttle throwing technique. . .

Here’s another, who holds it quite differently. . .

I gotta get me one! Weaving goes so much faster when you use a boat shuttle instead of a stick one!!

There were so many kinds of floor looms to look at that I soon lost track of which was which and found it easier to just talk about what people were weaving. I was assured that this pattern isn’t nearly as complicated as it seems when seen as fabric on the loom. . .

and as a draft, the chart you follow when threading the loom and while weaving.

DH caught me talking with my hands again, lol.

Check out the beautiful hand-woven tote that I’m holding! If I remember correctly, this volunteer was showing how it’s fabric, a block weave?, was made by alternating single picks of a heavy yarn, wound on the long stick shuttle in her left hand, and a much finer one, which is on a bobbin in the boat shuttle.

Playing with all these floor looms made me reminisce about mine a little. It’s an ORCO (Oriental Rug Company) 74, which I bought in about 1975. Can you believe how little a 36″ floor loom cost back then?

When we were first married I reassembled it after each move even though I didn’t have the time to weave on it. But, after a while, I quit even putting it together and now it’s been in our garage, in pieces, for many years. It’s Big and Heavy. Maybe if I really get into weaving again, I’ll decide it’s worth the bother to make a place for it in our little house.

P.S. I discovered that ORCO 74 looms are still being built, now by Great Northern Weaving of Kalamazoo, MI.