Are you joining us for our rigid heddle, Stash-busting Handspun Scraps Weave-along? If so, it’s time to gather your yarns for warping and weaving. I find it easiest to sort my yarns by colour and colour palettes first; then I go through these groupings to further divide my scraps into warp and weft piles, while simultaneously weeding out any yarns that don’t make either cut. I usually end up with more than one project arrangement that excites me, so I’ll choose one to weave first and put the other(s) in separate labelled bags or containers for the future.
Stash-Diving Ideas for Selecting Handspun Scraps, Minis, Etc.
Don’t overthink things. Instead, let the array of colours and textures inspire you. If you’re a newer spinner, your stash will likely boast fewer handspun scraps and partial skeins than someone who’s spent more time at the wheel. Use what you have, even if that means breaking into your full (100 g) hanks.
Still feeling stuck? Here are some yarn-batching ideas to consider:
- Select one skein of handspun that inspires you for its unique colour and/or texture, and use it as your main, focal yarn. This is a great way to highlight a special skein of handspun. Pair it with a solid commercial weaving or knitting yarn for an elegant result.
- Pull together a familiar colour palette. We all have our favourite colours and colour combinations, and your spinning stash likely reflects yours. You could also sort together colours based on seasons, themes, or digital images that call to you.
- Put those “not quite right” skeins to use. We all have them. Mine are over-twisted/over-plied skeins from my earlier years of spinning. These work beautifully as warp and can also be used in tandem with lighter plies to create distinctive results in the finished handwoven cloth.
- Use up your odds and ends. Even the smallest of handspun scraps can be used in rigid heddle weaving, both as weft yarn and as inclusions. If the scrap is long enough to be used in a single warp dent, it can also add visual interest to your project.
Choosing Your Warp Yarns
While the rigid heddle loom is uniquely friendly to a variety of handspun structures—even used together—some yarns are better than others as warp.
- First, consider your reed/dent size. The warp yarn needs to glide through the holes easily, without added friction.
- Avoid using yarn that’s super soft, structurally delicate, and/or that drifts apart easily, as the action of beating it with the rigid heddle is abrasive—collectively so. Trust me when I tell you… a visibly unsound join will continue to deteriorate with each beat and warp advance. However, this same unstable yarn can still be used as weft, as can your soft scraps (including strips of top or roving).
- Until you’ve woven a cloth or two, use a limited amount of singles in your warp and be especially careful of warping with art yarns like large beehives and fluffy clouds. Those hard-earned structures are likely to be destroyed more with each beat of the heddle. Tighter textured wraps and plies made from stronger fibres (even a smooth or thread-plied corespun) could be used in your warp, provided there’s enough space in the dent to allow it to slide freely. These make for beautiful eye candy in the finished cloth. I don’t recommend using any textured/art yarn as your entire warp, though. Instead, pepper these yarns into the warp decoratively. Since the rigid heddle itself distributes the tension of your warp threads across the threaded reed, a decorative row or two of warp can work quite well.
- Test for tensile strength: Pinch the yarn firmly between both hands, several inches apart, and pull to check for stability. A superfine or light laceweight yarn might snap, but it could be used doubled-up for added strength. You could also use a questionable warp yarn alongside another yarn, sharing the same dent.
Note that you may wish to use some of your yarns as both warp and weft for a cohesive effect.
Warping Your Rigid Heddle Loom
Now that you know which yarns pass the warp test, you can start contemplating your warp design. I can tell by sight whether my yarns will go well together, and that’s from lots of experimentation. If you’re feeling less secure, get a hangtag or business card and wrap your warp yarns around it to play with threading ideas. You can try alternate striping, colour blocks, or a free-form, random design (that one’s my favourite).
If any of your yarns are still in hank form, ball them up so they’re ready for warping and weaving. If you’re unsure of the yardage amounts of your handspun scraps, a digital scale and calculator can help you estimate. If you don’t have enough handspun to weave a full scarf, that’s okay too. You can still weave up a sample cloth. These may be used decoratively in your home or for sewing small bags and accessories.
Whether you choose to warp your rigid heddle loom using the direct or indirect method is up to you. When working with scrap yarns, I prefer the direct method for these reasons:
- I can design my warp by sight as I go.
- I can tell right away if a yarn needs to be replaced, and doing so is easy. Sometimes an unstable join or an otherwise weak area gets past my testing. This is a guaranteed “fail” when used as a warp.
- If a thread does break while I’m warping the loom, replacing it—if I choose to—is simple with this method. Sometimes, however, I leave my warp as is. Even imperfections can be beautiful in handspun, handwoven fabric.
- Even with all the tying of new ends onto my apron rod, this method is still faster and easier for me.
However you choose to wind your warp, be sure to keep the tension loose as you do so. Handspun yarns can vary greatly in their memory makeup. If you wind with too much tension, the bouncier yarns will snap back once they’re released and you’ll find yourself with radically different lengths of warp yarn.
How to Participate in the Scrap-Along/Weave-Along
The Stash-busting Handspun Scraps Weave-along will take place in the SweetGeorgia Discord group #weaving-with-handspun throughout the month of November, and we’ll be gathering on Zoom on November 15, 2023, at 11:00 a.m. Pacific time for a show-and-tell of our projects and progress! Join us any time from now on, if you are spinning for the weave along, you can find us also in the Discord channel #spinning.
I hope to see you there!
Original publication: October 11th, 2023; Refreshed: January 21st, 2025
