Yes, You have to be Warped to Weave....

And I have a button to prove it...  Thanks Madelyn.
Get ready here we go with another weaving lesson.

Yes, those bread cloths I was working on last time
I made a "weaving" post are all finished and waiting
for our local craft show with other handwoven items
I   have completed.

There are basically 2 types of designs.  "Loom Controlled" designs
are determined by the way you thread the loom, tie the harnesses to
the foot treadles and the order in which you step on the treadles.



Tapestry Weaving (my favorite) is a process where the weaver creates the design
and that's my current project.  Ready for some new vocabulary words?

My weft yarn has been wound in balls and placed
on my loom shelf for easy access as I weave.

With Tapestry weaving, the loom still has to be threaded (warped), but the
thread interlacement is basic weaving where the yarn goes over one
warp thread and under the next (plain weave).  

A design (cartoon) is drawn to scale and placed under the
warp threads.
The hieroglyphics are guides for color and weaving techniques
I want to use to get the desired visual result.

Each row of weaving is packed in place with a hand held
tool called a packing fork and not the "beater" that is part of the loom.  You can tell  I'm left handed...

The weft yarn is wound into "butterflies" 

When I step on one foot treadle it raises every other warp thread
which creates an opening between the raised and not raised
threads.   I pass the yarn through the "shed" opening by hand
and hand pack the weft tightly in place - about 30 rows per inch
for these handwoven coasters.

Tapestry is a weft faced weave structure where you only see
the weft as opposed to cloth (loom controlled structures) which
generally show various amounts of both the warp and weft.  As
each neighboring weft weaves thru the shed opening, it must
travel in the opposite direction of its next door neighbor for this technique
which is called "hatching", to work.  For example,
in this shed, the green is traveling toward the left, the turquoise toward
the right and the purple toward the left.  There are numerous variations possible!!!

For this series of Coasters, I decided to weave
a variety of tapestry techniques that I use to create
different looks in each of my tapestries.

For example I did a series of 5 small format tapestries,
which reside in our AZ home, using many of these
shading technique.  Each piece is 9 by 11 inches and framed
in a black 11 x 15 inch shadow box.

These wool Coasters woven on a cotton warp
 will all be about 4.5" x 4.5" with a little fringe..
 #1 finished - only 19 more to go...