Inkle Weaving on the Lofty Band Loom
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Setting up an inkle loom for the first time can be a daunting task. In general, I recommend setting up your loom without additional fringe for your first few projects. It is also easier to lay the left side of your loom down flat on a table rather than to try setting up the loom while it’s upright.
When I do inkle woven bands, I use Texsolv heddles and heddle the first and last ends of the warp to get clean, an even shed and controlled selvages. In addition to choosing your style of heddles (see Additional Notes and Materials for more information), you can also choose to leave your warp unheddled until you’re done winding or to start and end your warp with unheddled warp ends.
Step 1: Select your warp path, using Warp Paths - Baby Grand Loom or Warp Paths - Grand Loom as your guide. The samples of Bowties and Diamonds shown in this booklet were woven on the LoftyBaby Grand using 50” tablet weaving band path found in warp path buide for the Baby Grand and resulted in an average woven length of 30” (not including fringe).
Step 2: Lay the left side of your loom on a flat surface and lay out your heddles. Before you start, grab your heddles, a pair of scissors, and all the yarn you’ll be using in your warp. At this point you may find it helpful to attach the optional bases and/or cup hook if you have not done so already. For more information see Assembling your LoftyBand Loom. At this point I also lay out my heddles in an orderly way so that it will be easy to grab them later. If you have a new pack of heddles, make sure to cut them apart at the top and bottom before removing the twist ties.
Step 3: Using the first color in your warp, tie a loose knot either around the dowel in the end piece or the optional cup hook. This knot needs to be secure enough that it won’t move while you wind your warp, but it should be loose enough that you can untie it later.
Step 4: Wind your first (heddled) warp end according to your pattern. After you have wound the warp end, put the large hole at one end of the heddle over the contrasting colored dowel. Then fold the heddle around the end of the warp end and put the other large hole around the dowel. The picture below shows what your loom should look like after this step.
Step 5: Wind your second (unheddled) warp end. Picture below shows second warp end in the lighter color.
Repeat steps 4 and 5 until the end of your warp, finishing with a heddled warp end. Then tie the last end to the first end to make the warp into a continuous loop.
