What's On The Loom...

I know I've been MIA since Thanksgiving.  Thank you sweet ones for sending notes of concern and encouragement, it was greatly appreciated!  Everything has been wonderful, just needed to pull back from a few things to enjoy my family over the holiday season, and a little recoup from the crazy preChristmas pace in the shop!  I will post a more comprehensive sharing of life later, but I wanted to at least share a new skill I am learning and thoroughly enjoying!

I have been dreaming of this for a very long time...being able to weave on a large scale.  So, for my birthday this year, Matt and Cole helped me build a 6 foot loom.  We almost did not have the space to build it-hard to find a 6 foot by 6 foot open space in our little home.  Fortunately when in use, it takes up practically no space!  It is on the unfinished outside wall of our new bedroom in the basement.  We laugh because Matt and I's bedroom in the basement looks like a movie set from the outside with all of the studs exposed.  It happens to be the only "wall" though that is not used in one way or another.  So attaching the loom to it worked very well!  The picture should help make sense of what I am saying.

        (through that door is our beautiful new bedroom which you would never expect from the outside)


The loom is basically just an over sized potholder loom, the kind we all did as children. We used simple 2x4's for the frame.  It contains 268 screw pegs on it. 67 on each side.   It is the most calming, easy going craft-therapeutic even.  I can do 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there and come back or leave it whenever I want.  I do not have to duck away to do it, I can be around the kids as I work and even Bell has her own smaller loom that she sits and works on by me.

My first project was a small rug made from cotton jersey stretch reclaimed from bed linens.




And this is what is on the loom right now.

I am ready to cast off the loom with this rug.  If all goes well, it is going to go into the shop.  I used both jersey sheets and tshirts for this rug-so soft and cushy.  These go relatively fast.  My hope is to begin a wool rug and that one will probably take me a good amount of time.  Smaller pieces of fabric to attach and many more garments included than in a jersey rug.  The jersey rugs I just tie, but the wool I am going to sew strips together.

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas!!