Backstrap Weaving

Hola Herminda y bienvenido!
Gracias por visitar y espero que vuelvas!

Hi. I am sorry to hear you have been experiencing these problems on your rigid heddle loom and I hope that something I say here will help you solve the problem and enable you to finish your project. I typically work on a backstrap loom, a set-up that allows me to move my body and adjust tension on the warp…something which makes working with multiple sets of heddles easier particularly when one is weaving warp-faced cloth where the warp threads are sitting right next to each other.

I have, however, woven a few balanced weave projects using multiple heddles…the kinds of structures that people often weave on their floor and table looms. I wove a rosepath pattern and a 4-shaft shadow weave and some other things. I think the secret lies in having a lot of space between your heddles. If, for example, you are raising heddle 4…the one furthest from the fell…I would bunch heddles 1, 2 and 3 very close together and then have a considerable gap between them and heddle 4. I would pull up on heddle 4 and place a weaving sword or even a wooden ruler into the shed. You could strum your fingers gently across the warp threads if some of them are sticking. Of course, some of the warp ends in heddle 4 will also be enclosed in heddles 1, 2 or 3 but that should not make any difference to anything. Once you have your sword within the shed, you should tip it on its side. If your heddles 1, 2 and 3 are pushed close together, the shed should clear straight through those three sets of heddles to the front of your loom where you can pick it up an another sword or ruler. You need your heddles to be at the very least the length of the width of your sword.

When you want to raise heddle 2, for example, make sure that there is as much space as possible between it and heddles 1 and 3. You also want a decent amount of space between heddle 1 and the fell. Insert your sword into the shed and tip it on its side so that they threads can travel through heddle 1 to the fell where you can pick it up on another sword.

When you tilt the sword on its side, do so sharply and strongly. You can even push down slightly as you do so. This will help open up a clean clear shed and ensure that you are not picking up rogue threads from the other heddles.

Using multiple string heddles on a balanced weave is so much easier than using them on a warp-faced weave. You don’t have to deal with friction between threads and having them stick to each other.

if you continue to have problems, you might consider that perhaps you got some threads crossed when you made the heddles in the first place, that is, you didn’t put them into heddles in the correct order. Any crossed warp threads will create obstructions and make it impossible for you to pass the open shed through the various sets of string heddles to the fell. I wish I could jump through the computer to be there to help.

Good luck!