Backstrap Weaving

Here are some suggestions for places and ways to tie up the far end of your backstrap loom in your house….

1. Here my loom is tied around the leg of my electric piano.

2. The loom bar can be suspended from a door knob. Note that this doesn’t work well for narrow warps and that the loom bar should be only a little longer than the width of the warp otherwise it will tend to slip from side to side and be very unstable.

3. This is my favorite way – tied to the bottom of my bed. I sit on a cushion on the floor. The warp is angled up only slightly and I find this very comfortable. I can also brace my feet against some planks that are under the bed.

4. Hooks can be placed in the side of a heavy piece of furniture and you can then slot your loom bar into those. As you go advancing and rolling up your warp, you will need to add some rope to the loom bar so that you maintain your distance from the piece of furniture (or you will end up with your knees under your chin!).

A suspended loom bar works best on wide warps. It is also important to have notches in the ends of the loom bar so that the cords that hold the bar to the fixed point will not slide into the center.

This works beautifully in all kinds of situations as long as the clamps are on a heavy piece of furniture that is not likely to move. My friend Lisa puts her clamps on a window ledge. I have heard of others doing so on a kitchen counter.

My friend Janet came up with this while visiting a friend. I love it!

A porch rail works nicely as does a stair rail. I know someone who has hooks on either side of a door frame and lodges the loom bar in those. Another friend attaches to the rungs on the ladder of a bunk bed. 

The loom bar tied up to a rail at left and lodged behind tent stakes driven into the ground at right.

Montagnard weaver, Ju Nie, also lashes her loom bar to her bed base and sets up a large roll against which to brace her feet.

The loom bar can be lashed to a vertical post but, depending on what the post is made from, the bar can slip down. A special kind of lashing which Barry Brown explained to us in the Backstrap Group on Ravelry will stop this from happening.

You can see instructions for this lashing thanks to Barry who provided the link and the Girl Scouts here.

If all else fails…..use a toe or foot for narrow pieces…

…and both feet for wide ones!

I have tried it and am not a big fan but for many weavers in Asia this is the norm. They tend to weave this way using circular warping.

Please drop me a line if you have come up with any ways of your own!