Dear Friend and Fellow Maker,
Once there was an assortment of pipes purchased from Amazon sitting in a box. They sat there day after day from late winter to spring to early summer before someone decided to see if they might work together to become a loom. Yes, a loom to weave images. A loom with tension so that the “someone” might have an easier time of warping and tightening up the warp threads, as well as offering a longer shed to work with.
This dear someone, whom I know pretty well 😉1, has tried several kinds of looms, from small to big. She hasn’t tried them all mind you, as she has a small budget, small studio space, and just doesn’t like size or expense to loom over her. 😆2 She even sold a used Mirrix Tapestry Loom and an Ashford Tapestry Loom a couple of years ago as she just couldn’t seem to wrap her foggy head around how it all worked, how to be comfortable at said looms perched on her studio desk or standing upright on the floor.
She continued to warp her small frame looms made from pulling the canvas off of the wood frame and just warping that up nice and tight. She has happily woven many things this way, even though the skin on her fingers would sometimes be worn near to bleeding in the attempt to keep a tight even tension on the warp. 😩
So the day came a few weeks ago when the box of pipes was plopped on the kitchen counter and assembly ensued. Within a mere hour or so, (and a couple of trips to Lowe’s hardware for a few things I needed to complete the loom), she had what looked like an actual, real life, pipe loom such as she had seen Sarah Swett use3, and Rebecca Mezoff4, as well as Tommye Scanlin5. This was exciting to say the least!
Now this is where the loom actually became a seed. Because you see, something began to grow, if ever so slowly, and quite tentatively, as the someone gathered the “soil” around the bottom of the loom, choosing colors from her Snippet Jar. She had made many Snippet Jar Tapestries6 over the last several years, many of the leftover snippets becoming lovely little images, framed and sold at an exhibit and at her local gallery. Life has been intervening here and there, like rainstorms and other various weather systems that prevent much tending to the growth of her tapestry garden. But bit by bit, slow as slow does…something has been growing!
At first I (switching to first person narrative here!) wondered if the rattle of the threaded rod within the side pipes would continue once the warp was nice and snug on the loom. I am happy to report it has disappeared! Yet other adjustments needed to be made to ensure happy weaving.
I propped the loom on top of a card table in a corner of my sunroom studio. The card table, being a few inches shorter than my old oak teacher’s desk, afforded being able to weave without my hands working way above my heart. But as the Tree grew, so did my need for either the table legs to be lopped off, or the loom to be shortened somehow.
I knew there were options for this. I won’t enumerate all of them here (although if you are really interested you can check my Instagram for a detailed list of options plus other terrific ones Tommye gave me there). I will simply tell you what I ended up doing. 😃
I pulled out my long neglected Julian French Easel from my painting years. I knew that this easel allowed for adjusting the height from sitting to standing and every inch in between! I also knew that the bar at the bottom and top would securely hold the pipe loom, sans feet. So I removed the legs of the pipe loom (so easy to do!) and set the loom on the easel, adjusting the height as needed for a comfortable weaving position of my hands in front of me instead of high above my eyeballs! (Goodness, what contortions we makers will sometimes put our bodies through to create what we want!😵💫)
You may also wonder at the black felt behind the loom…? This was a tremendous help as I was straining my eyes to see what I was weaving with such strong backlighting. Since I have windows nearly all around me in this lovely room, I just couldn’t see well even with the blinds closed. I found a piece of black felt, draped and pinned it down the back of the loom and now it is absolutely perfect for watching this little woven Tapes-tree grow pick by pick, color by color, using up little bits of leftover hand spun yarns and other snippets from knitting, crocheting, and weaving cloth.
I am now weaving the canopy of this tree, dreaming of what is next for the pipe loom. I have a series in mind (not of trees…though that is certainly percolating:) but it will require an 18” pipe across the top and bottom instead of the 12” I’ve got here. I also need to be a bit more purposeful in getting the tension EVEN across all warps next time. I can feel the difference in tautness from left to right as I pick the warps. I was thinking it would all work itself out on its own once I tightened up the wingnuts. Ha! I still need to pay attention to having the warp as evenly taut as I can for each warp, and THEN I can tighten them up altogether.
Just like gardening…there is A LOT of prep work to do before you actually plant a seed on your loom and watch it grow. And just like a garden, it is ever so satisfying to see your work yield results you are pleased with, both on the loom and in your body. Less aches and pains in the process is all the better and will keep me weaving more happily into the future!
7If you have any questions at all about the making of this loom or other such things, feel free to ask in the comments. If there are enough of you who would like the specifics on my loom, I can surely make a post about it. Be sure to check the links I have given in the footnotes below, one to Sarah’s posts, one to Rebecca’s and also Tommye’s on making pipe looms. Think of it as making a trellis8 on which your tapestry garden can grow. This trellis is made of pipe instead of wood, but works just as well and it can withstand nearly any pressure, tension, weather or other! 🤪😍💖9
With gratitude,
Jennifer
aka Moi! I can be slow as molasses when it comes to figuring out technical things. 🙄 Once I figure it out though, Katy bar the door! I may have ten of these pipe looms before summer’s end!! Just kidding…😜 (And just how many idiomatic expressions can I use here? haha!)
See what I did there? Loom over her…? I’m really on a roll today! 😋
This is an excellent post Sarah Swett has on her blog, which I have poured over, to figure out the technical bits of making a pipe loom!
This is Rebecca’s blog post on making a copper pipe loom, which I chose not to make since I wanted the strength of galvanized pipe and did not want to solder anything. 😬 Rebecca and Sarah have teamed up to create a course on all things to do with Fringeless Tapestry including making a pipe loom! Do check that out!
And this is Tommye Scanlan’s blog post about her small pipe loom she made. I saw this one in person at a two day class I took from Tommye three years ago. Such a good time!
This link will take you to a photo listing of several things I mention in this post…the Ashford Tapestry Loom (which I no longer have), the frame loom made from taking the canvas off of the stretcher bars, and a few Snippet Jar Tapestries. There are many more, which you could see on IG using the hashtag #snippetjartapestries. 💖
See that pile of yarns with the Niddy Noddy on top of it? Those are recent hand spun yarns as I spin daily for Tour de Fleece! Anyone else participating in TDF this year? I don’t join a team or anything…I just spin, as much or as little, each day, as I am able. So fun to watch the pile grow!
Seed? Trellis? Which is it Jennifer? I suppose a Loom can be viewed in any number of ways. It is certainly an essential part of weaving, without which, a Tapes-tree could not grow. 😍
I have FAR TOO MANY emoji’s in this post! I do apologize! No respectable writer does this. I promise to restrict the number of them in my next post! 🙄😁😜😂🌷🌳🧶
Impressive loom and a beautiful tapestry! ♥️
Gorgeous new Tapestry!. And the LOOM! So impressed and happy. Thank you for the beautiful words the delight of pipe loom connections to you, to Rebecca and to Tommye, and the glimpse into what you're doing.