Cheap DIY Tablet Loom

Pennsic tends to suck all your money away, and when I got home, I realized I really needed a loom for 25+ card projects. My inkle loom is great for smaller bands, but strings start popping off after a while if I add too many cards to it.

But what to do? A box loom can run $50 or more, depending on size, quality, maker, so on, and I couldn't keep borrowing bigger looms from people. Instead, I worked out with my husband a way to make a (temporary, admittedly) solution. We went to Home Depot (both my favorite and least favorite place in the world), and I invested about $10 in tools for a jury-rigged loom that needed only minimal tools on my part.

Here are the supplies I decided I would need for this:

- One larger piece of scrap lumber, at least 18 inches long. Light enough to be portable.
- Two small pieces of scrap lumber, about 3x5 or 8x10.
- Two cheap drawer handles
- At least three clamps
- Two clip...things. (They're in the photo.)

The small scrap lumber squares are actually flooring samples - you can snag them for free at Home Depot. They're the perfect size, and some of them actually come with foam on the bottom, which is a bonus if you want to hold fiber in place without tearing it up with wood.

I had a 2'x2' board I was going to use for another project, but this was a more immediate need so I repurposed it. It saved me a bit of money, but honestly you can probably get some scrap from Home Depot or Lowe's for just as free. 

We drilled holes in the flooring samples to attach the drawer handles. The screws ended up being too long, but that isn't something I'm going to worry about. This isn't the Sistine Chapel and I'm not Michelangelo. 

Next step: clamp the small wood (and attached handle) to the end of the long wood with two clamps. LOOK AT THAT. The two clamp side is the "working side", or where you'll be doing all the weaving.

After that, attach the second piece of wood-and-handle to the opposite side of the long wood.

It doesn't need to sit on either side of the handle because this is just where you've got your loose thread hanging out. You can even wrap thread around the clamp to keep it in place when you're not working.

But hey. If you really want two clamps on this end, you do you.

You can see here that I've stacked two flooring samples foam-to-foam, giving extra height and a place for fiber to go, as mentioned above. 

Just another angle, because I value multiple camera angles when trying to figure out DIY projects explained by people who can't explain things - like me.

So, those weird clip things that probably have a name, but I don't know what it is. They look like metal clothespins, or jumper cable clamps. THOSE are great, they were like 90 cents.

IT'S FOR HOLDING THINGS IN PLACE.

I like to weave with good tension on my project, but as you can imagine, there's probably a point where I'll tug too hard and things will explode like a mousetrap. These clips will help with that: they grip REALLY WELL, and will keep the project in place while I'm working on it.

By the way, if you're curious about how sturdy all of this is with the handles and clamps and whatnot: it weighs about 5-10lbs. I grabbed it by one of the handles and carried it upstairs just like it is in the above photo without any slipping. 

It's sturdy, it'll do the job I need it to do.

Happy crafting!

(Awwww) YIS,

Ciosa 

Baronial Award Garters

I finally settled in to do a test run of some garters for the Barony of Ponte Alto's Order of the Garland award.

Pre-Pennsic, I had plotted out the entire weave; the plan was to do double-faced tablet woven bands, using a font from Linda Henrickson's Please Weave a Message. I had graphs. I had cards.

When I sat down to actually do it upon returning from Pennsic, I couldn't remember why I had set the pattern as needing 34 cards, so I cut it down to 22. I wove through the first three letters of the word "Order", turned the page in my graphing journal to "of the" to get a sense of timing, and went, "Oh."

That goddamned "f". That "f" was why I needed 34 cards.

"Oh."

So this meant I needed to either scrap the whole thing...or play Frankenstein with the lettering. The latter seemed easier than warping up 34 new cards, so that's what I did: I re-wrote the pattern so that the "f", "t", "g", and "l" all fit into the space I had available.

GIVE MY CREATION LIFE

From that point, I was like, "Hell, graphing is easy, I'm going to add Ponte Alto's bridge from their heraldry!" and...did that. I spent the better part of the evening graphing out the bridge and then finishing the weave. I'm really happy with the results, to be honest. For a first attempt at double face tablet weaving, I think I did PRETTY GOOD. 

Now I get to do it in s i l k.