Loom

[1][2][failed verification] By 1838 "loom" had gained the additional meaning of a machine for interlacing thread.

It generally has additional components to make shedding, picking, and battening faster and easier.

Heddle-rods and shedding-sticks are not the fastest way to weave, but they are very simple to make, needing only sticks and yarn.

So when the heddle rod is pulled out and placed in the forked sticks protruding from the posts (not lettered, no technical term given in citation), the shed (1) is replaced by the counter-shed (2).

The combination of a heddle-bar and a shedding-stick can create the shed and countershed needed for a plain tabby weave, as in the video.

The warp threads pass through the holes, and the cards are twisted and shifted to created varied sheds.

There are heddles made of flip-flopping rotating hooks, which raise and lower the warp, creating sheds.

They are mostly controlled by treadles; creating the shed with the feet leaves the hands free to ply the shuttle.

[14][16] If the threads are rough, closely-spaced, very long or numerous, it can be hard to open the sheds on the jack loom.

In a drawloom, a "figure harness" is used to control each warp thread separately,[20] allowing very complex patterns.

A drawloom requires two operators, the weaver, and an assistant called a "drawboy" to manage the figure harness.

[21] Some scholars speculate an independent invention in ancient Syria, since drawloom fabrics found in Dura-Europas are thought to date before 256 AD.

Mechanical dobbies pull on the draw threads using pegs in bars to lift a set of levers.

It is based on earlier inventions by the Frenchmen Basile Bouchon (1725), Jean Baptiste Falcon (1728), and Jacques Vaucanson (1740).

With a flick of the wrist, one cord was pulled and the shuttle was propelled through the shed to the other end with considerable force, speed and efficiency.

The flying shuttle was one of the key developments in weaving that helped fuel the Industrial Revolution.

The whole picking motion no longer relied on manual skill and it was just a matter of time before it could be powered by something other than a human.

Many advances in weft insertion have been made in order to make manufactured cloth more cost effective.

Patented in 1802, dandy looms automatically rolled up the finished cloth, keeping the fell always the same length.

They can readily produce warp-faced textiles, often decorated with intricate pick-up patterns woven in complementary and supplementary warp techniques, and brocading.

When a weaver has woven far enough down, the completed section (fell) can be rolled around the top beam, and additional lengths of warp threads can be unwound from the weights to continue.

The earliest evidence of a horizontal loom is found on a pottery dish in ancient Egypt, dated to 4400 BC.

Looms used for weaving traditional tapestry are called not as "vertical-warp" and "horizontal-warp", but as "high-warp" or "low-warp" (the French terms haute-lisse and basse-lisse are also used in English).

They are made to fit under the fabric being mended, and are often held in place by an elastic band on one side of the cloth and a groove around the loom's darning-egg portion on the other.

[52] Darning looms were sold during World War Two clothing rationing in the United Kingdom[53] and Canada,[54] and some are homemade.

The capabilities of power looms gradually expanded, but handlooms remained the most cost-effective way to make some types of textiles for most of the 1800s.

Edmund Cartwright built and patented a power loom in 1785, and it was this that was adopted by the nascent cotton industry in England.

The invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay allowed a hand weaver to weave broadwoven cloth without an assistant, and was also critical to the development of a commercially successful power loom.

[58] Cartwright's loom was impractical but the ideas behind it were developed by numerous inventors in the Manchester area of England.

This symbolism is encapsulated in the classical myth of Arachne who was changed into a spider by the goddess Athena, who was jealous of her skill at the godlike craft of weaving.

A treadle-driven Hattersley & Sons Domestic Loom, built under licence in 1893, in Keighley , Yorkshire. This loom has a flying shuttle and automatically rolls up the woven cloth ; it is not just controlled but powered by the pedals.
Lease rods Heddles and heddle frames or harness Batten bar or beater bar Reed Shuttle Treadle Breast beam Warp beam
A simple treadle floor loom. Mouse over components for pop-up links. The warp runs horizontally. On the left the warp beam, held from turning by with a weighted trough to keep the warp taut; on the right, the cloth beam (also called a breast beam on this type of loom), with a pawl and ratchet to allow the weaver to roll up the fell. In the center, devices for performing the motions of weaving.
Weaving a tapestry on a vertical loom in Konya , Turkey
A Turkish carpet loom showing warp threads wrapped around the warp beam, above, and the fell being wrapped onto the cloth beam below.
A simple handheld frame loom
Passing the shuttle through the shed
Pin weaving , not using any shedding devices. Note ordinary white plastic hair comb (beneath a red yarn, behind the box), presumably used to beat the warp against the fell.
Heddle-rod, laid across the warp threads, and tied to every other thread with short lengths of string. Tapestry loom, France, 2018
Using a heddle bar (tied with black and white heddles) and a shedding stick (plain wood, just above the heddle-bar). See subtitles for a step-by-step. The wide, flat stick is a sword batten; it is inserted lengthwise into each shed, and used to clear the shed, get it wide open and smooth, and to batten. [ 6 ] Weaving a silk rebozo with a dyed-warp pattern on a backstrap loom, Taller Escuela de Rebocería in Santa María del Río, San Luis Potosí , Mexico.
Simple one-tablet weaving
A tiny loom with a heddle made of rotating hooks.
Darning loom with hook heddle
A rigid heddle. Widthwise slots do not quite reach either long edge, and a row of small circular holes lies between the slots, along the lengthwise midline. Warp threads pass through both slots and round holes. It heddle is carved from a solid wood plank. The long sides have a protruding triangular area, making the heddle hexagonal; the top and bottoms points are surmounted by flat knobs. The triangular areas have simple, rough incised carving.
A rigid heddle on a backstrap inkle loom , unspanned.
This counterbalance loom has two string heddles, connected via a pulley overhead so that they rise and fall alternately. They are operated by treadles. Each treadle is a toggle on a string, held in the weaver's toes. He is making a simple tabby-weave cloth, bogolan .
A countermarch loom, with upper staves attached to the outer ends of the jacks, above. Below the heddles, there are two rows of lamms. The inner ends of the jacks are tied, in bridled pairs, to the upper lamms, which are tied to the treadles. The lower lamms are tied to the bottom staves and to the treadles. The roles of the upper and lower lamms may be swapped. [ 17 ]
Drawloom, with drawboy above to control the harnesses, woven as a repeating pattern in an early-18-hundreds piece of Japanese figured silk.
Dobby-loom control mechanism. The pegs driven into the bars (hung in a loop on the left) each lift one "treadle" in a pre-determined pattern, like lifting the teeth of a music box . Hooghly District, West Bengal, 2019
Shuttleless tablet weaving, Finland ( image of finished band ).
Jacquard ribbon loom, showing distinctive sliding ribbon shuttles.
A Picanol rapier loom
Weft insertion at 15 seconds
1906 Toyoda circular weaving loom
Bone sword beater (2) and adjacent bone pin beater (3), Iron Age, Middle East
A temple on a loom
Warp-weighted loom with three heddle-rods for weaving twill
Elements of a treadle loom:
  1. Wood frame
  2. Seat for weaver
  3. Warp beam- let off
  4. Warp threads
  5. Back beam or platen
  6. Rods – used to make a shed
  7. Heddle frame - heald frame - harness
  8. Heddle - heald - the eye
  9. Shuttle with weft yarn
  10. Shed
  11. Completed fabric
  12. Breast beam
  13. Batten with reed comb
  14. Batten adjustment
  15. Lathe
  16. Treadles
  17. Cloth roll- takeup
Medieval European haute-lisse tapestry loom. Oddly, while many dangling bobbins are shown, the different colours are not.
Two Lancashire looms in the Queen Street Mill weaving shed, Burnley
A 1939 loom working at the Mueller Cloth Mill museum in Euskirchen , Germany.