How to Weave Detail into a Rug

Once you are past the basics of weaving, you can start to put patterns and new looks into your pieces. Knowing exactly how to plan the designs and put them in the right order will allow you to go one step past weaving and into knowing the designs that follow the pattern.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• loom
• yarn

1. Plan your colors. With the warp, that moves horizontal on the loom, there will be a solid color or set of colors that you will want to choose. With the weft, which moves across the loom, you will want to make sure that you have opposing colors that can be used. For instance, if you have blue on the warp and white on the weft, it will be easier to make patterns with the transitions of color.

2. Pick your pattern. There are several weaving books that will provide you with patterns and will show you how to weave them into the loom. Remember that in weaving, the pattern can be either one pattern in the middle of the loom or can be more repetitive patterns that go across and up the piece of weaving.

3. Plan out how your pattern will go over and under with the loom. What makes a pattern in weaving is when the weft, or yarn that is moving across the loom, goes under or over the warp. If your warp is white and the weft is blue, when your weaving goes under the warp, the warp, or white, will show. When it goes over the weft, or blue, will show.

4. Know when to go over and under. From here, all it takes is going over and under with the pattern. You will do this by counting the pieces of yarn to skip over or under, combined with the different rows. The rows will be moving upwards and each will have a different count of how many goes over or under. Take, for instance, if you are making a diamond. The first row will have one that goes under and the rest that go over, allowing the warp to stick out. The second row will have two that go under. This will increase, then decrease with the pattern.

Tips & Warnings

• Always count your pieces of yarn. One of the easiest ways to make sure that everything stays in line is to count the number that is going over and the ones that are going under as you go. You can draw this on a graph first in order to make sure that you are staying in line with the pattern on the loom.
• Use a loom with petals. If you have a petal loom, you can plan your pattern so the warp will have certain petals that push the pieces of yarn in the warp that will stay up and which will stay down. You can then change these as you change the rows, which will give you an automatic shift in the pattern.