Loom

Lojan 8-Shaft Flex Loom

Yarns

Warp: 9.5’/2.9m of Harris tweed yarn in a blue shade.  (Came from a professional weaver friend who was destashing her huge collection of these yarns, the same that are used to make Harris Tweed in the Outer Hebrides.) This yarn is a single and still has grease/spinning oil in it.

I forgot to measure width of fabric pre-washing but the heddles spread out were about 7″/18cm wide.  141 ends in total.

Weft:

1. Harris tweed yarns in pink, purple and a lighter blue shade. (Same as warp.)
2. Scottish lambswool 9 colour pack of 4 ply from Kingcraig Fabrics in Dornoch.  The yarn is untreated so blooms after washing.

Sett

20 ends per inch, threaded double through 10 dent reed.

Threading draft

Pointed twill (12345678765432)

Patterns

I initially found some 8-Shaft patterns on Pinterest and used those.  There were hearts, snowflakes and diamonds. 

I had ordered A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns edited by Carol Strickler and when this arrived I used patterns:

1. #82 page 26
2. #83 page 26.

Process

The contrast wasn’t great when using the Harris yarn for both warp and weft and these patterns were hard, if not impossible to see. 

I then switched to using the pack of 50g balls of the lambs wool with these same patterns from Pinterest and again they weren’t very good.

So I switched to playing around with patterns #82 and #83 and these showed a lot better.  I also changed my process of beating.  Initially I had been doing pass the shuttle, beat, change the shed, pass the shuttle.  With this sticky hairy warp this was making things too loose. So I switched to pass the shuttle, beat, change the shed, beat again, then pass the shuttle.   That extra beat really neatened up the patterns which you can see with the later red hearts section below.  Whereas with the earlier cream weft and single beat, the hearts are hard to see,  even when I tried passing 2 wefts in one shed.

I decided to then stick to pattern #82 and cycle through all the colours of weft, as a colour study for future use of this warp yarn.  Towards the end I went back to #83 and then right at the very end tried some wacky eyelash type sparkly yarn!

Outcome & Gallery

Pre-washing the woven section was 96″ long, post washing 88″.  It is about 15.5cm wide post washing.

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Weaving Plans

I love pattern #83 in the blue and beige, both front and back and would definitely like to do a project in those colours. 

Next I am going to try weaving some cotton on the Lojan Flex.