Weaving
Weaving is the process of creating fabric from two separate elements of yarn: the warp is fixed to the rigid frame of the loom and the weft is interlaced. Most looms incorporate a way to make the shed, or space where the weft is inserted. Simple or complex, plain or decorated, the loom is the technical starting point of a weaver's creativity.

The oldest known depiction of a loom comes from an Egyptian dish dated 4400 BCE. It shows a horizontal ground loom used to weave linen cloth. Some posts sunk into the ground and a few sticks make this one of the simplest, and thus possibly earliest, looms known. It continues to be used in the Middle East, Iran, and North Africa.

Looms come in all sizes. A weaver uses a group of small square cards with holes in each corner to weave belts and bands. Ribbon or band looms from Northern Europe are one small piece of wood. A back-strap loom consists of a number of sticks and a belt to encircle the weaver's waist. These looms can only weave cloth as wide as the weaver's body and need an attachment point to create the necessary tension to weave. Back strap or body tensioned looms are common in many parts of the world. Intricate patterning is achieved through the use of extra heddles, shed sticks, or picking up by hand. The weaving process, the same with any loom, is slow but offers almost infinite decorative possibilities depending on the skill of the weaver and the time devoted to the work.

Floor looms are much larger tools, usually built of wood with foot treadles that operate the harnesses to make the shed. The weaver sits or stands at the loom and, with the help of a shuttle that glides across the warp, weaves a much wider cloth than is possible on a smaller loom. The history of the floor loom, from its murky origins to all the complex developments including the Chinese and Syrian draw looms, the flying shuttle, and the jacquard loom that contributed to the mechanized and computerized looms used today to produce all kinds of fabrics, is fascinating and far too lengthy to delve into here.

Male weavers in West Africa use a unique loom. Although it has treadles like a floor loom it is portable and small, making a strip only as wide as the beater and usually no more than 4-5 inches wide. The loom is set up every day in a small roofed shed. The heddle pulley is attached to a beam and the treadles are attached to the heddles by a cord. When the weaver is finished he rolls the loom and the weaving into a compact bundle and brings it inside.

Vertical looms were used in the ancient world and today are used in Nigeria, North Africa, Southwest United States, Turkey and many other places to weave a wider cloth and carpets. There are no treadles and the weaver sits on the ground or a low chair to weave. In central Africa, a small vertical loom is used to weave raphia--fiber obtained from the leaf of the raphia palm. The European high-warp tapestry loom is a variation of the vertical loom. The stunning designs and high quality of the work produced in northern Europe from the 14th -18th centuries offer ample proof that the skill of the weaver is more important than the level of the technology used to produce a work of art.

Tapestry is a weave as well as a product. Navajo and Rio Grande rugs and blankets are woven in tapestry technique as are Swedish wedding textiles, Turkish kilims, and Chinese bedding and clothing fabrics among others. Tapestry technique can be woven with fine or heavy yarns using any fiber.
Weavers work with many different tools-a warping board or paddle is used to measure out the warp yarns, different types of shuttles hold the yarn during weaving, picks of wood or bone help a weaver to make a pattern, a wooden sword holds the shed up in a body tensioned loom, and various types of beaters are used to place the weft correctly.

Sprang, an ancient method of producing fabric, also uses a loom. The earliest examples are from Peru (ca. 1100 BCE) and in Europe, from Denmark (ca. 1400 BCE). The simple frame is warped and those yarns are then manipulated by interlacing, intertwining, and interlocking to create a stretchy, knit-like fabric with various patterns.


Vocabulary
Cloth - a material made by weaving, felting or knitting natural or synthetic fibers
Fabric - synonym for cloth
Fiber - a long hair-like component of plant or animal tissue
Loom - a frame to support for interlacing threads at right angles to make cloth
Shuttle - a stick or other device used to pass the weft thread between the warp threads
Synthetic - man made as opposed to naturally occurring
Textile - anything made by people from fibrous materials
Thread - fibers twisted together to form a continuous strand used for sewing or embroidery
Vegetal - of or related to plants
Warp - a series of yarns extended lengthwise on the loom
Weft - a thread or yarn used in weaving to fill in between the warp
Yarn - a continuous strand made of natural or man-made fibers used in knitting, weaving, crocheting and other forms of textile production

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