The washed yarn was wound up into balls today, which was then wound up onto bobbins. I have about one blanket’s worth of a black walnut-dyed cotton warp left on the big loom loom and that’s what I’ll use for the first blanket. The first photo shows the warp threads, which are wound around the back beam (300 threads, all cut to the same length.) These are each threaded through the middle of the loom in one of four harnesses, which will raise or lower them, then threaded through equally-spaced wire slots on the beater bar and attached to a bar at the front of the loom that moves the woven cloth forward.

In the final photo above, you can see the boat shuttle, which holds our bobbin, and the first inch of woven cloth, which will be turned under to form a hem when the cloth comes off the loom. The thick purple strips of cloth serve as to spread the warp threads out and space them evenly. They will be unraveled from the weaving at the end. This is a plainweave, which means that I raise the evenly numbered harnesses and pass the shuttle through, then raise the odd numbered harnesses and pass the yarn through. This forms our groundcloth—essentially the background cloth that any design will be woven into. Now that this header is woven, I can have a sense of what the texture of our cloth will be and can begin to add any additional stripes into the warp and begin to choose colors for the design.