Loom

T'boli dream weavers using two-bar bamboo backstrap looms (legogong) to weave t'nalak cloth from abacá fiber. One bar is attached to the ceiling of the traditional T'boli longhouse, while the other is attached to the lower back.[8][9]

The back strap loom (also known as belt loom)[10] is a simple loom that has its roots in ancient civilizations. Andean textiles, still made today with the back strap loom, originated thousands of years ago with the same back strap loom process. It consists of two sticks or bars between which the warps are stretched. One bar is attached to a fixed object and the other to the weaver, usually by means of a strap around the back. The weaver leans back and uses their body weight to tension the loom. On traditional looms, the two main sheds are operated by means of a shed roll over which one set of warps pass, and continuous string heddles which encase each of the warps in the other set. To open the shed controlled by the string heddles, the weaver relaxes tension on the warps and raises the heddles. The other shed is usually opened by simply drawing the shed roll toward the weaver.

Both simple and complex textiles can be woven on this loom. Width is limited to how far the weaver can reach from side to side to pass the shuttle. Warp faced textiles, often decorated with intricate pick-up patterns woven in complementary and supplementary warp techniques are woven by indigenous peoples today around the world. They produce such things as belts, ponchos, bags, hatbands and carrying cloths. Supplementary weft patterning and brocading is practiced in many regions. Balanced weaves are also possible on the backstrap loom. Today, commercially produced backstrap loom kits often include a rigid heddle.

Warp-weighted loom with three heddle-rods for weaving twill

The warp-weighted loom is a vertical loom that may have originated in the Neolithic period. The earliest evidence of warp-weighted looms comes from sites belonging to the Starčevo culture in modern Serbia and Hungary and from late Neolithic sites in Switzerland.[11] This loom was used in Ancient Greece, and spread north and west throughout Europe thereafter.[12] Its defining characteristic is hanging weights (loom weights) which keep bundles of the warp threads taut. Frequently, extra warp thread is wound around the weights. When a weaver has reached the bottom of the available warp, the completed section can be rolled around the top beam, and additional lengths of warp threads can be unwound from the weights to continue. This frees the weaver from vertical size constraint.

Elements of a treadle loom

Wood frame Seat for weaver Warp beam- let off Warp threads Back beam or platen Rods – used to make a shed Heddle frame - heald frame - harness Heddle- heald - the eye Shuttle with weft yarn Shed Completed fabric Breast beam Batten with reed comb Batten adjustment Lathe Treadles Cloth roll- takeup

In a wooden vertical-shaft loom, the heddles are fixed in place in the shaft. The warp threads pass alternately through a heddle, and through a space between the heddles (the shed), so that raising the shaft raises half the threads (those passing through the heddles), and lowering the shaft lowers the same threads — the threads passing through the spaces between the heddles remain in place.

A treadle loom for figured weaving may have a large number of harnesses or a control head. It can, for instance, have a Jacquard machine attached to it[13] .

Traditional treadle loom at Ranipauwa Muktinath, Nepal

Japanese treadle loom, late 1820s-early 1830s

Tapestry can have extremely complex wefts, as different strands of wefts of different colours are used to form the pattern. Speed is lower, and shedding and picking devices may be simpler. 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).[14]

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  Medieval European haute-lisse tapestry loom. Oddly, while many dangling bobbins are shown, the different colours aren't.
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  Haut-lisse tapestry loom, 2022, New Zealand
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  Commercial haut-lisse tapestry loom, 2004
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  A commercial basse-lisse tapestry loom in the same factory, 2004
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  Tapestry tools, on the loom. Bobbins, scrapper (with short teeth), comb (double-ended), and awl (tip hidden).
• A power loom in the TextielMuseum Tilburg weaving a tapestry for the Niewe Kerk Middelburg; note that the threads do not vary in colour along their length.

Inkle looms are narrow looms used for narrow work. They are used to make narrow warp-faced strips such as ribbons, bands, or tape. They are often quite small; some are used on a tabletop. others are backstraps looms with a rigid heddle, and very portable.

There exist very small hand-held looms known as darning looms. 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. They may have heddles made of flip-flopping rotating hooks (see Loom#Rotating-hook heddles).[15] Other devices sold as darning looms are just a darning egg and a separate comb-like piece with teeth to hook the warp over; these are used for repairing knitted garments and are like a linear knitting spool.[16] Darning looms were sold during World War Two clothing rationing in the United Kingdom[17] and Canada,[18] and some are homemade.[19][20]

Circular looms are used to create seamless tubes of fabric for products such as hosiery, sacks, clothing, fabric hoses (such as fire hoses) and the like. Tablet weaving can be used to knit tubes, including tubes that split and join.

Small jigs also used for circular knitting can be used as circular looms.[21]

Loom with a shed bar and without a string heddle, neolithic reconstruction in the Piatra Neamț Museum

A shed-rod is simply a stick woven through the warp threads. When pulled perpendicular to the threads, it creates a shed. To create the counter-shed, a heddle-bar is usually used.

Elements of a warp-weighted loom

See body text for labels.

Heddle-rod on a tapestry frame, France, 2018

A heddle-bar is simply a stick placed across the warp and tied to individual warp threads. When it is lifted, it pulls the warp threads it is tied to out of position, creating a shed.

A warp-weighted loom (see diagram) typically uses a heddle-bar. It has two upright posts (C); they support a horizontal beam (D), which is cylindrical so that the finished cloth can be rolled around it, allowing the loom to be used to weave a piece of cloth taller than the loom, and preserving an ergonomic working height. The warp threads (F, and A and B) hang from the beam and rest against the shed rod (E). The heddle-bar (G) is tied to some of the warp threads (A, but not B), usign loops of string called leashes (H). 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). By passing the weft through the shed and the counter-shed, alternately, cloth is woven.[22]

Heddle-rods are used on modern tapestry looms.

Simple one-tablet weaving

Tablet weaving uses cards punched with holes. The warp threads pass through the holes, and the cards are twisted and shifted to created varied sheds. This shedding technique is used for narrow work. It is also used to finish edges, weaving decorative selvage bands instead of hemming.

Darning loom with hook heddle

There are heddles made of flip-flopping rotating hooks, which raise and lower the warp, creating sheds. The hooks, when vertical, have the weft threads looped around them horizontally. If the hooks are flopped over on side or another, the loop of weft twists, raising one or the other side of the loop, which creates the shed and countershed.[23]

A rigid heddle on a backstrap inkle loom, unspanned.

Rigid heddles are generally used on single-shaft looms. Odd warp threads go through the slots, and even ones through the circular holes, or vice-versa. The shed is formed by lifting the heddle, and the countershed by depressing it. The warp threads in the slots stay where they are, and the ones in the circular holes are pulled back and forth. A single rigid heddle can hold all the warp threads, though sometimes multiple rigid heddles are used.

Treadles may be used to drive the rigid heddle up and down.

This 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.

Rigid heddles (above) are called "rigid" to distinguish them from string and metal heddles, where each warp thread has its own heddle, which has an eye at each end and one in the middle for the warp thread. The eyes in the ends are fastened to a shaft, all in a row. This requires multiple shafts; it cannot be done on a single-shaft loom. The different shafts (also called harnesses) must be controlled by some mechanism.

While non-rigid heddles generally mean that two shafts are needed even for a plain tabby weave, twill weaves require three or more (depending on the type of twill), and more complex figured weaves require still more harnesses.

Treadle looms can control multiple harnessess with multiple treadles. The weaver selects which harnesses are engaged with their feet. One treadle may be connected to more than one harness, and any number of treadles can be engaged at once, meaning that the number of different sheds that can be selected is two to the power of the number of treadles. Eight is a large but reasonable number of treadles, giving a maximum of 2⁸=256 sheds (some of which will not have enough threads on one side to be useful). The weaver must remember the sequence of treadling needed to produce the pattern.

Drawloom, with drawboy above to control the harnesses, woven as a repeating pattern in an early-18-hundreds piece of Japanese figured silk.

A drawloom is for weaving figured cloth. In a drawloom, a "figure harness" is used to control each warp thread separately,[24] allowing very complex patterns. A drawloom requires two operators, the weaver, and an assistant called a "drawboy" to manage the figure harness.

The earliest confirmed drawloom fabrics come from the State of Chu and date c. 400 BC.[25] Some scholars speculate an independent invention in ancient Syria, since drawloom fabrics found in Dura-Europas are thought to date before 256 AD.[25][26] The draw loom was invented in China during the Han Dynasty (State of Liu?);[27] foot-powered multi-harness looms and jacquard looms were used for silk weaving and embroidery, both of which were cottage industries with imperial workshops.[28] The drawloom enhanced and sped up the production of silk and played a significant role in Chinese silk weaving. The loom was introduced to Persia, India, and Europe.[27]

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

A dobby head is a device that replaces the drawboy, the weaver's helper who used to control the warp threads by pulling on draw threads. "Dobby" is a corruption of "draw boy". Mechanical dobbies pull on the draw threads using pegs in bars to lift a set of levers. The placement of the pegs determines which levers are lifted. The sequence of bars (they are strung together) effectively remembers the sequence for the weaver. Computer-controlled dobbies use solenoids instead of pegs.

The Jacquard loom is a mechanical loom, invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1801, which simplifies the process of manufacturing figured textiles with complex patterns such as brocade, damask and matelasse.[29][30] The loom is controlled by punched cards with punched holes, each row of which corresponds to one row of the design. Multiple rows of holes are punched on each card and the many cards that compose the design of the textile are strung together in order. It is based on earlier inventions by the Frenchmen Basile Bouchon (1725), Jean Baptiste Falcon (1728) and Jacques Vaucanson (1740).[31] To call it a loom is a misnomer, a Jacquard head could be attached to a power loom or a handloom, the head controlling which warp thread was raised during shedding. Multiple shuttles could be used to control the colour of the weft during picking. The Jacquard loom is the predecessor to the computer punched card readers of the 19th and 20th centuries.[32]

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  The punched-card control mechanism of a Jacquard loom in use in 2009, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India.
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  Hand operated Jacquard looms in the Textile Department of the Strzemiński Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź, Poland.
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  Battening on a jacquard loom in Łódź.
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  A female worker changing jacquard cards in a lace machine in a Nottingham factory (1918 (First World War)).
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  Boy next to two weaving looms with the weaving pattern on reams of paper (India).
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  Following the pattern, holes are punched in the appropriate places on a jacquard card.
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  Manual loom with double width and jacquard loom, Colegio del Arte Mayor de la Seda of Valencia.
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  The Jacquard cards control the healds on a loom.

At their simplest, these are just sticks wrapped with yarn. They may be specially shaped, as with the bobbins and bones used in tapestry-making (bobbins are used on vertical warps, and bones on horizontal ones).[33][34]

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  Shuttles are passed, not thrown, through warp-weighted looms. These Ancient Greek weavers have a yarn-wrapped stick.[22]
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  Tapestry bobbins are used on vertical-warp looms.
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  Tapestry bobbins, empty and full
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  Tapestry bones are used on horizontal-warp looms
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  Tapestry bones actually made from cannonbones (those in the last image are wooden)
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  Paper quills (paper bobbins) used as tapestry bones in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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  Stick shuttles wound in a figure-of-eight.
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  Stick shuttles must be passed, not thrown, which is inconvenient for wide warps.
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  Belt or band shuttle, a short shuttle used for inkle weaving. This extra-sturdy shuttle is also used at a batten, to beat the newly-woven weft against the previously-woven fell.[35]
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  Netting shuttle.[36] Also used for netting.
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  Ski shuttle.[37]
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  A rag shuttle has two skis; it is used for weaving strips of rag into carpets, whence the name.[36]

Boat shuttles may be closed (central hollow with a solid bottom) or open (central hole goes right through). The yarn may be side-feed or end-feed.[38][39] They are commonly made for 10-cm (4-inch) and 15-cm (6-inch) bobbin lengths.[40]

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  Top, an open boat shuttle (the other two are closed). Bottom, a Swedish-style asymmetrical shuttle with a paper quill. All are side-feed; the topmost one runs on rollers
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  Boat shuttle inside the shed. It floats on the lower warp threads. This only works on horizontal looms. Rhode Island, USA.
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  Boats with square-ended recesses are intended for bobbins with end flanges. Other shuttles have round-cornered recesses. They are often intended for use with paper quills (tubes of rolled paper).
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  Macedonian open shuttles with paper quills.
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  A collection of open and closed shuttles in Ukraine, some clearly handmade.
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  This Transyvanian shuttle was a Valentine's-Day gift.
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  These Assamese shuttles, presumably for very fine silk, are slender and do not hold much volume.
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  Asymmetric open boat shuttle, Khotan.
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  Two end-feed pirns and a side-feed bobbin (bottom)
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  Simple closed, side-feed boat shuttle with a paper bobbin, Mexico
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  How the conical pirn loads on a end-feed shuttle.
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  Using two shuttles for weft stripes, Estonia
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  Weaving with three shuttles

• Handloom with a flying shuttle. The shuttle runs in a shuttle race attached to the front of the beater bar
• An early fully-automated loom. The arms at the sides can be seen swinging to bash the flying shuttle back and forth.
• The auromated shuttle moves almost too fast to see
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  Manufacture of a boxwood flying shuttle
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  In the shuttle race.
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  Narrow tanmono loom with a shuttle race. Late 18-hundreds Japan.

Hand weavers who threw a shuttle could only weave a cloth as wide as their armspan. If cloth needed to be wider, two people would do the task (often this would be an adult with a child). John Kay (1704–1779) patented the flying shuttle in 1733. The weaver held a picking stick that was attached by cords to a device at both ends of the shed. 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. A flick in the opposite direction and the shuttle was propelled back. A single weaver had control of this motion but the flying shuttle could weave much wider fabric than an arm's length at much greater speeds than had been achieved with the hand thrown shuttle.

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.

A Picanol rapier loom

1906 Toyoda circular weaving loom

Different types of power looms are most often defined by the way that the weft, or pick, is inserted into the warp. Many advances in weft insertion have been made in order to make manufactured cloth more cost effective. Weft insertion rate is a limiting factor in production speed. As of 2010, industrial looms can weave at 2,000 weft insertions per minute.[41]

There are five main types of weft insertion and they are as follows:

• Shuttle: The first-ever powered looms were shuttle-type looms. Spools of weft are unravelled as the shuttle travels across the shed. This is very similar to projectile methods of weaving, except that the weft spool is stored on the shuttle. These looms are considered obsolete in modern industrial fabric manufacturing because they can only reach a maximum of 300 picks per minute.
• Air jet: An air-jet loom uses short quick bursts of compressed air to propel the weft through the shed in order to complete the weave. Air jets are the fastest traditional method of weaving in modern manufacturing and they are able to achieve up to 1,500 picks per minute. However, the amounts of compressed air required to run these looms, as well as the complexity in the way the air jets are positioned, make them more costly than other looms.
• Water jet: Water-jet looms use the same principle as air-jet looms, but they take advantage of pressurized water to propel the weft. The advantage of this type of weaving is that water power is cheaper where water is directly available on site. Picks per minute can reach as high as 1,000.
• Rapier loom: This type of weaving is very versatile, in that rapier looms can weave using a large variety of threads. There are several types of rapiers, but they all use a hook system attached to a rod or metal band to pass the pick across the shed. These machines regularly reach 700 picks per minute in normal production.
• Projectile: Projectile looms utilize an object that is propelled across the shed, usually by spring power, and is guided across the width of the cloth by a series of reeds. The projectile is then removed from the weft fibre and it is returned to the opposite side of the machine so it can be reused. Multiple projectiles are in use in order to increase the pick speed. Maximum speeds on these machines can be as high as 1,050 ppm.
• Circular: Modern circular looms use up to ten shuttles, driven in a circular motion from below by electromagnets, for the weft yarns, and cams to control the warp threads. The warps rise and fall with each shuttle passage, unlike the common practice of lifting all of them at once. Circular looms are used to create seamless tubes of fabric for products such as hosiery, sacks, clothing, fabric hoses (such as fire hoses) and the like.[42]

Patented in 1802, dandy looms automatically rolled up the finished cloth, keeping the fell always the same length. They significantly speeded up hand weaving (still a major part of the textile industry in the 1800s). Similar mechanisms were used in power looms.

A temple on a loom

The temples act to keep the cloth from shrinking sideways as it is woven. Some warp-weighted looms had temples made of loom weights, suspended by strings so that they pulled the cloth breadthwise.[22] Other looms may have temples tied to the frame, or temples that are hooks with an adjustable shaft between them. Power looms may use temple cylinders. Pins can leave a series of holes in the selvages (these may be from stenter pins used in post-processing).