Making a Large Tapestry Loom

Warp: the yarn or other type of string or cord that is stretched over a loom, typically the vertical strings on a loom. Weft: the yarn or other type of string or cord that is woven back and forth, typically horizontally across the warp.

On this page I will document how I built my large tapestry loom for hand weaving.

Link to Weaving Main Page

Making Tapestry BEaters

Making a Small Hand Loom

My first weaving project; a 3 ft x 4.5ft wool rug made on a large tapestry loom I built. Fun project full of mistakes and learning. More detail on this loom below.

There are weaving experts out there and I advise you to seek them out; here is my novice experience in starting to weave. The purpose of this page is to inspire people to try weaving something and to encourage those folks to learn from experts; my goal is not for this to be a resource for expert knowledge on the topic of weaving....because it is not. Weave away people! It is easy, and fun, and endlessly challenging if you want it to be.

6' long wool scarf with linen warp; made on my big tapestry loom.

A loom is a device upon which one set ups fibers in rows, into which are woven other fibers, in order to make a woven surface.

Building an Extra Large Tapestry Loom! 55" Wide x 65" Tall

These look wonderful when all the warp is on the loom and all the heddle bars are all strung up. Here are some photo's of the loom I built. This is not a detailed instruction, but some photo's that may inspire you to try something similar.

I started with rough sawn Ash, and here have planed and roughed out the pieces.

The top of the loom frame features a upper tension beam that will ride in this slot. I knob and threaded rod will allow me to raise the upper beam and apply tension to the warp. I made this mortise with forstner bit and chisel.

I rounded the beams , and made the dowels, by hand with a plane.

Starting to come togerther!

Here is my finished Large Tapestry Loom. I 3D printed the tensioning knobs and the raddle spacing strip on top of the tension beam.

The working angle of the loom is adjustable with nuts and bolts at the base of the frame.

I made a number of stick shuttles and waxed them with Carnauba.

Here is the loom with the warp installed. You will see a round rod towards the bottom of the loom. The warp wraps around that rod, and as I weave, I can pull that rod up and pull the woven fabric down around the bottom of the loom, which will expose new, unwoven warp to weave into, in order to make a longer piece of fabric as I weave.

With the warp installed on the loom, I took a long length of strong cotton string and threaded the heddle bars to the warp. If you look closely, you can see that the upper bar grabs the 2nd warp from the left, and then every other warp thereafter. The lower bar grabs every other warp that is not grabbed by the upper bar. When I pull a bar forward, every other warp is pulled forward allow me to quickly pass the weft (on the shuttle) through the resulting gap in the warps. When weaving you pull one bar, pass the shuttle, beat down the weft, then put that bar back and lift the other bar, pass the shuttle the other way, and so on.

Here is a side view of how pulling one rod forward pulls every other warp and creates a "tent" to put the weft through.

Shuttle with weft wound on it.

My first weaving project a 3 ft x 4.5 ft wool rug on cotton warp. It wound up a bit trapezoidal in shape, as I learned all about the concept of too much tension resulting in your weaving necking tighter as you weave on this project.

I left long tails on the warp that extended from the weaving, and I braided and tied them.