Here’s a fun, meditative way to construct a spell! You’ll need:
A small cardboard/cardstock box. This is what you’ll be making a loom out of. Matchboxes work great for ultra-small weavings. You can size up to the boxes checks come in, or shipping boxes, or you can buy a lap-size loom at craft stores.
Weaving materials, matched to your intent. Here’s a great blog post on fabric correspondences. My intent for this spell weaving was a better mood, or a lighter spirit, so I went with sky blues and a balance of materials. By far the cheapest way to get a variety of natural cotton thread is embroidery floss. It’s all natural cotton, comes in every shade and hue, and costs less than fifty cents for a skein.
Additional objects to weave in–in this case, a feather and three beads. You can add crystal beads, sprigs of herbs, linear sigils on narrow paper and anything else that can be embedded between warp strands or worked into the weft.
Large- and small-eyed needles. It helps me to have needles that can span the entire width of my loom.
The most important part of this process is to weave intentionally! You can repeat an incantation or mantra as you go. Weaving is a lot of repetitive motion and it’s a great opportunity to focus on what you want to accomplish with this spell.
I cut an arm’s length of embroidery floss and split it into its six strands.
With a craft knife or one side of a pair of scissors, I cut an even number of slits into the short sides of the box. I take a few inches of my separated embroidery floss and stretch them between the slits, lengthwise across the box, and then back. Tie them at the base. This is the first pair of warp threads.
I continue tying warp threads all the way across. On the second to last thread I added my wood beads.
I thread my small-eyed needle and knot the thread so it doesn’t slip while you’re weaving.
At the base of the box, I weave my needle under every other warp thread. The most important thing to remember is to be consistent from both sides. If you start by going under the first thread under the right, when you go back from the left, start by going under the first thread on the left too.
I weave around my beads and leave a lot of space to fill in on the left, which is the perfect opportunity to bring in…
… wool roving! With my large-eyed needle I start weaving it into the open space above my thread.
If your spell is designed with a multi-part incantation, switching sections when you change materials is a great way to work that in.
As I double back I pull down with my needle to straighten out the roving.
I work my tail in on the left side, and then, when it’s time to switch back to thread, I wrap the last bit of roving around my small-eyed needle as I weave the next row.
When I finish the next block of thread and have a few inches left on my needle, I wrap around the left warp and push the needle down through the weft. Then I whip stitch around the left side in order to clean up the roving.
With my thread coming out of the bottom of the box once more, I have another tail to tie off and trim just like the warp threads.
Next I’m going to work in some ribbon with my large-eyed needle.
I weave it through once, and then wrap the tail around and use the needle to push it under the same warp threads.
I trim it at an angle and use my thread to whip stitch underneath the ribbon and warp.
Then I proceed with my next block of thread weft.
This is about as high as I wanted to go for this weaving. I can keep going almost to the edge of the box, but I always have to be conscious that it will loosen a little when I take the warp out of the slits.
Here it is fresh off the loom box! A little crooked, and I haven’t frayed the warp thread tails or added the feather yet.
I insert the feather’s quill directly into the wood beads.
Once I have it finished, I can attach a springless safety pin, and now the spell weaving can be worn as an amulet. You can hang it on your wall as a subtle decorative ward. It’s also just the right size to serve as a mat for a raw crystal–which is a great way to charge!
Here are three more of my looms and the weavings that came from them. Top left is a vintage Jasco mender, top right is a Reclaiming Craft super tiny acrylic loom, and bottom is a lap loom from a craft store, which is just big enough to use the full-length projects as tarot spread cloths, or fold into pouches.
The bottom weaving uses cotton yarn, and I wove the same direction two times for each row to let the warp show through in that dot pattern. The top left weaving is wool embroidery floss, which holds its shape beautifully when you take it off the loom. The top right is cotton that I colored with alcohol ink before I wove it–I was hoping for a sunset-looking scene, and it did not disappoint! When you start with plain white yarn or thread and you know exactly how wide the finished weaving will be, the potential is limitless for custom color correspondences, simple images, and even sigil-like results!
Even when a weaving is finished you can still attach small pendants, little bells, or anything else your spell requires. You can also go back and embroider sigils directly into the weft.
Go weave some witchcraft!
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