I found fibrecraft tumblr after searching drop spindles because my dad *didn’t even know what that was.* And despite having been firmly of the opinion that I didn’t intend to learn it, y’all have me getting ever closer to giving in. However, I’m also growing ever more enamored with the idea of weaving - and despite recently deciding to give knitting and crochet another go - I think it looks the most fun of the fiber crafts. My issue is that I have absolutely no space.
But I’m beginning to realize there’s a lot of different looms and types of weaving. So I was wondering if you have any resources or tips for small space methods and storage?
welcome to fibrecraft tumblr! it's fun here, we have enablers.
i will admit that while i love knitting, weaving is amazing, and is much better with regards to instant gratification—weaving for an hour gets you a lot more fabric than knitting for an hour.
so let's talk about weaving, because i have great news for you: you can 100% totally weave in a small space if you want to, and you even have options for how you do it. i'm going to go through basically all the small space weaving options that i'm aware of in roughly size order, and if you make it to the bottom of this you'll have a pretty good overview of space-saving weaving methods.
the first question to ask yourself is what you want to weave. maybe you're not sure yet, which is totally fine. if you don't immediately have strong feelings about it, though, maybe consider if band weaving strikes your fancy. this is pretty limited in size, but lets you weave belts, straps (like camera or bag straps), lanyards, etc.
if you think that sounds neat, it's worth looking into tablet weaving, an inkle loom, or a band/tape loom. tablet weaving takes up no space at all—if you can fit a stack of index cards into your life, you can fit tablet weaving. the tablets are small square cards, often made out of heavy cardstock, and even with a project on them, you can probably fit them into an index card holder.
inkle looms are larger, and to be honest i've never used one and don't know a ton about them, but they're also used for making woven bands. the looms can also be very aesthetically pleasing, if that's something you're into. they can be very big, but the ashford inklette, for example, is only 36 cm long and maybe 12 cm wide.
tape looms are—in my experience, anyhow—larger than tablet weaving but smaller than inkle looms, and even the larger ones are only about shoebox size. they vary widely, from gorgeous, complicated little looms to a handheld paddle that you use to create a shed, which is what you put your yarn through when you're weaving.
if that doesn't sound like good times, consider a frame loom. these are pretty simple—if you ever wove potholders out of stretchy cloth strips as a kid, you probably used a frame loom to do it on. frame looms are generally inexpensive and readily available, and can be used for small woven objects like potholders, coasters, placemats, etc. they can also be used to make some truly stunning tapestries. while you can buy a huge frame loom, you're still only talking about huge in two directions—it might be as wide as your armspan, but it's still only a couple inches thick.
another option is a pin loom. these don't get mentioned a lot, and i'm not totally sure why. pin looms are shapes with a bunch of pins (metal points, usually) coming out of them. on one hand, you're limited to making things that are the shape of the loom, but on the other hand, if you've been hanging around fibrecraft tumblr, you've seen all the things crocheters get up to with granny squares, right? there's no reason in the world that you can't do all those things with the squares made on a pin loom. or the hexagons! or the triangles! i've been kinda thinking about getting a little hexagon or triangle pin loom and using it to sample my handspun, then turning the shapes into a blanket.
if you hate all of that, that's ok! we have more options.
you could consider a backstrap loom, which is an ancient way of weaving that's still practiced today in many places. backstrap looms are cool because you can weave probably 24 inches wide on them, but even with a project on it, they take almost no room at all. backstrap looms are fairly easy to diy, because they're basically a bunch of dowels, so they can be a good low-cost way to try out weaving. backstrap looms will let you make longer, wider fabric than anything else we've mentioned so far!
another option—stay with me—is a toy loom. there are a number of cheap looms for sale on amazon/ali express/some local places that are actually fully functional looms. recently i've seen a number of people (like sally pointer, though i'm sure i've seen someone using one of the brightly coloured harness looms, as well) who've used them and report that they're functional, if basic, looms. you're fairly constrained in terms of project size, since there's not a lot of space for the finished fabric to wind on, and there's a very limited width, but the looms are quite small and tuck away easily.
ok, but so what if you hate all of those options? don't worry—there are more options! this is the part where things get expensive, though.
as looms go, rigid heddle looms are actually quite reasonably sized. i think the smallest one i've seen is a 40cm (~16") weaving width, which is about 50x60 (20x24") in length/width, and 13cm (5") high. so that's more space than anything else we've talked about, but it's still not a ton of space, you know? a 40cm rigid heddle will let you weave lovely scarves and things of that nature—table runners, placemats, strips of woven fabric to whipstitch together into a blanket, etc.
but maybe that's enough. so let's talk about table looms. some of them are quite large—mine, for example, is about a metre square and sits on a frame that it came with. it is not what you would call space efficient. but many of them, especially modern ones, are very compact, and can even be folded up into something more or less briefcase sized. (weird way to consider it, since the last time i saw a briefcase was probably the 80s, but you know what i mean, i bet.) the cool part here is that you can weave damn near anything you want on a table loom. the less cool part is that for the compact ones that fold up, you're looking at hundreds if not thousands of dollars. the smallest one i'm aware of is the louët erica, which folds down to 42x62x42cm (16.5x24.5x16.5") and gives you 40cm (16") of weaving width. i feel like that's impressively small. you'd have to decide for yourself if that's enough to justify the $500 usd/$800 aud price tag, though.
finally, we've come to folding floor looms. i don't think someone who's never woven before should run out and buy one of these unless money is just literally not at all a concern for you, but they are basically the dream for those of us trapped in crappy rentals, and it seemed weird to leave them out when i'd come this far.
some floor looms are various levels of collapsible. to be clear, this does you absolutely no good at all when you're actively weaving, because you have to unfold them to weave, but it does you a lot of good if you'd like to have a floor loom and still have the ability to, say, walk through the living room when you're not actively using the loom.
most relevant to our discussion about small weaving footprints, some looms fold up entirely. they are incredibly fucking expensive and incredibly fucking cool. the two that i'm most aware of are the leclerc compact and the schacht wolf line, both of which fold up to about half of their unfolded depth. they're still not small—i think that they're both the better part of 75cm (30") wide and tall, so even if they fold down to 40cm (16") deep, they're still 75cm wide and tall. which is Fairly Large, though much better than having something 80cm deep sitting in the middle of the floor.
this was a very, very long post, but hopefully makes it clear that there's a surprisingly wide range of options, and they all have advantages and trade offs. if you're asking my opinion, my suggestion would be to try something—anything—with a backstrap setup and see how you feel about it. maybe you love it and keep at it forever, in which case you're in good company: there are entire cultures that weave exclusively on backstrap looms.
if you like producing cloth but don't love the backstrap setup, or don't like using your body to tension the warp, you have a lot of other options, and you're out maybe ten dollars of dowels.
personally, my next loom is probably going to be a pin loom. unless i win lotto, in which case it's going to be a house that has a weaving studio and like four floor looms in it. but probably a pin loom.
