We spent a few weeks this summer at the cabin in Finland. A relative gifted us a table loom to bring back home. It already had warp thread prepared, but it was a puzzle and a half to grasp how to unpack the loom itself. I had hopes about placing it on the floor, but the system to control the heddles was pedals placed on the floor, so I had to grab a table to get it set up.

A table mounted loom placed on the floor
Unpacking the table loom. At this point I had never been up close to a loom before so couldn't tell front from back, and didn't figure out until much later that it needed to be placed on a table to be function properly.
A table mounted loom placed on a table
Had I seen a picture of how it was supposed to look once properly set up, I would've saved a couple of hours playing jigsaw. There are two sets of pedals att the bottom, and a hoisting system to have four heddles with string headles, one for each pedal. As one pedal is pushed down, that heddle is pulled down and it's correspoinding friend rises.

Using leftover fabric (cotton bedcloth I’ve used pieces of in the past to do clothing mockups) I turned it into thin stips to use as weft to make a rag rug.

A video taken during the weaving process as I'm adding thin strips of fabric for the weft.

Rag rugs has a long history in Swedish and Finnish culture, and I like the rustic look of table runners woven like tiny rag rugs. This was the first time I had a go at a proper weaving loom, so it was a bit of a guesswork to get it all mounted (the thread healds were in shambles) and going, but was quick to progress and get going.

A table mounted loom in the middle of weaving a runner
About half-way through the project.

My daughter wove about half of it, with me jumping in when she wasn’t occupying it, so it has a truly eclectic try-as-you-go-woops-loose-thread-missed-some-sheds kind of look.

I did not make use of the full length of the warp, so am contemplating doing a second runner for practice or procuring some weft-appropriate weaving yarn to try out making a shawl in twill.

The warp is mounted to the heddles so for each row, alternating yarns are pushed down and pulled up. One up, one down. This is called a simple weave. A twill pattern requires more heddles to control which warp strings are brought up/down to create its pattern.

The project all in all didn’t take a lot of time at all (each “row” is quite thick so doesn’t take a lot of passes to progress) and has led to about five new books in my bookcase on the topic of weaving to grasp the fundamentals.

Closeup of tying the ends of a rug carpet table runner
Usually, the same thread as used in the weft is woven in a few rounds for stability in the end before tying it off, something I did not have the material ready for so skipped. An extra stabilising double knot before tying groupings of six threads was done to on end for a decorative touch.
A table runner looking like a little rag rug on a marble table
The final look. One end has a different style ending as the table runner was planned to become a back where this end would work best.
A table runner looking like a little rag rug on a marble table with ends in knots
The final, final look of the end. Afer a few weeks I took the time to untangle the end that wasn't looking too great to make it more similar to the fringed side.

It was a lot of fun getting an intro to weaving on a loom this way. Having the warp already prepped helped a lot, and I could just practice getting the hang of the rythm of pushing a pedal to open one shed, use the beater, shuttle through, push other pedal to open the next shed… and so on.

I think the way the pedals have been tied to the heddles isn’t ideal as it had some issues with tension and balance, os there is room for improvement next time around.