There are some things one just CAN’T let go.

For me it’s the triangle loom. I’m on a quest to discover how to get it to make a half square in the three-layer warping style. So far, no good. You can see how the bumps along the hypotenuse don’t intermesh. The corners don’t work either (believe me). If you lapped one hypotenuse over the other and stitched through two thicknesses, you’d have it, but that’s not what we’re after.

These two three-layer warped triangles do not a square make

I’ve seen photos of woven triangles that make a square, but I think the weavers have used the bias weaving technique. Hoping to get a better understanding of how this works, I tried it on my square loom and again on my two homemade triangle looms.

L-R: triangles bias-woven on a square loom (with a needle for the hypotenuse) and on the two triangle looms pictured

The triangles woven on the triangle loom look a bit neater than the first one (woven using a needle as the hypotenuse; see Margaret Stump’s book for instructions), but that might be because it was my first one. Still, I think the triangle loom probably helped make a tidier hypotenuse edge.

Though I haven’t stitched them together yet, I think the bias triangles are going to make a regular square. (I used baby yarn for these samples, so the weaving is a bit gappy.)

1 + 1 = 1

You might be tempted to say, “Great! How do I order one?”* Hang on a sec and look at the triangles’ outer edges. In order to use these in a project—say a blanket featuring some quilt-type designs along with some plain squares—you’d have to weave all the pieces in the bias style. That’s not something I, personally, would want to do (though I understand some people really enjoy bias weaving). It’s likely the hypotenuse-to-hypotenuse join of bias triangles will look straighter than the intermingled loops of three-layer woven triangles though.

At this point, I can report that my design for the triangle loom works for weaving half-square triangles in the bias style. If we really can’t figure out how to make the three-layer method work, at least we have this. Let me point out that the loom DOES make triangles (see top photo), and they’re useful for things like doll clothing, but further experimentation is required to see if the up-to-now-impossible can be achieved.

I feel like Edison.

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*Currently Hazel Rose Looms is the only seller of the triangle loom I know of. Wunderwag Industries’ experimenter/designer is on the job and hoping to come up with a version that works the way she wants it to!

2 Thoughts on “Frustrations in Pin Loom Weaving — Once, Twice, Three Times a Triangle

  1. C. Sayers on 24 August 2017 at 5:20 PM said:

    Have woven non-bias weave triangles on a triangle loom that has evenly spaced pins all around that came out with even edges all around, great for stitching together (but the 1-3 side and the 1-2 sides are even not scalloped like a traditional weavie edge). Weaving it involves using some pins twice and using a securing line up the hypotenuse.

    • That’s an option I haven’t tried yet. As you pointed out, it wouldn’t end up with scalloped edges which is the desired result here. But thanks for that input. I’ll give it a whirl and see if I can do magic on it.

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