Catching the Cloth

Sometimes we get cloth overload on our Saori looms. Different to other small table looms, the foot power gets us weaving long lengths quickly. After a few metres you can find that the cloth wound onto the cloth beam really builds out its space and starts to connect a bit much on the knees, especially with thicker woven cloth. But we have a great workaround. You can ‘catch’ the cloth in the warp beam without winding the full length on it. The excess just sits, draped at the side of the loom or can keep you warm as Mieke shows us here.

How to do it

First unwind all of the cloth on your cloth beam.  Make sure excess cloth is behind the clipping rod as shown. Select the images for a more detailed view.

Here it is viewed from the front of the loom.

Then start winding the cloth beam as you normally would. This will ‘catch’ the working weaving and leave the rest free of the cloth beam.

You can now continue to weave the cloth without the build up on the cloth beam. You will need to do this again as you go along.