Gift Ideas for Rigid Heddle Weavers under $50

06 Dec 2022gift ideas

With Christmas coming up soon, now seems like a good time for a post about things the weaver in your life might like as a gift! All of these are under $50 and assume your weaver already has a loom. This list is focused on rigid heddle weaving but many of the ideas would apply for other kinds of weaving as well. Another source of inspiration for a newer weaver is my Frugal Buyer's Guide.

I’ve organized them by a “typical” price in USD, but of course there’s always a range and some things will be cheaper or more expensive!

< $10 #

There’s lots of really little things in the weaving world that can make your life easier. A lot of these overlap with sewing supplies and are great if your weaver isn’t already equipped for sewing.

Flexible Tape measure Useful for measuring on or off the loom.
Small Ruler This can just be a 6” or so ruler from an office supply store. Useful for measuring things on the loom.
Thread snips or small sewing scissors. These are useful for clipping off the ends of yarns in weaving, something with a nice pointed tip is great.
Pins There’s lots of different kinds of pins out there, most of which are useful! T-Pins in particular come up when you need to repair a warp thread.
Sewing needles Weaving tends to lead into some amount of sewing in order to hem certain kinds of pieces.
Darning needles These take bigger yarn than a sewing needle and are often used to secure the ends via hemstitching.
Online pattern There’s lots of people who sell weaving patterns online on places like Etsy. Some weavers like to use patterns, and others like to design their own.
Sett Tool These are a small piece of wood with a 1" notch for checking the thickness of yarn.

< $20 #

Stick shuttle Most rigid heddle looms come with 2 of these, about the weaving width of the loom. It’s useful to have more stick shuttles, for working with more than 2 colors, and also, to have some in different sizes, as they work best when they’re close in size to the item being woven. It’s hard to go wrong here unless they already have a lot of shuttles or they prefer using boat shuttles.
Pick up stick This is just a pointed stick. If your weaver doesn’t have one, you want one usually a little over the weaving width but that can still fit inside the sides of the loom. Having a couple of these is useful, and like a shuttle extras can be in some smaller sizes for narrower pieces.
Yarn Weavers go through a lot of yarn. Make sure it’s something they’d like to use though, different people have different preferences!

< $50 #

Books:
- For a brand new weaver, especially someone getting a loom at the same time, I recommend Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom by Syne Mitchell.
- For someone who’s been weaving for a little while, the Weaver’s Idea Book by Jane Patrick is a great exploration of a range of techniques.
- For someone interested in a more advanced technique, Crazy Shot by Myra Wood, or one of the companion books if they already have it.
- I also have several other books described on my book reviews page, including several that are great for anyone looking for more project focused books.
Subscription to Little Looms magazine (print or digital). Little Looms is a magazine which focuses on Rigid Heddle Looms and some other small looms. A more advanced weaver might also appreciate Handwoven magazine.
Additional heddles For this one, you need to know exactly what brand and width of loom they have and what DPI of heddles they might be interested in. A 2.5 DPI heddle is for very fat yarn and a 15 DPI heddle is for thin yarn.
Fabric shears These are good for cutting the weaving off the loom, and, for cutting out fabric for sewing.
Cone holder (aka spool holder) A base with some dowels or rods in it to hold yarn on tubes or cones in place while warping or winding shuttles.

Check out Not So Rigid Designer, my online weaving software for rigid heddle loom weavers!

Learn More!