My First Few Projects

01 Jun 2021getting started

If you're looking to see what a beginner can do, or get some inspiration for your own beginner projects, you're in the right place! These are definitely not the prettiest things I'll ever weave, but this is where I started!

I started my weaving journey with a couple balls of acrylic I had from my previous failed attempts to pick up crochet, a few balls of yarn a knitting friend gave me, and a couple small balls of dishcloth cotton I picked up with the loom, and my 7.5 dent heddle.

Literal first thing (as an adult) #

Before I got my real loom, a friend loaned me a toy rigid heddle style loom she had. It even still had the acrylic yarn in primary colors from the kit it came with. The loom works on the same principle as the rigid heddle loom, but you have to push the heddle down or pull it up, and the shed was quite small, making it really easy to have accidental floats.

If you think it's ugly, I totally agree with you, this was just using some yarn I did not care one iota about to get the feel of things. The warp striping changes partway through because I misinterpreted how many threads I needed and I was out of the red. It can be liberating to just play around and not care about the end result! The purpose of this was to help me decide if I wanted to buy a loom, and the answer was yes!

First Weaving on my Sample-It: Sampler Scarf #

Download the PDF from Ashford | See more photos of my scarf on Ravelry

To begin with, I did a sampler scarf based on the pattern in the booklet that came with my Ashford Sample-It loom. I used a DK weight yarn instead of worsted which worked out just fine but I skipped a couple patterns so it was way short by the end of 2 repeats, so I did a bit of playing at the end. I also learned it's hard to cut fringe evenly with scissors.

Textured Dishcloths #

Ravelry Project

So I warped up thinking I would do the Spa Washcloths in Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom (also available online on Weavezine: Spa Wash Cloth on a Rigid-Heddle Looms). But I tried one row of the looped pile, and decided it was way to finicky for my mood that day. So I "pivoted" to make some dischloths with pick-up textures instead. I had a great time exploring the pick up textures!

I learned here that I don't have much patience for hand sewing! These have been sitting in an unfinished state for a while. I think I may turn it into a roller towel as I haven't cut them apart yet. I definitely see why a lot of patterns recommend a thinner yarn around the hem, a double roll hem of worsted cotton is pretty bulky!

Color and Weave Coasters #

Ravelry Project

These coasters were made out of my limited yarn stash while waiting for more yarn to arrive. I warped up with 4 of the lighter color and 2 of the darker color. I learned a lot about color changing and got lots of practice with hemstitch. It's really easy to put colors in the same shed by mistake, as you'll see where the jagged lines are on the 1/1 one. My edges on the last one were much neater than the first.

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