Tapestry Loom

By Petrea Kelly

You can make a loom out of cardboard and weave your own tapestries. You will need: rectangle of heavy cardboard, ruler, pencil, knife, scissors, and yarn.

Make your cardboard rectangle any size you can handle easily—10″ x 14″ is a good size, but yours can be smaller or larger as you choose. Using your ruler and pencil, mark the longest sides every half inch. Cut a slot about 1/2″ deep at each mark.

With a long piece of string or yarn, thread the loom up and down through the slots, wrapping it around the loom each time; this is called the warp (see illustration). Tuck the loose ends under the yarn near the top of the loom.

A shuttle will make your weaving go faster, though you can push the yarn over and under with just your fingers. Make a shuttle from a flat ice-cream stick. Make a hole near one end with the point of a knife, but be sure to work on a cutting board. Twist the knife point slowly into the stick. Don’t try to go too fast or the stick will split.

Tie a piece of yarn to the shuttle and then simply pull the yarn over and under the warp, turning at the end of a row and coming back the opposite way for the next row. Push each row up tight against the previous row with your fingers or the flat side of your shuttle. Change colors by tying the new color to the end of the old color, and let your imagination go!

Illustrated by Shauna Mooney