Hand weaving

Over, under, over again.

Every woven thing, from a linen shirt to a tapestry, is made the same way: one thread passing over and under another. With a simple frame loom you can learn the whole craft at a table and make your first wall hanging in a weekend.

Start weaving

Hands pressing down rows of green, yellow and purple weft on a tapestry in progress, with the pale warp threads and a coloured design sketch beside it — A tapestry being woven by hand in Senegal, following a coloured design. Photo: Wuzyprod, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A reconstructed Iron Age warp-weighted loom with wooden uprights and warp threads hanging down to clay weights

Swatch 1

How weaving works

Warp and weft, sheds and the main kinds of loom.

A smooth wooden boat shuttle with a bobbin of thread inside, photographed on a grey background

Swatch 2

Frame loom

Warping, plain weave, tension and finishing.

A long low-warp tapestry loom in a workshop, with a paper design laid beneath the white warp threads

Swatch 3

Tapestry techniques

Shapes, colour joins, hatching and rya knots.

Photo: Weaver80, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons · Photo: Selwyn Wright, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons · Photo: David Monniau, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Close up

The simplest structures in cloth

Change the order of overs and unders and the same threads make a completely different cloth.