It all starts with a warping board. Above…a homemade one.

Sometimes you need to improvise.

Finding something FIRM around which to wind your warp is essential. If you think that you will be doing a a lot of weaving it is well worth investing in a warping board or building one yourself. If you are using dowels embedded in a plank, make sure they are firmly embedded and cannot move at all. Leaning warping stakes will seriously affect your warp.

“L” brackets screwed into wood work well using one arm of the “L”  as the stake.

The warping pegs that come with rigid heddle looms are another good option. Clamp two to a table.

An inkle loom can be used as a warping board using two pegs.

There are many ways to wind a warp for backstrap weaving. Here are some basic moves:

1.Start by tying the yarn in a large loop around stake A. Place the ball of yarn in a bowl or other container so it won’t roll around. Pull the yarn off the ball and lead it to and around stake B. 2.When returning to stake A, the yarn needs to cross itself. You are moving in a figure-of-eight path. 3. When changing colors cut and tie on new yarns to each other at stake A. Finish by cutting and tying off the yarn around stake A in a large loop.

Concentrate on keeping the tension as even as possible. Try not to stop or pause in the middle of warping. Remember that this warp will go directly onto your loom. A well-wound evenly-tensioned warp will get you started on the right foot with your weaving.

Warps wound this way can be used to weave bands that look like these:

Bands with vertical sold-color stripes.

Guatemalan weavers use space-efficient set-ups to warp their long warps. The Guatemalan weavers with whom I studied like to put two crosses in their warps.

Four-stake warping, which allows you to quickly and efficiently separate out two colors into two sheds on the warping board.. A warp set up this way will produce a band with horizontal stripes. It is also the base for creating patterns with simple warp floats and complementary-warp pick-up structures.

Warps created using 4 stakes and used for weaving Andean Pebble Weave bands

You can learn two basic ways of warping use two stakes and four stakes in my video Basic Warping for Backstrap Looms.

This blog post also has a lot of information about warping.

Follow up your warping with my video on Operating a Backstrap Loom which is available for streaming or as a dvd on Taproot Video.