Handlooms

A loom is a machine or device for weaving thread or yarn into textiles. Looms can range from very small hand-held frames, to large free-standing hand looms, to huge automatic mechanical devices. The ancient Egyptians and Chinese used looms as early as 4000 BC. In practice, the basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but the basic function is the same.

The earliest looms were vertical shaft, with the heddles fixed in place in the shaft. The warp threads pass alternately through a heddle and through a space between the heddles, so that raising the shaft will raise half the threads (those passing through the heddles), and lowering the shaft will lower the same threads -- the threads passing through the spaces between the heddles remain in place.

Edmund Cartwright built and patented a power loom in 1785, and it was this that was adopted by the nascent cotton industry. A silk loom was made by Jacques Vaucanson in 1745, which used the same ideas but it wasn't developed further.Powered looms were shuttle-operated for two hundred years. 200 Austin looms (under license) were installed in a Pollockshaw mill in 1800. The 1803 Johnson improvements in warping led to a new power loom factory in Manchester in 1806, and three more factories in Stockport and Wigan by 1810. By 1818 there were 32 factories containing 5732 looms.

Knitting looms (also known as Amish looms or knitting boards) were recently popularized in crafting circles by the Knifty Knitter system. Knitting looms are a descendant of the frame loom. Grooved pegs are spaced along a central frame. These pegs are wrapped with yarn in various ways, then the knitter uses an angled hook to pull the wrapped yarn over the top of the peg, resulting in a fabric with stitches similar to a needle knitted item. A type of loom used for thin strips of beading. A bow loom consists of a bendable branch of cedar, willow or other easily bendable types of wood. 10-11 holes are then made along the length of two smaller pieces of wood. Thread is looped through the holes and attached to the long bendable piece. Once the bow is threaded, the thread is then used for beading. This method was traditionally used by the Native Americans.