DIY Loom | Weave a Bag | Weaving for Beginners

Weaving is one of those projects you need to dedicate yourself to. It takes time, perseverance and mindfulness. Weaving engages your mind and hands, and unlike knitting for instances, you can’t easily take your eyes off your project. Weaving in found in the Waldorf curriculum starting at grade 3. It complements the the block on shelter, farming and clothing. With a bit of effort, you can actually weave fabric and potentially make your own rudimentary clothes! In this project, however, we are weaving a bag. With a bit more effort, you can optimize your weaving time and create a bag rather than a solid piece of fabric. For this project, we are making our own DIY loom out of heavy cardboard or chipboard. I’m using chipboard from the backing of a watercolor paper pad. It’s thick and difficult to bend which is just what we want. The piece I’m using is 9“x12“. Along the top and bottom (9 inch side), I’m marking 1/2 inch increments. You can make your increments smaller for a tighter weave or larger for a looser weave. One thing to make sure of though, is that your last increment is as close to the edge of the chipboard as possible. If not, trim the chipboard because otherwise in the end, you’ll end up with a large bit of unwoven yarn on either end of the project. It doesn’t affect the project, but it’ll be noticeable. If you look closely, you can see if in the correct project with teal colored bulky weight yarn. Make sure you have an odd number of increments/strings otherwise you won’t have the opportunity to go over/under in an alternating pattern to create a proper weave. Once your increments are set, it’s time to string up your loom. In this case, I made a mistake. I’ve shown you my mistake in the video and how I remedied the problem, but I also show you the correct way to do it. When weaving a bag, you want an opening! Do do this you need to string your loom so that the string goes around alternating tabs and comes down the same side before circling back up the other side in which you just string it up without wrapping it along the tab. This is very confusing at first! It took me a lot of practice and there are still times I do it wrong. Truthfully, there are a few ways to do this, and I’ve now done this about 4 different ways depending on the projects and sadly, one time, it was very wrong and this is the time you get to see! In the end, we found an alternative way to fix our mistake, and while it’s not perfect, it works. I debated showing you the mistake, but in the end, with your suggestions, I showed the mistake in a way I hope isn’t confusing to the tutorial. I’m pleased with finding a solution to our problem even though it took so much time to fix. In the end, you can hardly tell and it salvaged weeks of work. Imagine starting over!! We used yarn from Harrisville Designs as well as some home dyed yarn using natural materials like onions skins and tea. The yarn dyeing and weaving accompany our American History units by adding in Waldorf inspired handwork. I love having the opportunity to tailor our lessons to appeal to my child’s interests and still work within the Waldorf Education philosophy. We initially used some tools that came in the Harrisville Designs Loom Kit, but ultimately, this was completely DIY. My 8-year-old daughter worked on the Harrisville Design loom to make her project, while my 13-year-old son worked on the DIY loom to make a bag using a ruler to separate the string and a popsicle stick as a shuttle. This project is fast at first and you can complete 90% of it fairly quickly. The last part is challenging because the space is so tight. I helped with that part using a knitting needle with a sharp point and a wide eye to fight the yarn. I also helped make the twizzle with my son (which is the handle) and sewed it in for him, though these are things he’s capable of doing at his age. He chose the pattern which was just an alternating of colors starting with wider bands at the bottom and tighter bands at the top. To keep in line with Waldorf philosophy, you’ll want to be mindful to use darker colors at the bottom and lighter at the top where it opens. Also if there is an embroidery design on top of the weaving, you’ll want to ensure that the bottom of the design is closed and the top open. In our case, I feel that the tighter bands would have been more appropriate at the bottom versus the top. Something to consider when you are embarking on your project! Check out the Waldorf Handwork blog post for more handwork projects: This project accompanies our American History unit, check out the blog post for this unit: Find me here: