The first thing I needed to do was take much better notes on the weight of my fiber, the weight of my dye material, times, temperatures, pH, and the concentration of any after-treatments. As for the samples and notes I did have, I needed a better way to store and keep track of them. I decided to make binder pages with holes punched in the side to thread the yarn through. This works well for storing dyed yarns and leaves room for my notes.

I think this is a good start for improving my organization and note-taking systems. Now I just need to keep up with it!

The first thing was simply the width of the loom. I purchased the 24in because I wanted to maximize my weaving width for the end result, but I am a small person with a short wingspan, which made actually weaving on this size loom uncomfortable and much less enjoyable. Additionally, the size and solid frame made storing it in a small space difficult, especially while it was warped and mid-project. These two challenges were ultimately what led me to purchase the 15” Schacht Flip.

While working my first project on the Flip, however, I found that with all the small differences between Ashford and Schacht looms I much preferred the Schacht. Starting with the apron bar tie-ons: the Ashford plastic tabs are stiffer, and I found them challenging to work with during that initial wind-on stage, whereas the Schacht string tie-ons are flexible and easy to adjust. I have seen complaints about the apron bar slipping out on the Schacht, but I did not have problems while warping, and found it an excellent feature when taking my work off the loom. Then there is the simple fact that the Flip comes finished, whereas the Ashford needed assembling, some light sanding, and oiling. While this is a plus for the Schacht loom, it is a big part of how Ashford keeps the cost of their looms lower, so it is a fair trade-off if you’re on a budget.

The feature that ended up surprising me the most was the gear mechanism for progressing the warp. I didn’t realize until I experienced weaving on the Flip how much I disliked the gears on the Ashford. Outside of the aesthetic complaints you’ve probably seen elsewhere about the Ashford gears being big hunks of plastic, for me it was the sound that made the difference. When you advance the warp, the gears make a horrible, very loud clicking, and the lock pins can often be difficult to unlock. While I was weaving I found myself pushing the weft closer to the heddle than was reasonable, because I was dreading having to unlock the gears and wind the warp forward. On the Schacht it is an entirely different experience: you simply tighten the bar a little more to take the pressure off the teeth and flip up the latch. No struggling with the locking mechanism, no horrible clicking noise!

So obviously I am happy with my purchase, and in the question of Ashford or Schacht, I have become a Schacht supporter — but what’s the catch? The biggest drawback of the Flip is that there is no slot for the down shed, and this could easily be a dealbreaker for you. I was worried I would struggle with this but ultimately did not have an issue while weaving. If at all possible, see if you can borrow or try one out to gauge whether passing the shuttle while holding the heddle down will be comfortable for you. Additionally, the base model Flip doesn’t come with the slots for a second heddle, but one can be purchased separately and installed, which I will likely do down the road.

All together, I am happy I made the switch from an Ashford to the Schacht Flip because it has made the process of weaving more comfortable and enjoyable for me. Both are solid looms — try to get your hands on each before you decide what suits you and your body best.

The first bag I made is a small envelope style pouch. This was originally going to be for thread scraps, but it did not turn out large enough for that purpose. Fortunately it is the perfect size to store my writing utensils. The base of the bag is made of a patchwork fabric I had already put together for another project I didn’t end up completing. I cut out a rectangle and closed up all the sides so there wasn’t any exposed seams, then got started on the fun part! For the decorative stitching I used a dark maroon embroidery floss and did a bunch of various sized circle of scotch darning. I recently did scotch darning for the first time and fell in love with it, hence the amount of it on this project. Once no more circles could fit I filled in the blank areas with seeds stitching. For the closure I just attached two lengths of hand-spun bourette silk, I am not completely satisfied with this closure and will likely change it at some point. Overall very happy with the stitching and I have a nice bag to replace the broken plastic pencil box I was using.

The next bag I worked on was a rice bag style inspired by K3N cloth tales on YouTube. For the outer fabric I used quilting fabric, the liner is some cotton sheet dyed with chrysanthemum, and in better those I used two layers of cotton drop cloth to add some stability. For the pattern I used a sheet of standard letter paper by cutting it square (8.5 inches) this was the template for each of the sides. The leftover rectangle I cut in half (2.5 x 4.25 inches) and used this as the template for the tabs. Then I cut out 5 squares of the outer fabric and lining with a 1/2 inch seam allowance, 10 pieces of the drop cloth with no seam allowance, and 8 tab pieces with 1/2 inch seam allowance. For the tabs you can use any fabric, I used the lining fabric because I had enough of it.

With all my pieces cut apart it was time for more stitching! I decided to do rows of running stitches using a weaving yarn as pearl cotton because thats what I had. I did this through the outer fabric and both pieces of drop cloth. You don’t need o do as much stitching as I have, you could also use a sewing machine, but I strongly recommend doing some stitching because it provides a lot of the structure that keep the bag upright. I used a machine to stitch each piece to the lining before attaching the bottom and sides with a whip stitch. I used some hand spun wool and a button as the closure.

Lastly I made a few simple drawstring bags. On one I used a blue patterned quilting fabric and a patch with a whale print I was sent in a craft exchange. For the next I used fabric I had eco printed with marigold petals last year. And for the final one I used the rest of the unused patchwork from the first bag, which I made a very tall skinny bag to cram all my little thread and yarn scraps in.

Overall I am so happy with how they all turned out, and my craft supplies are much more organized! If you want to see more of the project check out my YouTube channel.

After my fabric was off the loom, I washed it to allow for any shrinking to happen. Before cutting out my pattern pieces, I reinforced all the seams with a hemstitch. This prevented any fraying or unraveling of the loosely woven fabric and allowed me to cut with a very minimal seam allowance.

Once the pieces were all cut, I sewed everything together. The top shoulder seam and all the edges were sewn up by hand using drop-spun silk thread. The sleeve attachment was done using a machine zigzag to create a French seam. While a little bulky, this made the attachment very secure, protected it from fraying, and hid any polyester machine thread inside the garment.

Now that the construction was all finished, it was time for the most fun part: dyeing it!

I dyed it using madder root from Deb McClintock — check out her blog at https://debmcclintock.me for great resources on natural dyeing and weaving. Myself and some fellow guild members went out to her property to help dig up the bed in exchange for taking some of the madder home with us.

I started by scouring the shirt with Dawn dish soap and mordanting it with alum. At the same time, I started extracting the color from the roots by bringing them to just below a simmer for an hour, then putting a lid on the pot and letting them soak for a day. I repeated this process three times before straining out the roots. Then the shirt went in at just below a simmer for 90 minutes, and I left it to soak in the dye bath for a day before washing it. The results turned out a beautiful pink coral color I am very happy with!

Overall, this was an incredible learning experience, and I am incredibly proud of my first entirely handmade garment. If you want to see the shirt and other beautiful woven artworks, check out The Wild Wild Weft: Celebrating the Art of Texas Weavers, where it will be on display from October 3 to November 7, 2026.

I am fairly new to weaving and have only warped my loom a handful of times, so this was a stressful process. I did a direct warp, because that is how I was taught and I haven’t tried anything different yet. While it worked okay, if I were to do it again I would definitely measure out my warp beforehand. The difference in length between the edges and the middle, caused by direct warping, gave me some problems, even though this was minimized by using my DIY peg board to spread out the warp on the other end.

I tried using scrap yarn to tie the warp onto an apron board to save on waste yarn, which is very important when you are weaving with handspun you have spent months making. It seemed straightforward enough, so I didn’t look up any resources on how to do it. This worked well enough to get me weaving, but I definitely would have benefited from a quick YouTube search first.

These setbacks aside, once I was warped the weaving went quickly and was very enjoyable! I only had a few warp threads break, and was able to pretty easily tie in a new length to replace each one. Because the end product I’m going for is fairly loose and rustic, the extra knots don’t bother me.

Other than a quick pause to spin a few more skeins when I ran out of weft, the weaving only took a few days to finish. Seeing the fabric cut off the loom after months of spinning was so satisfying!

In the next post I’ll update you on creating the pattern and sewing it all together!

Then when you are ready you bring it back out and you frog it. For any non-knitters reading this frogging is the process of undoing your knitting by grabbing the end of the yarn and pulling. You may have heard that it is called frogging because you “rip-it rip-it”, and this is a fun explanation although unlikely the true origin. Our best guess is that the term was adopted from it’s use as a curse or disparaging term for the French which was widely used in England at the time we first see it appear in reference to fiber arts. If you want to read more on the possible origins of the word Lord Libidan has a great blog post on it. So I frogged my crooked sock, pulling and pulling all the way back to before the heel.

Why didn’t I just frog the toe? I picked now to do this because I was in need of a portable project that is so simple I barely need to look as I work. I don’t want to be thinking about where to put the heel and then actually need to do the heel, so I have decided to try an afterthought heel. For an afterthought heel you knit the whole sock as a tube then come back and open it up to add the heel. If this goes well I think it will be my new favorite way to make socks!