Army of Heddles

This week’s episode of A Handwoven Experience is all about the army of heddles contained in each and every loom.

A heddle is a tall, thin metal piece (could be made of other materials, too) with an eye in the middle of it. Each heddle slides along a top & bottom rail in a shaft of the loom. A heddle’s job is to hold a yarn so it lifts and lowers with the shaft. So, if a project has a lot of yarns? You end up with a serious army of heddles. Watch the full episode to get more information.

Show Notes –

Measuring Heddles – As with most things related to weaving, measuring heddles isn’t as straightforward as you would hope. Instead of measuring the entire length of the heddle, you need to measure the distance in your shaft from the bottom of the bottom heddle rail, to the top of the top heddle rail. This will give you an accurate length for your heddle. I found a great video from the Woolery that dives right into this topic. Check it out here.

Texsolv Heddles – If you are interested in another option besides metal heddles, a company out of Sweden called Texsolv makes a polyester heddle. While I haven’t worked with them myself, I have heard great things. The one consideration to keep in mind is the weight. Some looms are balanced with the weight of metal heddles in mind. So to put on much lighter Texsolv heddles is a problem. If you are considering this, just do a bit of research before you go through the process of swapping them out.