Davey and I: Weavers

I am kinda fascinated by weaving.  I think it would be fun to have a loom someday and weave fabric.  But in the meantime, I found a weaving activity on pinterest.  It’s from Made By Joel where I discovered the fun Paper City.  This is an easy easy way to begin weaving, and he provided a great pictorial tutorial.

I used the lid of a shoebox for our cardboard.  I actually cut the lid in half.  We each had one half as our “loom”. 

 

The tutorial provides good pictures on how to set this up.  Here’s how the back of the loom looks.

I set up the looms for us and then showed Davey how to weave. It’s very easy. Any yarn would work fine.  I had some leftover bulky wool yarn that I thought would be easy for Davey to grab and maneuver.

We just took a length of yarn and went over and under the yarn on the loom.  I did wind a little bit of scotch tape at the end so that the yarn wouldn’t fray as much.  It gave him something to grab onto as well.

 

Davey did great for awhile.

I loved watching his little hands work.  I think it’s a great activity to build fine motor skills.

He started to get a little weary of it though after not too long.  So I told him that the yarn was “breaching” and going back in the water, and coming up and “breaching” again.  He loves whales so this inspired him to weave on for awhile longer.

So that’s about as far as he got.  He did really well, and I could see how it could become kind of repetitious for him.  I found it calming and fun – kinda like knitting a row so I kept on going.

At the end you just carefully take the end loops off and you can adjust the weaving so that those loops work in smoothly.  I did have to weave in the ends where I did the color changes, but that was ok too. Being a fiber fiend, I enjoyed the whole process.

The ending result was a somewhat primitive square that could be used as a coaster maybe?  A person could get inspired and make a larger loom to make placemats or hot pads.

I think with a little practice, I would have a smoother result.

I thought it was a lot of fun.  Davey thought so too – for a little while anyway!