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How does Spin-Off relate to pin-loom weaving? Boy, just ask our customers! I did a Blitz call for customer photos last week on how TURTLE loom weavers use their looms for their handspun yarns, and here are some examples:
UK-based TURTLE loom user Claire Cryer contributed the header photo for this post. She adds “All handspun by me, and most of the dyed bits are hand dyed by me too. It’s a good way to use leftovers and experiments.” She used the TURTLE Elongon loom and no pattern, but if you are interested in a similar project, take a look at the “Painted Pillow” pattern in the Little Looms Holiday 2021 issue.
Customer Kim Chase is an all-trades fiber lover who is also very creative when it comes to recycling fibers. For this spinning adventure she re-spun a blend of fibers from different sources. Kim’s candle doily would make a great first project for a beginner. Kim also turned a boring shopping bag into an eye-catching accessory by crafting puffed hexagons for an extra 3D effect.
A hexagon flower is a versatile, beginner-friendly project.
Hexie flower doily.
Kim’s special hexipuff bag decoration.
Fiber recycling …
Plyed and ready to weave.
Australian crafters Tamantha Gilfoyle and Kaye Martin are a team: Tamantha spun the fibers and Kay wove them. Here are some of the results:
The star is woven on the TURTLE Original Diamond.
Kaye likes Bronson Lace and has tested different yarns on the TexaTURTLE.
I include Carolyn Blakelock‘s contribution with special emphasis on her “delicious” way of storing her woven pieces in biscuit boxes! Carolyn writes “When I learned to spin, one of the first things I did with my handspun was reach for my pin looms, and I love using up my leftovers on the pin looms. For my thicker yarns I use my square zoom loom, and for my thinner yarns I use my Turtle Loom Hexi. I keep my finished squares in Godiva biscuit tins, to keep them safe from little critters until I have enough to make something.” Great reason to eat more cookies!
Canadian customer Pat McDonald is a winner of the Garment Challenge that we organized a few years ago (see our ad in Little Looms Spring 2025). Pat has crafted a good number of garments and accessories using pin looms. Note how she combines different crafts for her hat!
Hexagon medley
Brown hat and scarf.
Blue scarf.
Beverly Anglin, who has designed numerous adorable projects for the Schacht Zoom loom, contributed this picture of a shawl where she combines handspun and commercial yarns. The pattern is Meg Stump’s “Night Covers the Earth” shawl from her “Pin Loom Weaving to Go” book.
Elise Mann bought some handspun and -dyed yarn locally in the UK, and she thinks that she will have just enough to weave a scarf on her triangle pin loom. It sure looks pretty!
All photos are courtesy of their respective owners and used with permission.
I hope that you enjoyed reading about these examples. Ready to give pin-loom weaving a try? Check out our loom catalog! Contact me if you have any questions.
I’ve been looking forward to this issue because it combines two of my lifetime favorites: Music and crafting. Editor Christina Garton put together an amazingly broad spectrum of musical aspects, and I’m humbled that I am part of this collection with two pin-loom projects.
The Decatonic Scarf
In music theory, a 10-tone or decatonic scale is occasionally used in experimental and contemporary compositions.
Similar to such a music scale, I used a curated mini skein collection to make this scarf. Like a decatonic scale, this has been an invitation to explore unusual color combinations.
The original yarn is slightly thicker than fingering weight yarn. It is very comfortable to weave and creates a smooth, solid fabric, perfect for a scarf.
I used Koigu’s Jasmine DK Pencil Box in Bala Cranberries. This mini skein collection has been discontinued by the company, but you can still find it online. Or use any 10 mini skeins to “compose” your own.
Optionally, add and play with removable tassels. Use them in a classical fringe way, as closures, or add your own 10-tone composition for decoration.
Folded in half around the neck and ends pulled through. No tassels.
Classical wear wrapped around the neck. Tassels along the short sides.
Uneven stole wear over the shoulders. Tassels along the front as extension of the woven color.
“Composed” wear with tassels used as random decoration.
The Rhapsody in Blue Rug
In his Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin expresses the many facets of the American Melting Pot in music.
The door mat depicts the first six notes of the opening of the Blues theme (midnight-colored hexagons), surrounded by the light blue sways of Blues, and some golden rhythmic accents of that time.
Dwella by Gist is my new favorite rug yarn. It is the smoothest rug yarn to work with, yet providing the strength that you need for crafting something that you will step on with your shoes.
The issue is packed with 17 projects that celebrate music, from playful to practical. I also enjoy the features, for example “How to Weave a No-Sew Pouch”, which is about weaving in the round on a frame loom.
It all started with this little patriotic heart coaster that I doodled together a few weeks ago. Then I thought it would be nice to write the pattern so that others can weave hearts as well.
Little did I realize that this would turn into an instructions series about pick-up pattern weaving using the continuous-strand weaving method on square looms, supported by seven new videos!
There are very few resources available for weaving pick-up patterns using the continuous-strand weaving method on square pin looms, and I quickly realized that there was a lot to explain before I could share my heart pattern. In this post you will find tips and tools that go beyond just one square loom. I hope that you will enjoy these new resources!
Continuous-strand weaving is typically done on looms with equidistant pin setting (the pins are evenly spread out along the sides).
However, I’ve tried to provide instructions that go far beyond just one loom so that you can apply the principles to similar looms.
Pick-up patterns for pin-looms most commonly weave over/under three threads, though longer floats are possible. The limited number of strands to work with on these little looms and the typically thicker fibers compared to what is used on traditional large looms make 3-strand floats a good choice to show as much “pattern” as possible in a limited space. These instructions use 3-stand floats throughout to keep the demonstration simple to follow.
Now let’s start the journey:
Challenge: Square Looms with Different Pin Setts
There are no traditional standards for square looms with equidistant pin setting like there are for the Weave-It method (pin looms with the classical 3-pin grouped setting). This also means that pin setts and loom sizes vary greatly. Writing a pattern that depends on a proper number of warp and weft threads therefore is of very limited use.
To solve this dilemma I decided to show how you can make a design template for any loom. Once you have that, you can more easily adapt a pattern to your loom and design your own patterns:
I recommend to start with weaving a plain square.
On the loom, slide the fabric up as high as possible.
Take a picture and optionally apply a high-contrast black/white filter.
Save this image as a reusable image for a blank template. You can print copies and color them in or use online painting apps to mark up a copy.
Such a template is useful to count warps and wefts, design cross-stitch patterns, and more.
Next, weave a square with an all-over pickup pattern. The easiest is an all-over honey comb pattern:
Weave the first five rounds as usual in plain weave. Note that you could start the pick-up pattern after just two rounds, but I recommend to add a plain weave border for a nicer edging.
On the next round, weave U1, O1, U1, … O3, U1, … O1, U1, O1 to the end.
For the continuous-strand weaving method you need rounds of plain weave between pattern rounds, so weave one round plain.
On each following pattern row, start the same pick-up sequence U1, O1, U1, then add repetitions of (O3, U1) to the last three strands and end in O1, U1, O1. The rows are getting longer because you have more warps from the previous weaving. Just repeat U1, O3 until you get to the last three strands.
Don’t forget to weave plain rows between pattern rows.
Continue to repeat the last two rounds. The final round should be plain weave to ensure pattern symmetry throughout the square. If your weaving doesn’t end on a round of plain weave, consider skipping the last round or weaving one more round in the beginning before you start the pattern weaving.
Weave the last pattern row.
Photograph your honeycomb square and make a design template as described above. Additionally, mark the line where you wove the last row. That’s your first geometry axis. Optionally you can mark the other diagonal as well for fully symmetrical motifs and to make counting easier.
Use this template to easily convert pick-up patterns to your loom and design your own patterns.
Here are video instructions that show how to weave the all-over honeycomb pattern. Shown are righthanded instructions, lefthanded instructions are available as well.
Challenge: Pattern Symmetry
Take a minute to understand how patterns develop on a continuous-stand woven square.
As is is common to continuous-stand weaving squares, what you weave at the beginning of a round “copies” automatically to the opposite side of the loom when you complete the round.
This means that any pattern stitches that you weave will automatically copy in reverse row sequence to the other side of your future fabric. The final row of the square serves as the geometry axis to join the two halves.
You only design half of a square (the upper right triangle) and the rest will fill in automatically in reverse row sequence as you weave.
That makes it easy to design patterns that are symmetrical in all directions, like a diamond. You plan the upper half of the shape and the lower half will automatically copy as you weave.
See in this video how you can try this out using your new template to design a pick-up pattern:
Challenge: Weaving a Shape with One Symmetry
Pattern design becomes a little more complex for motifs that only have one symmetry axis. The key is to align the symmetry axis of the design with the last row of your square weaving. Then the same rules that are explained above apply.
To weave the heart, you will now start each row weaving differently than ending it.
Here is a chart that shows the pattern for a heart on the Square 4″ R loom (righthanded view).
Weave plain weave for the areas outside the pattern.
To easily find out the row where you need to start the pattern weaving, count the pins!
This video shows how to weave the heart shape. Shown are righthanded instructions. Lefthanded instructions are available as well.
Challenge: Using Two Colors
Any pick-up pattern will look good in a solid color, but you may need to look twice to see the pattern.
You get a much more vivid effect if you use two colors.
Weaving a two-colored continuous-strand square requires a few extra steps:
To get a single strand at the beginning of the weaving, start with one color at the bottom corner (closest to you) and guide up a single strand to the top corner. Think of it that you weave half a round instead of a full round. Then start the second color at the top corner and weave the next round as usual. This will add one warp strand to your total count. You can add that to your design planning, or weave another template, this time using two colors!
Change colors every round in the same manner to avoid a frilled edging:
At the end of a round, guide the current working yarn between the last pin that has yarn on it and the next pin.
Switch yarns by guiding the next color OVER the previous color (the new color “traps” the old color).
To start the next round, guide the new color around two pins to get ready for the weaving.
Weave as usual, starting with going under the first thread. End each weaving with going under the last thread before fetching the working yarn.
And here we are finally reaching the pattern that started it all!
The following information puts it all together … how to weave a continuous-strand pick-up pattern on a square pin loom … with one symmetry axis … in two colors.
I invite you to download the written and charted weaving instructions for weaving a small pick-up heart pattern on the TURTLE Square 4″ R loom.
The final video shows the weaving for the heart pattern in two colors step by step. Shown are righthanded instructions, lefthanded instructions are available as well.
Bonus: Opposite Sides with Opposite Looks
When you weave a pick-up pattern, there is no right or wrong side. You will notice that the front and the back of your woven piece look different. The floats on the front (in the example heart pattern) will show horizontally on the front and vertically on the back. If you wove with two colors, the pattern shows in one color on the front and in the other color on the back. Feel free to mix and match those sides in your project!
Solid color, front.
Solid color, back.
Two colors, front. Pick-up is woven in green.
Two-colors, back.
There’s so Much More
There is so much more to write about but I tried to keep it reasonable. I invite you to ask questions in the comments section. Making all this information fit into one blog post has been a challenge on its own, and if something is not clear or I missed something that is important to you, please let me know and I will do my best to answer.
To make this occasion special, I’d like to invite you to contributeyour photos of pin-loom woven pieces or projects using handspun yarn to a slideshow that I’d like to add to this post!
If you have a photo (or more) that shows some handspun pin-loom woven pieces or projects that you made, please contact me.
I plan to add selected contributions with a mention of your name. There is no monetary compensation, but I hope that we can make this a fun event!
Here are three reasons that make pin-loom weaving a great choice for handspun yarns:
Pin-loom weaving is an easy and quick method to try out what your hand-spun yarn will be like when woven. Weave a piece in no time to find out what it looks and feels like, and get a rough idea what sett might work best for your yarn. Those small pieces of fabric are also ideal sample swatches for testing wet-finishing.
Handspun fibers are precious, and preserving even the smallest amount matters … weave up your leftovers and yarn ends into little treasures.
Not all handspun yarns are suitable for all purposes … pin-loom weaving broadens the possibilities of projects to make.
Here are just a few ideas for using handspun yarn on your TURTLE looms:
No matter which fiber craft you pursue, swatching is always a big topic. Why you should swatch … why people don’t swatch … and if you do swatch, what do you do with your swatch afterwards?
I’m a big swatching advocate. Simply speaking, I like to know before I spend hours and ours on crafting how a fiber will work and wash.
Pin-loom swatching results similar benefits as other fiber crafts. It takes just a few minutes to weave up a hexagon, and then you:
Know what it feels like to work with the yarn,
See if the sett is right or if you need to make adjustments or choose another loom,
Can quickly try different weaving methods and patterns, and
Get get a first glimpse of what the fabric will look like.
This is not only of interest for a pin-loom project but it may be useful for other weaving. Weaving up a little piece of fabric in no time may give a first impression of the fabric that you want to make on a rigid-heddle or multi-shaft loom. It will not replace sampling on that loom, but it may help with planning a project.
Using the Original TURTLE Loom in F-fine sett and R-regular sett I wove sample hexagons for each of the 13 skeins, sewed them together and blocked them.
I like to create a fabric instead of blocking pieces individually if I can, because that shows how the hexagons work together across seams.
But then I had this 13-piece, 3-row-something swatch and was wondering what to do with it. Swatches can always be part of a great patchwork blanket, but this swatch was big enough to become its own project … I decided to make a small project bag and here is what I did:
Fold the swatch fabric in half, right side facing in.
The red lines indicate where to sew the sides together. I used whip stitch.
For the handles I found some bamboo rings … they measure about 4.5″ in diameter. You could also use some rope or pretty ribbon!
Add a handle by folding the flap of the hexagon at the open edge over the bamboo ring and secure the folded hexagon along three sides as shown.
Turn the right side out, and you’re done!
The bag measures about 10″ wide at the widest point and is ideal for a pin-loom project or small (sock) knitting project. Lining is optional, but if you transport needles or small, thin items, you may want to keep them in a small Ziplock bag.
