One of the most frustrating parts of starting on a new weaving project can be warping the loom. There’s a lot of pressure to get it just right, because it is the foundation for everything else that follows. Luckily, learning how to warp a peg loom is actually really easy. In fact, it might just be the easiest type of loom to warp that there is.
This is a beginner-friendly project that’s perfect for weavers who are just starting out and for crafting with children. Learning how to warp a peg loom and get started weaving is a quick and easy process. That’s great news, because it means that you can spend less time prepping and more time weaving!
Materials
- Peg Loom (any size)
- Warp Thread
- Scissors
- Material for Weaving
- Optional but helpful: measuring tape, embroidery needle
Note: You don’t need any sort of special material to weave with, especially when you are first learning how to warp a peg loom and get started weaving. You can use strips of fabric, yarn, or fiber roving. Use a combination of yarns and fibers of different thicknesses for an interesting and playful effect.
Of course, we’re partial to our eco friendly Living Dreams Yarn and Fiber. We recommend a nice thick yarn like our bulky weight Bae or some pre-drafted roving like our Air Merino that we’ll be using in today’s demonstration.
How to Warp a Peg Loom
Step 1: Determine the length that you need to cut your warp thread by considering the project that you are planning on making. If you are making a wall hanging, for instance, that will be 1 foot long then you will need each of your warp threads to be 2 feet long (plus a little bit for wiggle room). The number is double because each warp thread is folded over on itself.
Step 2: You will need to cut multiple strands of warp thread. Each strand should be the same length (the length that you determined in step 1). The number of strands you will need to cut is equal to the number of pegs that your peg loom has.
It could also be less than the number of pegs, if you would like your project to be skinnier than the width of your peg loom. For today’s demonstration, we’ll only be using 8 out of the 24 total pegs on our loom. Measure out the first one and cut it. Then you can simply match the length of each subsequent strand to the first one.
Step 3: Now we’re getting somewhere! Take one strand of your cut warp and thread it through the hole at the bottom of one of the pegs. Pull it through so that the thread is centered and the ends are lined up with one another. An embroidery needles comes in handy here if you have one that’s thin enough to go through the holes. Repeat with the remaining pegs.
Step 4: Place the pegs into the holes of the peg loom, ensuring that all of your warp threads are going in the same direction. We find it most helpful if the warp threads are facing out towards us as we weave. You may notice that our loom has an extra row of holes. That’s because it has a separate set of larger pegs for making chunkier weaves. We’ll just ignore those holes for this project.
Step 5: Now that you’ve learned how to warp a peg loom you can start weaving. You can use any weaving stitch that you please, but today we’ll just be doing the basic over and under that you’re probably most familiar with.
Leaving a “tail” a few inches long, take your yarn or fiber and begin to wrap it in front of one peg and behind the next and repeat that motion all the way across. You can gently push down on the yarn or fiber to nudge it down towards the bottom of the pegs and keep everything in line.
Step 6: Go all the way around the last peg to complete your first row and then begin working in the opposite direction. You’ll go behind each peg that you went in front of on row one and you’ll go in front of each peg that you went behind on row one.
Step 7: Before you start on row 3, take your starting tail and wrap it all the way around that first peg as shown. Now it will be sandwiched nicely between rows 2 and 3. Continue weaving until you’ve nearly reached the top of the pegs.
Step 8: Ok, now I know that we took all this time to learn how to warp a peg loom, but we don’t want our weaving to live on our peg loom indefinitely. We will transfer our weaving to our warp thread by pulling up one peg at a time. You want all of your weaving to be transferred onto the warp thread plus a little extra wiggle room of warp thread to allow you to replace the peg back into its hole.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth a million! Here’s a quick reel showing the weaving process and the peg reset process:
Repeat that process of pulling up a peg and nudging the weaving down onto the warp thread all the way across. Then carefully replace each bare peg to reset your loom. You can tug on the loose ends of the warp threads if you left yourself a little too much wiggle room.
Step 9: Continue weaving until you’ve filled up the pegs again. When you transfer this next section of weaving onto your warp thread, you will likely have a gap between the two sections. Don’t worry, you can easily fix this! Grab a warp thread pair with one hand and use the other hand to gently push the first section of weaving up towards to the second section of weaving.
The neat thing about peg loom weaving is that you have a lot of control over how dense it is. You can push up more on your weaving to pack your stitches in really tightly. This is ideal for projects that benefit from a bit of stiffness like wall hangings or rugs.
Now you know how to warp a peg loom and get started weaving! It wasn’t too hard, was it? We would love to see your weaving projects. You can share them with us in our community Facebook group or tag us on social media.
