Treadles with chains that are hooked to the harnesses. Each treadle will have different harnesses attached. No two treadles will have the same harnesses as another. So, as you depress the treadle it will lift a number of harnesses with thread going through the heddles.
Harnesses that have heddles attached. As you can see, each harness has a number of heddles on it and will have thread going through them in a certain order. (see previous lessons) When a treadle is depressed certain harnesses will come up and others will stay down. You can see that harness 4 is up and harness one is down.
This is what is called a shed. As you can see some threads are kept down and others are lifted. You then put through the shuttle that holds the thread and put that thread through the shed and then let the treadle go, and then I will beat the thread. Refer to other lessons if needed.
This picture shows that the threads are going through heddles that are attached to the harnesses and the harnesses have a group of heddles on just one harness. The order of these threads is what helps to determine what the design will be, along with what order the harnesses will go up and down at different times when the treadles are depressed.
This particular loom has 8 harnesses and 10 treadles. Lets say that I want to do a towel in plain weave. First I would take all my threads and put one yarn through a heddle on harness one then two, then three until I get to harness eight. My towel will be 18 inches wide and will be 12 inches to the inch. which means that I will have 18x12=216 threads that will be threaded through a heddle and that would mean that being as I am doing a plain weave structure I will have an even amount of threads on each harness. 216 divided by 8 equals27 threads on each harness going through heddles. Now I would go down to my treadles and I would hook harnesses 1,3,5,7 to one treadle and then I would hook harnesses 2,4,6,8 to the other treadle because plain weave means that the odd harness will go up and the even would stay down on one pick(when I depress the treadle) and then when I let it go after putting my shuttle through the shed and beating it in I will depress the next treadle that will raise the even harnesses and the odd harnesses will stay down this time and then I will put the shuttle through the shed and beat that into the cloth. As you weave your cloth, you will start to see your design. Designs can be that simple or can be very complicated. You can use any type of yarn you like but some are easier to use for a particular design than others and so on. This is just the basics you have lots to consider; yarns, how close you want your weave structure, what you want to make, what design to use, what colors to use and what colors will go well together, how to set up your loom!
