Choosing yarn for your weaving project

There’s more to think about when picking your warp yarn, since it is the one held under tension and abraded by your heddle.

8/4 cotton is a really common kind of yarn to use for warps.

Make sure that your heddle can easily move up and down the warp yarn without getting stuck on slubs or weird texture things. Test this by running a good length of your yarn through a hole in your heddle, and watch for catching and snags.

You can see if a yarn can hold up to the tension it would be under on a loom by pulling out a long (18 inch or so, like the length between your beams) section, and tensioning it as hard as you can over your thumbs. This is more representative than just pulling a short section to see if you can break it. Watch out for whether the yarn is really stretchy - you can use elastic yarns in the warp, but it’s more of a challenge or a design feature than the default.

Mohair doesn’t like to be used in the warp where it’s next to lots of other threads of mohair, because they really like to catch on each other and it makes it hard to get a clean shed. Either use mohair threads occasionally between a smoother warp yarn, or just use it for your weft.

For weft yarns, pretty much anything goes as long as it fits in your shed and supports your design.