A while back, I decided to weave some tote bags, and it was so much fun that I decided I would share the process with you. I know not all of you are weavers, but maybe it will give you some insight into the weaving process and inspire you to add something new to your arsenal of fiber arts skills.
Deciding to weave some tote bags really started with a desire to use some of my handspun. I have a big box full of yarn I’ve spun and haven’t yet used, and I thought tote bags would be a great way to make something useful and fun. I wanted to make a couple tote bags for carrying books and–if I had any warp left over–a bag to connect to the front of my loom to hold supplies. If you’re not a spinner, you could certainly use hand-dyed yarn instead.
The first step was to decide how big to make the bags, and I thought that 18- x 18-inches would be a good starting size. That way, the bags would still be big enough to use even after seam allowance and any shrinkage on the loom. That meant I needed to weave 18 inches wide and 36 inches long for each bag.
I used my big 32-inch rigid heddle loom to weave on. I can weave about 5 yards of cloth on it at a time, so I thought I could manage both bags with a little extra for a small bag at the end. It saves a lot of time to warp once for several projects.
Since I was going to make several bags with different colored weft, I decided to use undyed Buttery Soft DK for the warp. It would match whatever weft colorways I chose and allow me the option of fulling the cloth afterwards if I decided to. More about that later.
Since I was using DK-weight yarn for the warp, I chose my 7.5-inch dpi heddle. That means every inch has 7.5 warp threads. For plain cloth, the rule of thumb is to take the wraps per inch of a given yarn, divide by 2, and choose a heddle size as close to that number as possible. The 7.5-inch heddle was perfect for Buttery Soft DK, which is about 15 wraps per inch.
I have a spreadsheet I use to figure out how long the warp needs to be and also how many yards of yarn I’ll need for the warp. Here’s what the spreadsheet looks like:
There are several terms used above that it might be good to explain. On a rigid heddle loom, a reed and a heddle are the same thing, so I tend to use the terms interchangeably. Fringe means the threads between the projects and not necessarily actual fringe on the project. Warp takeup is the space it takes for the threads to go over and under each other. I allow 10% of whatever the length of the project is for this.
You’ll notice that I only included tying on wastage for the first bag. That’s another advantage of weaving multiple projects at once. The tying on waste is the space at the top and bottom of the loom that can’t be woven.
To figure out the warp length, I add up the totals from each project plus the fringe, tying on wastage, and warp takeup. To figure out how many yards of warp yarn I will need altogether, I multiply the warp length by the total number of warp ends (or threads) from the very top row of the spreadsheet. I figure it out in inches and then divide by 36 to get the number of yards. All in all, I would need just under 2 full skeins of Buttery Soft DK to warp the loom since each skein has 245 yards.
I decided to direct warp the loom, which means putting the loom at one end of two long tables and a couple of pegs at the other end. Here’s a video from Ashford on how to do that.
After I was done warping the loom, it was time to start the fun part! I usually spin just one skein of a given colorway at a time, and I assumed I would need to use multiple skeins of handspun yarn for each bag. I didn’t know whether one skein of handspun would be enough for a whole bag or not, but I thought it would be enough for one side of a bag.
For the first bag, I started with some yarn I had spun from Purple Iris art batts:
If you decide to make yourself some tote bags, I do recommend using plied yarn for this project. While you can use singles, it’s more likely to pill over time. The skein of Purple Iris was 220 yards in length and 15 wraps per inch, so that put it in the DK range just like the warp. While we’re on the topic, I have found the yarn weight to wraps per inch charts on both Ravelry and the Craft Yarn Council to be a little off when it comes to the finer yarn weights. Here’s my own list of wrap per inch by weight based on my own experience:
DPI stands for dents per inch. Feel free to copy the chart and hang onto it.
I wove a length of 36 inches of Purple Iris–enough for both sides of the bag–and I actually had 34 grams left out of the original 100 grams. Here’s the cloth on the loom while I was weaving it:
After that I wove 10 inches of the undyed Buttery Soft DK as a spacer between the Purple Iris bag and the next one. My plan was to use that for the seams on the inside of the bag and keep all of the Purple Iris cloth on the outside of the bag.
Next I started with a bulky yarn I had spun from my Sailing Away Art Batts. I had 150 grams of this one, but I don’t how many yards I had. Unfortunately I don’t find a photo of the handspun I used, but here are the Sailing Away art batts:
My norm is to spin two of the same art batts and then ply them together, and that’s what I did with the Sailing Away handspun yarn.
Since I knew I had extra yarn for this tote bag, I decided to play around with some patterns. Every six inches, I added a decorative row using what amounted to hem stitches.
After I was done with these two, I only had a little bit of space left on the warp for the loom bag. It was 11 inches long in the end, so a little smaller than I had hoped, but I moved forward using a 3-ply bulky handspun I had made from Kristin Lavransdatter art batts:
When I was done weaving the cloth for all three projects, I took it off the loom and examined it. The cloth was good and tight, so I decided I didn’t want to full the first two.
Fulling cloth is a way of turning the separate strands from weaving into what is known as “whole cloth”–where the cloth becomes one piece. The cloth also becomes thicker and smaller. I didn’t want to make the two tote bags smaller and didn’t think they needed to be fulled, but I decided to full the little loom bag made from Kristin Lavransdatter handspun.
Before I could start making the bags, I needed to wash the cloth first. I washed the cloth for all three projects by hand. I let it soak in cool water with a little Dawn detergent for a couple hours and then rinsed it and let it dry. Then I cut the three bags apart, cutting in the middle of the spacer fabric I had woven between each of the bags. It’s always a little scary to take scissors to your precious handwoven fabric! Until it has been fulled or stitched along the edges, it can unravel a little bit, but I knew it wouldn’t unravel more than a row or two, so cutting through the middle of the spacer fabric wasn’t too scary.
For the two full-sized tote bags, I then ironed on medium-weight cotton interface to prevent any unraveling. This idea came from Sarah Howard on YouTube. She creates wonderful videos on how to make clothing from handwoven cloth using a rigid heddle loom, and she’s so much fun to watch!
After ironing on the interface which doubled as lining for the bags, I sewed up the sides of the bags. I used my basic Singer sewing machine to do this. By the time I was done sewing up the bags, the Purple Iris bag was 13 inches wide and 17 inches tall after seaming, and the Sailing Away bag was 15-1/2 inches wide and 14 inches tall.
The hardest part was adding the handles because it involved turning the very thick fabric around and around under the needle to attach the handles. For the Purple Iris tote bag I actually wove handles from the remaining yarn on a separate warp, but fashioning the handles was a pain because it required turning very narrow tubes inside out.
For the second bag, I made my life a lot easier and got some matching webbing on Amazon like this and made handles out of that:
Both types of handles have held up well. I use the Purple Iris bag and my husband uses the Sailing Away bag, and we both load them down with books!
For the loom bag made using Kristin Lavransdatter yarn, I did full it, and I have to tell you a funny story about that. It had been a long time since I had fulled cloth in the washing machine. It’s by far the easiest way, but if you do it too long, you’ll end up with a little piece of felt instead. To be on the safe side, I wanted to find some instructions, so I did what one does and googled “fulling cloth in a washing machine.” The stupid AI gave the first answer of course, but it sounded oddly familiar. When I delved a little further, I discovered that it was quoting a blog post of mine from 2017. Ha! Based on past-me’s instructions, I put it in my front-loading washer on delicate with a bit of regular detergent and hot wash and cold rinse. Part of the fulling process is friction, and part of it is changes in temperature, and detergent aids in the process.
It worked well. The finished cloth shrank from 17 inches wide down to 12 inches wide and from 11 inches long down to 7-1/2 inches long. It was super thick and solid enough to put small things in without having them fall through. Here it is:
I’d like to make another fulled bag for a purse soon.
If you have any questions or ideas for how to do this better, please don’t hesitate to email me.
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Fresh from the Dye Pots
This week I dyed a trio of colorways with Impressions of Autumn, Autumn Sunset, and Sunset at Sea on Stained Glass Fingering. Here they are together:
I also dyed some more Chasing Orcs and Hobbits on Stained Glass Fingering…
The Winedark Sea on Stained Glass Fingering…
and Cloud Gazing on Sock Perfection…
Here’s a sample I made using Cloud Gazing with double-elongated stitches at the top and floret stitches at the bottom:
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June Club Colorway
For June I chose a painting by Angelika Kauffman called The Sorrows of Telemachus:
This Neoclassical Swiss painter was well known and loved during her lifetime. She focused a lot on painting scenes from Greek mythology. While I used this in the collage for my Telemachus colorway, the yarn and art batts will not be the same. You can learn more about the scene in the painting here. As usual, the last day to sign up or make changes to the club is May 31st.
On a related topic, I recently finished reading Ithaca by Patrick Dillon. It’s a retelling of The Odyssey from Telemachus’ perspective, and it’s quite faithful to the original. I highly recommend it.
I know a lot of you love Impressionism as much as I do, and I’m almost giddy with the fact that we’re less than one hundred years away from the Impressionist period for the art-inspired club. I plan to spend a good long time on Impressionism when we get there a few months from now!
I think that’s everything for this week. I hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. I’m so grateful to the men and women who gave everything for the sake of our liberty!