Warping

As in all areas of craft, there are many grand debates in weaving. One of the most common is the debate over the best way to dress a loom. For each method, there are diehard fans and true believers. My favorite quote on this topic is from Mary Meigs Atwater, “there are several methods of warping: some good; some poor but useable; some vicious." She clearly had a preference for warping her loom from the back to the front. And she has a point, the act of dragging your warp through the reed and the heddles more than truly necessary is a bit harsh. However, unless you are using very fine or fragile threads or knobby materials, the practice of warping front to back has some distinct advantages. First it requires less equipment. the reed serves a dual purpose as a raddle and your own hand can act as the lease sticks. Second, warping from the front allows the weaver to split the warp into multiple chains either to avoid taxing the warping board or to fasciltiate the arrangement of stripes and colors. Personally, I like to wind and thread my background color as one warp chain and then place all my color variations in another. This is less for the purpose of design, than for convenience. All of my color changes are limited to one subset of the warp, rather than dispersed across the full warp. Of course, warping from the back of the loom has its own advantages and in some cases is the only appropriate choice. So my own recommendation is to learn multiple ways to warp your loom, consider variations which work for you, and then use your favorite method for most projects; but be willing to adapt when your yarn requires another approach.