Loom Work Pendant

This is a picture of my homemade loom with a pendant started on it.  After looking at pictures of various looms, and also understanding that you can warp a loom in a way that you don't have ends to deal with, I designed this one with the help of my very talented husband.  There are still some tweaks to do on the design, but overall it works really well and can be used with various techniques.

I learned a technique for doing the warp from the artist mentor who is leading the beading project.  She uses one continuous thread rather than tying off individual threads.  I have tried to use a no  end warp technique as well, but although the concept works, the actual process is so far a lot of trouble, and I am not happy with the tension, so I have done my first 2 projects with the traditional approach (which means a lot of ends to deal with afterwards!)

This pendant is a project by Heidi Kummli from Bead and Button  October 2005, p. 116. The patterns has two variations, both of them lovely.  I beaded the piece with no problem.  The backing technique used masking tape, and I was not hapopy with result, so I took that off and developed my own way of gluing the ends onto lightweight interfacing, then backing the whole piece with ultrasuede.  That worked well.  I used more info from Heidi's book to help with the finishing, and overall it is a very attractive pendant.

I really enjoyed the loomwork, and have another project to post soon.  Because I had lots of warp thread, I was able to do a little pair of matching earrings on the same warp.
Another helpful book in terms of the actual loom technioque was the one by Margie Deeb entitled Out on a Loom, ( which is not readily available but I found one in a remainder sale.)  It has good info on necklaces and how to deal with increases and decreases.

That's all for now folks, I have one more loom piece coming soon.