Lashing On To the Front Rod

Some weavers call this lacing on instead of lashing on. Same thing. I have lashed my warps onto the front beam for several years now. I learned about it at a workshop I took in Atlanta on rep weave. However, when I did so, I always lashed the warp ends close to the rod.

Before I lashed the current warp on, however, I decided to take a look again at Peggy Osterkamp to see what she had to say. On page 65 of her Warping Your Loom and Tying On New Warps, Osterkamp says to leave about 2 1/2 inches between the warp ends and the front apron rod. I interpreted that to mean between the knots at the warp ends and the front apron rod because the picture she draws would lead me to believe that is what she meant. So I decided to try this.

The first thing I learned was that a lashing cord ten times the width of the weaving (which is what Olterkamp recommends) is too short, at least when you are lashing on half-inch bundles. So I had to tighten everything a bit. As a result I ended up with about 1 1/2 inches between knots and rod. But that didn't seem to make any difference, and, as she promised, the warp was much easier to adjust than those warps where I had little to no distance between knots and rods.

I also tried something else new. In the past, I have had a lot of trouble keeping the apron rod and the warping rod parallel. This time, instead of using loops of a long nylon rope to lace the apron rod to the warp rod, I decided to try using the heavy polyester loop cord. I cut small pieces and inserted them in the spaces in the apron openings. If you look closely at the picture, you can see four of them joining the apron rod to the warping rod. Doing this made it easy to keep the two rods parallel.