Miniature rigid heddle

I've been thinking about this since Sarah Swett's recent blogpost about carving a tiny rigid heddle from a beautiful piece of wood she just happened to have lying around.

It's a weaving item which enables the weaver to raise and lower warp threads to slide the shuttle through. You can make string heddles, tied individually to warp threads, then lifted and lowered in bundles to change the shed. Same idea, different mechanism. It's a lovely engineering concept.

I needed a physical change of pace last evening from stitching, and had been mulling about this. And remembered the plastic sheets I have for cutting out epp templates. It's pliable enough to cut without shattering, and I thought I could pierce and slit it.

Which I did. As you see. Alternate slits and holes. You raise the heddle, the threads in the slits slide, the ones in the holes don't. Lower it, same, but you've changed the shed, the pathway for the shuttle.

 I used a metal eraser shield as a base outline shape.

 These things date back to old fashioned typing, and needing to erase mistakes without blurring the letters around the typo. I must have had this since freelance writing days, which was when Handsome Son was a baby. And I've also used it for paper embossing, must tell you about that another time.  Anyway, back to my heddle.

It's not a beautiful piece of wood, nor could my hands tolerate carving wood, but it will function.

 I'm going to try it today when I do a bit of weaving, using the paper thread I made recently. Here it's just showing how the warp is threaded. In action it will be held in place on the loom by the warp threads.

When you make something different from the daily artwork like this, it releases a lot of  thoughts about the main piece in progress. I've now decided on the backing for the Big Thing With Stars, and how to go with it. Caution: Artist at Work, Dyeing is Forecast.

Not to mention stamping and reverse applique, which I don't think I've ever done, but which will work a treat with this design.

I need to be weaving today, to save my stitching hands. Awful work, but someone's got to do it.. my son tells me I need to work on my joke alert game. He points out that people need cues now and then as to what's said seriously and what's not. To which I say, oh, you're joking...loud eye rolling ensues.