Use this guide to give you an estimate of your yardage needs for weaving. You want to make sure you have enough yarn to finish your project before you start. It is frustrating to be almost done weaving a project only to discover that the yarn is no longer available.

The Laffing Horse Triangle Looms come in a wide variety of sizes. These yardage calculations are for these looms. Different manufacturers looms have other measurements.

These are approximate measurements. You will find that your yardage needs vary with the thickness of the yarn, the tension of the weave and other factors. Use them as guidelines and add 15% until you have a feel for your loom. Always figure higher and buy a little extra yarn. It is better to have a little yarn left than to not have enough to finish your projects. Then you can add embellishments and highlights. Of course, if you are going to double up the number of times you use each nail, or double up your yarn, you will need to double the yardage.

One of the wonderful things about triangle looms is that there is no loom waste. You don't loose yards of expensive yarn tying your warp to the loom. All of the yarn ends up in your finished product, so you can use the fancier (more expensive!) yarns to weave beautiful creations.

Most shawls and blankets use several different yarns. These figures are totals. So if you need 1,078 yards of yarn to weave a 7-foot shawl with 6 inch fringes, you can have 2-320 yard skeins, 4-80 yard skeins and 1-150 yard skein and have enough yardage. Planning to have enough for a certain pattern is the subject of another guide.

If you are going to finish a shawl with fringe, make sure to add the number of yards of yarn you need for the fringe. With some shawls, the fringe takes more yards than the shawl! To figure how many yards you need to add fringe, multiply the number on the chart by the length in inches that you want your fringe to be - this will give you the approximate number of yards you need for fringe that you are going to attach by cutting the strands and attaching them to each thread on the edge by looping the middle of the fringe through the thread and pulling the ends through the loop.

Size of Laffing Horse Triloom                   Aprox yards needed               Multiply fringe inches by
8-foot                                                                       515                                   129
7-foot                                                                       400                                   113
6-foot                                                                       300                                    97  
5-foot                                                                       205                                    81
4-foot                                                                       130                                    65
3-foot                                                                         75                                     49
24-inch                                                                       35                                     33
18-inch                                                                       20                                     25
12-inch                                                                      10                                      17