When you are working up a new pattern for a shawl or afghan on your big triloom, (triangle loom, tri-loom) you often want to blend 3 or more yarns of different weights, colors and fibers. How do you know if these yarns will work well together?
Weave a sample!
You can easily weave a sample on a small 1-foot triloom, but if you only have a large triloom you can still weave a sample.


Take a 12 inch dowel and set it in the pegs or nails at the bottom point of your triloom. Make sure you have an equal number of pegs on each side.


Begin your weaving just like you have a regular top rail. When you get to the spot where you would go over the nail on your top rail, loop your yarn around the dowel.


Keep weaving just like the dowel was your top rail.



Change colors and add in all the yarns you want in your shawl. Put yarns that you want next to each other together in your sampler. You may need to change colors every other row to get them all in. Work in some of the counts and color patterns that you want in your finished shawl, blanket, ruana or...



I'm doing this example with some yarns that I know will leave a fairly open weave, so that you can see the process. When you are finished, run your last pass down and snip your middle thread at the bottom, pulling the extra line out the top.



Now just lift your sampler off the loom by pulling the dowel gently toward you, lifting the yarn off of any nails it is trying to stick to.



You can then just slide the dowel out of the top row.


Make sure you wash, finish and/or full your sampler exactly the same way your are planning on finishing your final project. That is the only way you will find out how the yarns are going to react with each other.

If you have any questions about triloom weaving, feel free to send me an ebay message, take a look at my other guides or visit our Common Threads fiber arts and more ebay store to see our Laffing Horse Trilooms and accessories.

Happy weaving , Jen