Choosing Yarns for the Pin Loom

Choosing the right yarn for your project is essential to a successful design. If you were knitting, you could change needle sizes, brand, materials, or even your knitting style to accommodate the demands of the yarn. With pin-loom weaving, your yarn choice is limited by your loom’s fixed sett. But fear not—there is room for innovation in yarn choices and how you use each type of yarn. The possibilities of weaving are as endless as the number of yarns in the world. Experiment and watch your pin-loom shapes come to life before your eyes! Here are a few pointers for choosing yarn.

Weight

Ben used a sport-weight 100% Merino yarn to weave the sample shown above. Finer yarns, such as the one shown here, will give your pin-loom fabric a lace-like hand while thicker yarns will yield a firmer cloth.

Sock, fingering-weight, and DK-weight yarns are generally the best for pin-loom weaving. You may use laceweight on its own to create an airy and delicate fabric or double it up to create a faux basketweave. Anything larger than DK-weight is nearly impossible to weave with for many small looms.

Stretch

Yarns with elasticity, such as wool and wool blends, work well for pin-loom weaving. Ben wove the sample shown above using Sweet Georgia Superwash DK yarn.

Wool, wool blends, and some synthetic fibers are the easiest to use, as the stretchiness makes weaving a breeze. You can use yarns with less stretch such as cotton, linen, or hemp, but you must add extra slack in the yarn as you warp the loom to make up for the yarn’s lack of give. The extra care is worth the effort, however, as yarns like these create a wonderful fabric with a great hand. Determine what kind of yarn you are using, then decide what kind of warping treatment to use with it.

Color

Pin looms are a great palette for playing with color in weaving—without using a lot of yarn. For this sample, Ben used Schoppel Yarn Zauberball Starke 6, a self-striping yarn.

You don’t have to use just a single color yarn, or even just one strand of yarn when weaving on a pin loom. Choosing a self-striping or variegated yarn will create striking patterns. You can also use different colored yarns together in alternating layers to create other great color-and-weave combinations.

Texture

Novelty yarns such as fun fur, ribbon yarn, ladder yarn, eyelash, bouclé, and others can add flair and texture to a pin-loom square. Use this type of yarn in your last layer, as shown in the header photo above, to avoid tangles or splitting the yarn when passing the needle through the warp layers. These embellished squares add pizazz to your project and can use up small bits of leftover stash.

Originally published in the 2016 Easy Weaving with Little Looms; updated 3/17/2026.