How to Wind a Stick Shuttle

What’s the best way to wind a stick shuttle? When I first learned to weave on a floor loom, I was given a stick shuttle for weaving, but I wasn’t shown how to wind it, something I didn’t question at the time. I wound the shuttle around and around, down the middle in a straight line. It seemed like the logical way one would wind a shuttle, and it worked then and worked later when I started weaving on a rigid-heddle loom.

Some years later while watching Life after Warping with Liz Gipson, I had my mind blown. Apparently, there was a better way to wind a stick shuttle, and I had no idea. In her video, Liz demonstrated winding the shuttle using a figure-eight motion around one side and then the other, switching back and forth between sides. The result was much less bulky, which means you can wind more yarn onto the shuttle and weave more before you need to do it again.

Both shuttles were wound with the same amount of yarn, one using the around method (top) and the other using the figure-eight method (bottom). Photo by Christina Garton

Don’t believe me? The photo above shows two stick shuttles, each with 20 winds of the same yarn. One I wound using the around method, one using the figure-eight method. As you can see, with the around method all the yarn is wound together in the middle of the shuttle giving the shuttle a higher profile. Conversely, with the figure-eight method, the same amount of yarn is split along each side.

When the shuttles are viewed from the side, the difference in winding methods is even more obvious. Photo by Christina Garton

When we turn the shuttles on their side as in the photo above, the difference is even more obvious. The around-method shuttle looks much bulkier. When I measured the yarn bulk, the around-method shuttle measured just more than an inch while the figure-eight shuttle was closer to half an inch—the same amount of yarn but with a much lower profile. Even better, I can wrap the figure-eight shuttle in the middle using the around motion to put on even more yarn and keep the bulk the same.

Liz Gipson in her video Life after Warping, shows a shuttle wound using a combination of the figure-eight and around method.

Now, if you’re winding a shuttle with a beveled edge, as you would for bandweaving, you can still use the figure-eight method, but only on the unbeveled side. When I’m winding my belt shuttles for my tablet weaving, I wind first using the figure-eight method and then the around method.

It’s such a little thing, but knowing how to wind a stick shuttle effectively makes a huge difference. The more yarn you can wind in one go, the less frequently you have to stop to put more yarn on an empty shuttle, which means more time for what we all love to do: Weave!

Happy Weaving!

Christina