Cardboard Loom Yarn Weaving
Your child weaves a small square of cloth on a loom cut from a cereal box, over four or five sittings, and it takes as long as it takes.
- Age
- 6 to 9, best at 7
- Setup
- 15 min, once
- Play
- 20 min or more
- Materials
- Household only
- Mess
- None
- You
- Set it up, then leave
Activity KG-A062
What you need
The loom is the only thing that needs making, and it is made once and lasts for years. Everything on this list is probably already in a drawer.
- Stiff cardboard, about 15 by 20 cmx1 Or: the side of a cereal box, doubled and glued. Or the back of a used notepad. Single-layer cereal box bends inward once the warp is tight and the weaving goes slack. Two layers glued together, or one layer of shoebox card, holds its shape for a whole project.
- Kitchen string or strong cotton threadabout 3 m Or: dental floss. Or the thinnest yarn you have. This is the warp, the set of threads running top to bottom. It has to stay taut, so it needs to be thin and not stretchy. Wool warp sags and the cloth comes out wavy.
- Yarn, in two or three coloursa small ball Or: strips of an old t-shirt cut 2 cm wide. Or garden twine. Thicker yarn fills the loom faster, which matters a great deal on the first one. A chunky yarn finishes a small square in about an hour; a fine one can take four.
- A blunt darning needle, or a lolly stick with a notchx1 Or: a bent paper clip. Or a strip of card 1 cm wide with a slot cut in one end. This is the shuttle. A cardboard shuttle 12 cm long is easier for a seven year old to steer through the warp than a needle, and it holds more yarn.
- Scissorsx1 For the notches at the start and the ends at the finish. Cutting the notches is the adult's job; everything after that a child can do.
- A ruler and a pencilx1 The notches need to be evenly spaced. Uneven notches give an uneven cloth, and it shows from the first row.
How to set it up
- Mark the top and bottom edges of the card every centimetre and cut a 5 mm notch at each mark.5 min
- Tape the end of the string to the back, run it up through the first top notch, down through the first bottom notch, and keep going until every notch is filled.5 min
- Tape the loose end to the back and check the strings are taut but not bowing the card.1 min
- Wind about two metres of yarn onto the shuttle and hand the loom over.2 min
- Weave the first two rows together, over one and under one, so the pattern is in his hands rather than in your explanation.3 min
What to say and what to do
Say
Over, under, over, under. All the way across.
Next row starts the other way round.
Do not pull it tight at the edge, just lay it down.
Do
- Weave two rows next to him and then hand it over completely. The rhythm transfers by watching, and it does not transfer by being described.
- Put the loom somewhere visible between sittings. A half-woven loom on a shelf gets picked up; one in a drawer does not.
- Let the colours change whenever he wants. Tie the new yarn to the old with a knot and carry on; the knot disappears into the cloth.
Let be
- Edges that pull in. Almost every first weaving comes out with a waist in the middle, and it is the most normal thing about a first piece.
- A row where he went over two by mistake. It reads as a pattern by the time there are twenty rows above it.
- Long gaps between sittings. This one is designed to be picked up a week later.
What it looks like when it is working
- The shuttle starts going through in one movement instead of being threaded string by string.
- She notices the missed thread herself, two rows later, and decides whether to undo it.
- He pushes the rows down with his fingers to close the gaps without being told.
- The question changes from how long it will take to what colour goes next.
What to expect at each age
At six
Weaves with the loom flat on the table and needs the over-under said aloud for the first few rows of each sitting. Pulls the edges tight, so the cloth narrows.
Holding the whole pattern in mind across a gap of days comes later; expect to re-start the rhythm together at the top of each sitting.
Lasts 10 to 15 minutes a sitting
At seven
Picks up where he left off without being reminded which way the row goes. Changes colour deliberately, and starts to plan stripes before he weaves them.
Even edges are still a way off. The waist in the middle is a tension habit that settles over two or three finished pieces.
Lasts 20 to 30 minutes a sitting
At eight and nine
Works out the over-two, under-two variation on her own, or asks for it. Keeps the edges straight and finishes a square in two sittings.
This is the point where a real loom, or weaving on a picture frame with nails, is the natural next thing.
Lasts 30 minutes or more
When it goes sideways
Everything below is something the loom is telling you. Each one has a fix that takes under a minute.
The cloth is narrowing towards the middle
The yarn is being pulled tight at the turn at each edge, which draws the outer warp threads inward. It happens on nearly every first piece.
Lay the yarn across in a loose arc before pushing it down, rather than pulling it straight. Two rows of doing that and the width comes back.
The warp strings have gone slack
The cardboard has bowed inwards under the tension, which is what single-layer card does once about ten rows are in.
Slide a pencil under the warp at each end, on the back of the card. It re-tensions the whole thing in ten seconds. For the next loom, glue two layers of card together.
He stopped halfway and has not been back
The middle of a weaving is the slow part: the novelty of the rhythm has gone and the end is not in sight.
Change the yarn to a much thicker one, or to strips of old t-shirt. A chunky row fills four times the height of a thin one, and visible progress is what brings a child back.
There is a hole where a thread was missed
One row went over two warp threads instead of one, usually near an edge where the shuttle turns.
It is fixable by pulling that row back out, and it is also fine left in. Ask which he wants; a seven year old who chooses to unpick two rows has just learnt something the finished square could not teach.
Making it harder
Four rungs, each built on the same cardboard loom. Only the last one needs anything the house does not already have.
Plain weave, one colour
- Ready when
- This is the starting point.
- What changes
- One thick yarn, over one and under one, from bottom to top.
- What is new
- The rhythm itself, and finishing something that takes more than one sitting.
Stripes
- Ready when
- She can weave a full row without checking each thread.
- What changes
- Two or three colours, changed whenever she likes, knotted on at the edge.
- What is new
- Deciding in advance how many rows a stripe gets, and then holding to it.
Over two, under two
- Ready when
- He can keep the edges roughly straight over ten rows.
- What changes
- The same loom, a different count, offset by one thread every second row.
- What is new
- A pattern that has to be tracked rather than felt, which is the first properly demanding thing here.
A shaped piece, off the loom
- Ready when
- She has finished two squares and asks what else it could be.
- What changes
- Cut the warp off the back of the card, tie the ends in pairs, and sew two squares together into a purse or a phone pouch.
- What is new
- The weaving becomes a component rather than the whole object, and the finishing is its own job.
Cut the piece off at a row he chooses, not at the top of the loom. A square finished on purpose at two thirds of the height is a better object than one that was carried on with until the interest ran out.
How to keep it safe
One tool, one moment, and it belongs to the adult.
- You cut the notches. Eighty small cuts in stiff card is the one part of this that wants adult hands and a sharp pair of scissors.
- A blunt darning needle, or a card shuttle, for the weaving. Both go through the warp perfectly well and neither needs watching.
- Cut yarn lengths to about two metres. That is long enough to weave several rows and short enough to stay out from around a neck.
- Wind loose yarn back onto the ball at the end of each sitting and keep the loom on a shelf if there is a toddler or a cat in the house.
Why this helps
From the guide The claims here follow our guide on how patience actually develops.
Weaving asks the two hands to do different jobs for a long time: one holds the loom and keeps the warp open, the other steers the shuttle and lays the yarn down at a consistent tension. That division of labour between the hands is the thing being practised, and it is much harder to sustain over twenty minutes than over two.
The second thing here is a result that arrives days after the work starts. Almost everything else in this library finishes inside one sitting. A loom sitting half finished on a shelf, picked up on Thursday and again on Sunday, is a genuinely different experience of effort, and it is the reason this one sits on the patience shelf as much as the hands shelf.
Skill practised: sustained bilateral coordination at a steady tension
This is a craft with a real object at the end. A seven year old weaves because he wants the square, and the hand work happens on the way there.
One a week, at your child's age
We publish one new activity a week at each age, in exactly this format. A cardboard loom is much easier to copy from fifteen seconds of video than from a paragraph about notches.
Opens the profile, not a message. No newsletter, and nothing on this page is held back for followers.
Questions parents ask
How long does a whole square take?
About two hours of weaving for a 15 by 20 cm loom with medium yarn, which in practice lands as four or five sittings across a week or two. Thick yarn or t-shirt strips halve that, and a first loom is the right place to use them.
Can we reuse the loom?
Yes, indefinitely. Cut the finished piece off the back, tie the warp ends in pairs so the cloth does not unravel, and re-string it. A doubled-card loom will do a dozen pieces before the notches wear.
What do you do with the finished square?
A coaster, a doll's blanket, a pocket sewn onto a bag, or two squares stitched into a pouch. Deciding what it will be before the weaving starts also gives a reason to keep going through the slow middle.
Is six too young?
Six works well with thick yarn and a loom about 10 by 15 cm, so that a sitting makes visible progress. The full-size loom and fine yarn suit seven and up, mostly because of how long the middle takes.