Posted by Mike Heilman on Saturday, 25 February 2006, at 1:15 p.m.:
We recently obained a lovely old Sabina 4 shaft-6 harness folding floor loom that had been partially disassembled. I put it together, but the harness/treadle tieups are a challenge. We have used only tapestry and rigid heddle looms up until now. We have it rigged now treadle 1, harnesses 1&2, treadle 2, harnesses 2&3 and so on. Treadling 1,2,3,4, seems to give a good twill. The problem is that following instructions in Rachel Brown's great book,tying up treadles 5&6 to harnesses 1&3 and 2& 4 to get a tabby option, we end up with locked treadles with those 2 if we try to use them with the other 4. Is anyone out there familiar with the Sabina loom or one similar to it (it has a pulley and chain mechanism)? Or is it just not possible to interweave tabby with the twill tie up? Any help we can get would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Mike and Chandra Heilman.