Variable Dent….

Have you heard of these?
I posted what I was working on to Instagram and I think I blew a couple of minds.

They’re basically a heddle/reed for your rigid heddle loom that has the ability to have various thicknesses of yarns used. Normally if you are working with a 12 dent reed, you can’t use bulky yarns so well. And alternately if you have a 5 dent reed going if you use fingering weight yarn, your weave may be too open to your liking. Variable reeds have sections where you can use different dents all together.

This is what the Schacht Variable Dent Reed kit looks like:

I had a Cricket that had nothing on it so I decided it needed to have something funky put on it. I gathered yarn and laid it out matching it up with the dent pieces. I arranged and rearranged to see how I wanted them to go together.

L to R: Super Bulky (5 dent), Light Fingering (12 dent), Aran-Bulky (8 dent), DK Weight (10 dent)

I loaded my heddle and warped my loom.

When it was all threaded you can see the variations all ready to go.

This is where I am at the moment. I haven’t spent much time with it but give me a couple of hours and I’ll have this baby done.

Did you notice up there that I don’t have a header woven in?

I don’t weave a header. I advance my warp and I start weaving. Like magic. No more pulling out a header when I’m done weaving. The only drawback is when I’m not hem stitching my end, I have to be careful cutting off.