Long Thread Podcast: Amy D. McKnight

When Amy D. McKnight talks about breaking the rules in weaving, she's not just talking about freestyle weaving or combining clasped weft with a pattern. She means hitching a warping board to her rigid-heddle loom, or letting weaving be an evening's entertainment in the vein of paint-and-sip, or throwing open educational videos from her weaving course for anyone to watch.

Amy's message is about setting aside whatever you thought was possible—or impossible—with your tools. She weaves not only doubleweave but point twill on a rigid-heddle loom, prefers a hybrid method of direct and indirect warping for long but efficient warps, and uses weaving software (usually a tool for 4+ shaft weaving) to plan her projects.

It's not just pushing a simple loom to do more complex weaving, it's also bringing a love of weaving to completely new audiences. She created a plan for the Common Threads Loom, a versatile pin loom/potholder loom/diagonal-weaving loom that anyone can make with simple office supplies, and she offers it as a free download on her site. Having created a rich weaving course that she offered for subscribers, she decided that keeping the information behind a paywall wasn't for her—and recently posted it to watch freely at YouTube.

Amy D. McKnight calls herself a motivational, inspirational weaver, and you will, too.

This episode is brought to you by:

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Links:

Amy D. McKnight website
Amy's YouTube channel
Amy D. McKnight Instagram
Common Threads Loom