Take Your Weaving to New Heights (and Depths!)

Have you been noticing all the pictures of waffle weave on social media and wondering how it makes those wonderful cells and textures? It looks much more complicated than it actually is. Let’s dive in!

Here’s Madelyn van der Hoogt to start us off:

Waffle weave is an unusual weave structure in that its name evokes images of the cloth itself (summer and winter? overshot?—not so much!). Some waffle-weave fabrics have as much depth and shape as an actual Belgian waffle. This depth is especially appreciated by weavers because most of the fabrics we weave are so very flat.

Creating such marvelous texture by crossing the warp and weft in their flat plane on the loom seems like magic. Even better, waffle weave can be woven on simple looms—everything from a rigid-heddle loom to eight shafts or more.