What Yarn Works for Rigid Heddle Looms? (Spoiler: Probably Yours)

Standing in the craft store with a skein of yarn, wondering if it'll work on your rigid heddle loom? The answer is yes. Probably. Maybe. It depends on things the yarn label will never tell you.

Here's the truth: yarn doesn't know what you're planning to do with it. That ball of worsted weight wool has no idea whether you're about to knit a hat or weave a scarf. It's just twisted fiber with opinions about moisture and an alarming tendency to tangle.

But—and this is where it gets weird—the yarn industry has split into two parallel universes that barely communicate with each other. Knitting yarn uses one measurement system. Weaving equipment uses a completely different one. And you, standing there with your loom and your dreams, have to translate between them like some kind of textile interpreter.

The short version: Yes, you can absolutely use knitting yarn for weaving. People do it constantly. Your entire yarn stash is fair game. But understanding why it works (and when it doesn't) requires venturing into the strange world where medieval sheep farming terminology meets dental measurements.

The Terminology Problem

Knitting yarn comes labeled with weights: lace, fingering, sport, DK, worsted, chunky, bulky. These names sound official. They're printed right on the label. Surely they mean something standardized and scientific.

They do not.

"Worsted" refers to Worstead, England, where they spun consistent yarn in the 12th century. We're still using their village name 800 years later to describe medium-weight acrylic from China. "DK" stands for "double knitting," which tells you exactly nothing about the actual thickness unless you already know what double knitting means, in which case you don't need the label.

Meanwhile, rigid heddle looms are measured in "dents"—literally teeth. Someone looked at those evenly-spaced slots in a loom reed and thought "that looks like a comb" and now here we are, counting dental arrangements to make fabric. An 8-dent reed has 8 teeth per inch. A 12-dent has 12. It's beautifully literal in a world that rarely is.

These two systems have to work together. It's like asking a medieval poet to collaborate with a dentist. They don't speak the same language. They don't use the same math. But somehow, through collective trial and error spanning decades, weavers have figured out the translation.

The Actual Translation Guide

Here's the rough mapping between yarn weights and dent sizes:

Yarn Weight	Common Names	Recommended Dent Size	Wraps Per Inch
Lace	Cobweb, thread	12-15 dent	14-18 wpi
Fingering	Sock yarn, 4-ply	12-15 dent	12-14 wpi
Sport	Baby yarn, 5-ply	10-12 dent	10-12 wpi
DK	Light worsted, 8-ply	10-12 dent	9-11 wpi
Worsted	Medium, aran	8-10 dent	8-9 wpi
Chunky	Bulky, 12-ply	5-8 dent	6-7 wpi
Super Bulky	Roving, 14-ply	5 dent	4-5 wpi

Notice the overlap? That's not imprecision—that's reality. A thick DK and a thin worsted are basically the same yarn wearing different labels. The 10-dent reed works for both.

The "wraps per inch" column shows the weaver's secret weapon: the wrap test. Take your yarn, wrap it around a ruler for one inch without stretching or compressing, count the wraps. That number divided by two gives you a rough starting point for dent size. It's not scientific. It's barely even math. But it works often enough that everyone keeps doing it.

What "Weaving Yarn" Actually Means

Walk into a weaving supply store (if you can find one) and you'll see yarn labeled specifically for weaving. It comes on cones. It costs less per yard. It looks more industrial and less photogenic than the hand-dyed artisan stuff at the knitting shop.

What makes it "weaving yarn"?

Absolutely nothing fundamental. It's just yarn wound conveniently for weavers who need a lot of it. The real differences:

Cone winding - Easier to manage long warps without the yarn trying to escape. Balls and skeins are designed for knitting, where you use maybe 200 yards at a time. Weavers blow through 2,000 yards on a single project and don't want to spend an hour winding balls.

Larger quantities - That cone holds 4-8 ounces instead of 1.75 ounces. Weavers making towels need consistency across multiple items. Buying 12 small skeins means 12 different dye lots. Buying one large cone means everything matches.

Tighter twist - Warp threads sit under tension for hours or days. Loosely spun yarn can literally fall apart from the stress. Tighter twist helps. But plenty of knitting yarn has tight twist too—it's not exclusive to "weaving yarn."

Boring colors - This is purely practical. Production weavers need reliable neutrals. Craft stores stock exciting colors because knitters want exciting colors. It's market segmentation, not fiber physics.

You can weave with knitting yarn. You can knit with weaving yarn. The yarn does not care. The labels are for humans.

The Warp vs Weft Question

Here's where knitting yarn sometimes reveals its limitations: warp threads (the ones under tension on the loom) face different challenges than weft threads (the ones you weave through).

Warp requirements:

• Strength to handle sustained tension
• Smooth enough to slide through the heddle repeatedly
• Consistent thickness (lumpy handspun creates uneven tension)
• Not so fuzzy that it sticks to itself

Weft requirements:

• Whatever you want, honestly
• Fuzzy? Fine
• Lumpy? Character
• Weird texture? That's the point

Most knitting yarn works fine as warp. The exceptions are predictable: loosely spun singles that pill or break under tension, extremely fuzzy mohair that creates heddle lint storms, novelty yarns with actual three-dimensional additions that catch on everything.

Weavers learn this through experience, which is code for "breaking a few warps and swearing." The luxury yarn you spent $40 on? Might be too delicate. The acrylic worsted from the craft store that cost $3.99? Practically indestructible. Life is unfair that way.

The Fiber Content Reality

Different fibers behave differently under tension. This matters more for weaving than knitting because knitting is forgiving—if your tension varies, you just knit looser or tighter. Weaving tension is set by the loom. The yarn has to cooperate.

Cotton - Rigid heddle weavers love cotton. It's strong, holds tension consistently, and comes in every weight imaginable. The downside: zero stretch. If you mess up your tension, cotton will not forgive you. It just sits there being perfectly, stubbornly consistent.

Wool - Forgiving, elastic, available in every weight and color. Wool compensates for tension variations and relaxes nicely after washing. The catch: moths think it's delicious, and superwash wool (treated to be machine-washable) can stretch significantly under tension and during finishing.

Acrylic - Cheap, strong, moth-proof, and weavers are embarrassed to admit how much they use it. Acrylic doesn't stretch or relax like wool, but it's consistent and reliable. Perfect for kitchen towels that'll get destroyed anyway.

Linen - The masochist's choice. Linen has no give, no forgiveness, and the personality of a very judgmental cat. It creates beautiful, crisp fabric that lasts forever and gets softer with every wash. But weaving with it feels like wrestling with dental floss. Experienced weavers love linen. Everyone else uses cotton and claims they'll try linen "someday."

Silk - Slippery, strong, expensive, and occasionally worth it. Silk creates fabric that drapes like liquid. It also slips through heddles, slides off shuttles, and generally acts like it's too good for your loom.

Alpaca - Soft, warm, with approximately zero structural integrity. Lovely as weft. Questionable as warp unless blended with something that actually has a spine.

The Dye Lot Dilemma

Here's a reality knitters understand but weavers sometimes forget: dye lots matter. A lot.

You're making a scarf. You buy three skeins of "Moss Green" worsted weight wool. Two are dye lot 4827, one is dye lot 4829. Knitters know this pain—that slight color variation shows up as an unwelcome surprise somewhere in your sweater.

In woven fabric, where threads sit next to each other in perfect parallel lines? It's just as visible. The variation becomes a stripe. Not subtle. Not natural-looking. Just wrong enough that you'll notice it forever.

Weavers learn to buy extra. If a project needs 600 yards, buy 800. All from the same dye lot. The leftover yarn will haunt your stash for years, but at least your scarf won't have a random stripe three inches from the end.

Alternatively: make the stripes intentional. If you're going to have color variations anyway, lean into it. Plan stripes. Nobody questions deliberate design choices.

When Knitting Yarn Fails at Weaving

Some yarns just don't translate well to weaving, and the labels won't warn you. Here's what weavers learn through expensive trial and error:

Single-ply loosely spun yarn - Beautiful for knitting. Absolute disaster as warp. The twist isn't tight enough to handle tension. It pills, breaks, or just gradually falls apart. Weavers save it for weft or knitting. This is one of those things you learn when warping your loom—the yarn that looked perfect in the skein reveals its structural weaknesses under sustained tension.

Extreme mohair - That fuzzy halo that makes mohair sweaters so cozy? In a heddle, it creates a lint snowstorm and threads stick together. Some mohair works fine. "Some" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

Roving - Technically yarn. Practically unspun fiber. Roving looks gorgeous in that artisan shop display. On a loom, it's chaos. Weavers use it as weft if they must, but keep it away from the warp threads.

Novelty yarn with texture - Those yarns with little loops, eyelashes, or pompoms? They catch on heddles, tangle in themselves, and create fabric that looks like it's having an identity crisis. Weavers use them anyway for art pieces, but rarely for practical items.

Very stretchy yarn - Elastic yarn, some sock yarns, anything marketed as "springy" or "bouncy." These compensate for uneven knitting tension by stretching. Under consistent loom tension, they just stretch and stay stretched. Your fabric dimensions become suggestions rather than measurements.

The Craft Store Strategy

Most weavers start with whatever's at the local craft store. This is completely valid. Those big-box craft stores stock yarn that's:

• Available in large quantities
• Consistent across locations (making dye lot matching possible)
• Affordable enough to experiment
• Strong enough for most projects
• Boring enough that you won't cry if it doesn't work

Weavers get snobbish about craft store yarn the same way coffee people get snobbish about Folgers. But that Lily Sugar'n Cream cotton makes excellent dish towels. That Red Heart acrylic weaves perfectly functional placemats. The yarn works. It's just not Instagram-worthy.

The hand-dyed artisan yarn from that local fiber artist's Etsy shop? Gorgeous. Unique. Expensive. And maybe worth it for a special project. But learning to weave on $30/skein yarn means every mistake costs real money. Better to learn on the cheap stuff, then graduate to the fancy yarn once you know what you're doing.

The Cone Conundrum

At some point, weavers discover yarn cones. These aren't regularly stocked at craft stores—you order them online or from weaving suppliers. And then you're stuck with 1,600 yards of one color.

This is either liberating or terrifying depending on your personality.

The advantage: Consistency. That's 1,600 yards of identical dye lot. You can make a whole set of towels, multiple scarves, or one very ambitious blanket without color variations. The price per yard drops significantly. And cones don't roll away or tangle like balls and skeins.

The disadvantage: Commitment. You're living with that color choice for a while. Also, cones don't fit in most yarn storage solutions. They're industrial-sized. Your carefully organized yarn shelves designed for knitting skeins will mock you.

Experienced weavers own cones in neutrals—white, black, gray, cream—and supplement with smaller quantities of craft store yarn for color. This gives them consistent backgrounds with flexibility for accent colors. Whether you're working on a rigid heddle or considering a floor loom, having reliable neutral cones simplifies project planning.

The Fiber Festival Wild Card

Fiber festivals are where weavers lose their minds and their budgets. You meet actual sheep. You touch yarn before buying it. Someone is demonstrating how they dyed that yarn using mushrooms they foraged themselves, and suddenly $40 for 200 yards seems completely reasonable.

Here's what happens: You buy yarn because it's beautiful. Not because you have a project. Not because you checked if it'll work with your available dent sizes. Just because it's beautiful and you're standing next to a sheep and the vendor is explaining their sustainable farming practices and your credit card is already out.

This yarn joins your stash. Someday, you'll find the perfect project for it. That day may never come. But you'll pass that skein every time you open your yarn storage, and you'll remember that sheep, and it'll make you happy. This is fine. This is how fiber artists live.

Testing Before Committing

Smart weavers test yarn before warping an entire loom. The wrap test (wrap yarn around a ruler, count wraps per inch) gives you a starting dent size. But it's just a starting point.

Here's what actual testing looks like:

1. Cut a few yards of yarn
2. Thread it through your heddle in a small section—maybe 2-3 inches wide
3. Weave a few inches
4. Look at it honestly

Is the fabric too dense? Try a smaller dent size (fewer teeth per inch). Too open and loose? Bigger dent size. The yarn trying to escape through the slots? Wrong yarn for that dent, or wrong dent for that yarn.

This test takes 15 minutes and can save hours of frustration. Weavers do it anyway because optimism is stronger than experience. But the test exists for people who learn from others' mistakes instead of exclusively from their own.

The Bottom Line

Can you use knitting yarn for weaving? Yes. Do weavers do it constantly? Also yes. Will every yarn work perfectly? No, and that's fine.

The yarn you already own is probably suitable for weaving. That stash of orphan skeins from abandoned knitting projects? Use them. The colors you bought because they were on sale? Weave with them. The expensive hand-dyed stuff you're saving for something special? This is something special.

Weaving isn't more precious than knitting. The yarn doesn't become sacred just because you're changing crafts. Thread it on a loom and see what happens. Worst case, you learn which yarns don't work and you've created a wonky scarf that'll live in a drawer. Best case, you've just expanded your stash-busting options significantly.

The real question isn't whether knitting yarn works for weaving. It's whether you're willing to translate between medieval village names and dental measurements to figure out which yarn goes with which loom parts. And honestly, after the third or fourth project, you'll stop thinking about it entirely. The translation becomes automatic. The yarn is just yarn. And you're just making fabric, regardless of what the label says.