Hummingbird Looms

When I taught recently with the Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild, there were a number of these looms being used. I’d never heard of them: Hummingbird Looms.

Hummingbird Looms is a collaboration between Susan Gaire and her husband, Erik. They looked to me like a combination between the Artisan loom available from Weavers Bazaar and the Saffron or Chloe loom from Mirrix. But with some nice additional features. Features like angled powder-coated teeth, adjustable legs, and beautiful wood choices.

Since Susan was in the workshop, I asked her to tell me more about the looms.

She told me that this design has been an evolving process as she began to combine all the features that she, herself, would prefer in a loom. She likes to weave 4-selvedge and to move back and forth between weaving from the front and weaving from the back. In the workshop, she had her loom set up to do sampling both from the front and back when working the various techniques.

Susan originally set her loom up to weave from the front on the left hand side and from the back on the right side of her loom. (Also notice the beautiful wood and the cover for the bottom teeth). The wood on this loom is Purpleheart.

All of these design features are really nice, but the additional ability to choose from a long list of fine wood choices (hard to decide but I think Canarywood or Padauk would be my pick) and further customizations makes it hard to give it a pass. No matter how many looms you already have!

Susan sent me the following images and descriptions. All photos are credited to Hummingbird Looms website where you’ll find even more information.

You can see that it can be warped a number of ways:

“The photo above shows the loom warped with combs. The combs allow quick and easy warping and enable the weaver to create a four selvedge tapestry. In addition, one can weave a 3 selvedge tapestry; start weaving without weaving a footer first and then finishing off the tapestry with a header once the desired height is reached.

Alternatively, the combs can just be used as spacers for warping around the loom as seen in the photo below. Combs come in 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 dent.

Here it is warped using a dowel in a continuous manner. The dowel fits into the holes in the legs for easy warping and then can be freed from the legs to allow the tapestry to rotate as the weaving progresses.

The combs are secured with screws that are set into brass inserts allowing the combs to be removed and interchanged easily and without damage to the wooden loom frame-see 2 close up photos of the brass inserts below:

Below is a close up of the powder coated combs-they are bent at an 80 degree angle to help keep the warp in place while warping the loom.

And this photo shows the nylon fitting that allows the upper loom frame to slide smoothly up and down the threaded rod making adjusting the loom to a desired size easy.

The loom’s integral legs are adjustable and can be folded together for easy storage and transport in a tote bag.”

I have to say, this is one of my favorite features. I love a traveling loom!

And that’s not all… you can pretty much design your own.

They’ve made looms as small as 6” (sounds adorable) and can go as high as 20” in width and 24” in height.