Pin Loom Weaving with Filatura Di Crosa's Zarina Mosaico

Filatura Di Crosa's Zarina Mosaico comes in a palette of 5 colors. It's a 4ply that has a beautiful marled color effect. When you touch it, you will feel that it's buttery soft because it's made from 100% superwash extra fine merino wool.

Zarina Mosaico is a sport weight yarn. It will weave up a little looser on Schacht Spindle Co's Zoom Loom, but I really wanted to see how the colors would look like when woven. Sampling is always the best way to see how a yarn will look like. It's like swatching with knitting.

The elasticity of Zarina Mosaico made it really easy to weave it on a pin loom. And I like how the sport weight wove up. It will make a light fabric with a nice drape.

Yarn Review: Filatura Di Crosa SOLOCASHMERE

I recently had the opportunity to try a cashmere yarn from Filatura Di Crosa. They are an Italian luxury yarn brand. Solocashmere is a fingering weight 100% cashmere yarn. It comes in 25 gorgeous colors. As you can imagine, cashmere is very soft. I wanted to make something with it that would be worn close to the neck.

This is a fingering weight yarn, but I had a feeling it would weave up nicely on a 4" pin loom. The yarn is made of many strands and plied. It has a soft halo. I used a Zoom Loom from the Schacht Spindle Co to make a test square and I really liked the woven fabric. The test square showed me the yarn bloomed and filled in the spaces. I was able to weave 11 squares from 1 ball of yarn.

I played around and decided to use 6 squares to make a close fitting cowl. I seamed all the squares together like above first. This way I can check the fit. This size actually fits me and my two daughters. After that, I joined the two ends together.

For the bottom of the cowl, I single crocheted around and I added a crocheted pom pom at the point of the cowl as I went around. The little pom pom is cute and decorative.

I think a crocheted edging gives a nice finishing look to pin loom projects. The crochet hooks I used are from Knitter's Pride. I used a 4.5mm hook.

Look at my cutie pie wearing her new cowl. It is so soft and light. This is going to be perfect to keep her neck warm.

She loves it and is super excited to wear it to school. I love that I could use one ball of Solocashmere to weave a cozy cowl. My older daughter has requested I make her one also.

Thank you to Filatura Di Crosa for letting me review your yarn. Molte grazie!

More than just plain weave with the Zoom Loom.

I just love the simplicity and beauty of plain weave, but recently I wanted to try some patterns on the Zoom Loom. I chose the Houndstooth Check Pattern from the book, 100 Pin Loom Squares by Florencia Campos Correa.

For the first layer, you warp with one color and then your second color. This part was a bit confusing as it is hard to see which pins to wrap the yarn around.

After that, it's just weaving back and forth with each color. Once I finished my first one, it was easy to make another one. It always takes the longest to a make a first of anything.

As you can see, I just kept going with different color combinations. I can't wait to try out more colors. 

If you are interested in learning to weave on a pin loom, take a look at my video, Creative Pin-Loom Designs. This is a great video for pin loom beginners, or anyone who needs a refresher on this fun little loom.

How To: Zoom Loom (Pin Loom) Cross Stitch Coasters

 

I made a few of these woven coasters with the Zoom Loom a while ago and I thought it would be fun to show you how I made them. When you weave a square with the Zoom Loom, you will notice that the woven fabric looks like a grid pattern. I thought it would be neat to cross stitch a design on it. After a few trial and errors, I got the results I wanted. I found that using a thinner yarn for the cross stitching looked way better than if I used the same weight I wove with. When I tried it with worsted weight, the cross stitching was bulky and not as clean looking.

I have seen pin loom coasters on the internet and often they just consist of 1 woven square. A coaster that is double sided is much more absorbent in my opinion. Also I like to hide the wrong side of the my cross stitching inside to give it a much cleaner look. That way, your coaster is reversible and you can also cross stitch on both sides if you like.

THE MATERIALS

 

- A Zoom Loom (Your local yarn stores may carry them or you can find them online. I got mine from The Woolery.)

- 2 skeins of Worsted Weight Wool, each a different color. (I used Cascade 220.)

- 1 skein of Fingering Weight Wool, in a contrasting color. (I used what I had from my stash.)

- 1 tapestry/yarn needle

- Crochet hook size US F/3.75mm

 

 Following the instructions for the Zoom Loom, weave 2 squares with 1 color.

 

Cut a few yards of the fingering weight yarn and thread it through your tapestry/yarn needle.

 

Cross stitch your design. On my coasters, I chose to cross stitch a heart. I suggest using some graph paper and coloring in squares to map out your design beforehand. Each thread (horizontal and vertical) of the woven fabric represents a square of cross stitch. 

 

To join your woven squares, take your finished cross stitched square (right side facing you) and put it on top of the second woven square. Be sure to match up your loops on the squares. Using your crochet hook and second color of worsted weight yarn, pull a loop of yarn through both loops of the squares. 

 

Chain 1, then SC (single crochet) into the next loops of the 2 squares.

 

Chain 2.

 

SC (single crochet) into the next loops.

 

Another SC (single crochet) into the next loops.

 

Continue around the squares to join them together. So the pattern for the edging is: *2 sc, ch 2; rep from * until the end. Finish with a sl st into the first sc. Cut yarn and weave in your ends.

 

The final finishing touch is to use a iron to steam the coaster. Or you can soak and dry it. Just like wet blocking in knitting and crochet, it helps even out the woven fabric and the fibers fluff up. It really makes a big difference in the final results. Since it's just a coaster, I like to use the iron to steam it.

I hope you give this a try. Have fun!