The scariest part of the rug project was definitely when I needed to remove the first half of the material. The worry was that once the threads were cut they would accidently get pulled out of the reed and/or heddles. Even a small section - especially in the middle of the loom - of threads being pulled out would cause major problems and rethreading mid-project is extremely difficult.
There was going to be a decent gap in time from when I cut the threads until I would be able to tie-off the yarn on the loom for the second half because the first half needed to be secured and then removed from the front beam.
I came up with an idea for after the warp threads were cut: I carefully used long dowels and put the threads over and under them - then tied the dowels onto the reed with the hope that they would stay in place.
Securing fabric while removing it from the loom is not a quick process -- at least not if you want to prevent everything from coming undone. I use pieces of yarn leftover from past projects to tie around the threads hanging off of the woven fabric. This needs to be done to both ends. In the back, I could tie knots before cutting the warp threads. In the front, I tie the scrap yarn around the warp thread going into the knots on the front beam. Once the scrap yarns are on, I untie the knots and separate the material from the loom.
Only after all of this can the warp threads be pulled forward and attached once again. THAT is when I could breathe again.
First half of the rug off of the loom.
