Johanne Désormeaux and Ginette Blais set up a loom

Johanne Désormeaux, in charge of weaving at the Cercle de Saint-Eustache, and her student Ginette Blais, set up a loom together. You can’t be in a hurry when you set up a loom, Johanne Désormeaux explains. It involves a lot of steps: things to consider and calculations to make when choosing the colours and the pattern, as well as knowing the number of threads to install, preparing the spools of thread, mounting the spools on the loom, threading the needles and positioning the thread in the reed (a kind of comb used to keep the warp [vertical] threads at equal distances and then push down or compress the weft [horizontal] threads, tying, and so on. And checking to make sure you haven’t made any mistakes. It’s only after all this is completed that you can really start to weave, using the pedals on the loom when necessary, moving the shuttle, the tool used to pass the weft thread from one side of the warp to the other, and pressing the threads with the reed.