Craft:Weaving

Weaving spun wool or cotton into cloth is common to almost all Cerilia, and is the process of interlacing long threads closely together to form a lattice of closely-packed threads at (generally) right angles to each other.
In more primitive areas weaving is a slow laborious art which uses a wooden frame to stretch the warp (vertical threads) whilst the weft (parallel threads) are snaked in between them. Amongst the goblins and the Vos this is the only method of weaving known.
A Brecht priest of Sera called Gunther invented the Heddle and Shuttle that transformed weaving in more civilised parts of Cerilia not long after the formation of the Anuirean empire. The Heddle is a plank of wood with a number of holes for thread, interspaced with vertical slots for alternate threads. When the heddle is raised the threads going through the holes rise, while the threads going through the slots does not. The resulting gap between alternate threads (called the shed) then allows the shuttle to be thrown between all the threads in a single stroke. By use of several different shuttles it is quite possible to thread multiple colours quickly. The church of Sera swiftly refined the initial invention by adding bobbins to the shuttle, and building frames, called looms, to hold the threads, heddle, etc in place and easily raise and lower the heddle using pedals. Modern looms have a comb-shaped reed to tighten the weft threads together, and hold the warp threads tight with rollers at each end of the loom allowing long cloths to be made as a continuous piece. More complicated cloths with several colours in warp and weft require multiple heddles and shuttles.
Tapestries and carpets are generally made on upright looms in the laborious 'traditional' way as the patterns and colours are too complicated for a medieval loom. The vertical loom allows the weaver to watch the pattern as it forms and spares them from continually bending over a horizontal loom. Even such manual looms however are swift compared to spinning the wool in the first place ? a single handweaver requires the produce of 10-12 spinners, even when those spinners have good spinning wheels and spindles.