Weaving_ Power loom

At this point, the thread is woven. Depending on the era, one person could manage anywhere from 3 to 100 machines. In the mid nineteenth century, four was the standard number. A skilled weaver in 1925 would run 6 Lancashire Looms. As time progressed new mechanisms were added that stopped the loom any time something went wrong. The mechanisms checked for such things as a broken warp thread, broken weft thread, the shuttle going straight across, and if the shuttle was empty. Forty of these Northrop Looms or automatic looms could be operated by one skilled worker.^[22]

A Draper loom in textile museum,Lowell, Massachusetts

The three primary movements of a loom are shedding, picking, and beating-up.

• Shedding: The operation of dividing the warp into two lines, so that the shuttle can pass between these lines. There are two general kinds of sheds-"open" and "closed." Open Shed-The warp threads are moved when the pattern requires it-from one line to the other. Closed Shed-The warp threads are all placed level in one line after each pick.
• Picking:The operation of projecting the shuttle from side to side of the loom through the division in the warp threads. This is done by the overpick or underpick motions. The overpick is suitable for quick-running looms, whereas the underpick is best for heavy or slow looms.
• Beating-up: The third primary movement of the loom when making cloth, and is the action of the reed as it drives each pick of weft to the fell of the cloth. ^[23]

The Lancashire Loom was the first semi-automatic loom. Jacquard Looms and Dobby Looms are looms that have sophisticated methods of shedding. They may be separate looms, or mechanisms added to a plain loom. A Northrop Loom was fully automatic and was mass produced between 1909 and the mid 1960s. Modern looms run faster and do not use a shuttle: there are air jet looms, water jet looms and rapier looms.