Hi, I am new to this group and a beginner at weaving. I started on a 4 shaft loom and soon turned to double weave with pattern pick-up, I seem to like it that I can weave for example a filet crochet pattern. But I now have a rigid heddle loom. The advantage is that I can now weave in the living room because it is much more easy to move than the 4 shaft.
So, I wanted to do double weave with pickup patterns on my rigid heddle loom. I searched the internet and found that double weave can be done with 2 rigid heddles, but pattern pickup is not possible. After a lot of thinking about it, I came up with a solution. Using just one rigid heddle and a pickup stick and a knitting needle, I performed double weave. And pickup patterns I could do as well, although the counting was cumbersome : I could not see what lower layer warp thread belonged to which upper layer warp thread. So I added a normal reed (a heddle reed won't do) that will have 1 lower and 1 upper warp thread in each slot, and that reed is also handy a a beater.
I posted some pictures of how I did it here https://www.ravelry.com/projects/AlidaFranciska/double-weave-on-rigid-heddle-loom
I think it is strange that as a beginner I would come up with something new. So, although I clearly did it and it works, I wonder if this is a good solution. I use the combination of rigid heddle and pickup stick to create the sheds, and the knitting needle to transfer a shed to the front of the pickup stick. The pickup stick stays in front of the reed so the rigid heddle reed can't be used as a beater. The optional second (normal) reed can't be a rigid heddle, (unless one only uses the slots) it would not be possible to transfer the picked up sheds across a hole.
Although it works for me, I feel insecure about this, I lack experience and everywhere on the internet one can read how a second rigid heddle reed has as major advantage that one can do double weave. I would like to hear opinions about my solution from more experienced weavers!