Weaving the body section

With the tricky section complete I removed the weaving from the form and emptied the sleeves of all the cardboard and bottles used to fill them. 

Then I put the loomskin back onto the body form and safety pinned it down the front. I pinned the bottom edge of the loomskin firmly to the form and drew the top of the weaving together with large tacking tied tightly to draw the weaving as taut as possible.

I did some freeform weaving in the underarm section to level out the weaving line and then began to weave level rows back and forth around the body.

Half way down, I  released another tension row around the bottom and unpinned and repinned the bottom to tighten it. I discovered I had to re-tension the shaping wedges separately because they had way too much slack.  I'll need to darn in the extra length at the hem later.

shaping wedge with way too much slack

shaping wedge after re-tensioning

The tricky section, second attempt

This time I took the form I made for weaving the body section and added cardboard caps for the shoulders and a drinks bottle rammed into the top of the sleeve. A strip of cardboard wrapped around the bottle with wedges of folded cardboard inserted inside it filled it out to the right size. I re-tied the tourniquets around the sleeves. I pinned the loomskin firmly in place top and bottom across the front and back. This held well enough to weave this section.

This section was complete when the weft threads met under the sleeve.

Then I did a row of hem stitching to stabilize the edge of the weaving on the sleeve.