Warping Direction

Which direction should one warp their loom?
Front to Back or Back to Front!

Before I had my Louet loom, I always warped front to back. I know most people tend to go the other way, but I learned to warp a loom from Deborah Chandler's book, "Learning to Weave", and while she explains both methods, she covers FtB first and then does BtF. I just never learned the other way. And since it was about 6 or 7 years after I read that before I took my first weaving class, that didn't do anything to change my mind. Besides, the weaving instructor at Siever's, where I took that one class, did nothing to disabuse me from warping FtB. She was teaching Double weave, not basic setup.

Why am I even discussing this today? The Louet loom came with a DVD that I have studied carefully, it teaches BtF warping. I have now tried warping BtF a couple times and I have learned a few things about that method that I want to comment on.
The loom is designed to be warpped BtF. Once one follows the clear directions in the video then BtF is not the tangled mess that I had always previously thought it was. So I will use that method more often in the future.

But right now I am in the middle of warping up the loom to make a double weave L shaped shawl for my mohter-in-law. This will be made with Harrisville Design's Shetland weight wool. Which is a lovely looking, but very "sticky" yarn to work with. I have the sneaky suspicion, confirmed in the Louet video, that there are occasions when FtB wraping makes sence, and when I need double the threads per inch in the warp, and very sticky yarn, that FtB is the way to go with this.

In the past I sometimes skipped having a "cross" in my warp as I wound it onto the warping board, and often I ended up with tangles in the warp as I pulled it through the reed.  So now I am being more careful about using a cross to keep the threads in sequence as I warp.  This should keep the threads straighter and easier to work through the loom.

So here is the partly sleyed reed for this project.  I have about 2 more inches to sley and then the rest of the set up process before I can weave.  But I am really enjoying looking at the colors in this warp.  And I wanted to just make a few comments about this.