If you aren’t a weaver, it may be better to just enjoy the pretty pictures in this post. If you are a curious person, but not a weaver, some of this will probably stick and make sense. If you…
If you aren’t a weaver, it may be better to just enjoy the pretty pictures in this post. If you are a curious person, but not a weaver, some of this will probably stick and make sense. If you…
On my last post, I mentioned Sangre's very successful event, the Shrewsbury Faire. As the name implies, the event was themed as a medieval faire in the market town of Shrewsbury in England. As any proper faire, there were plenty of competitions. We had a very yummy baking contest, a cordial tasting, and a "Not so Livestock" competition. This last one involved people bringing in their crafts with some sort of livestock theme to be judged by the Duchess (no actual livestock need apply). I decided that I would enter this competition, and managed to land a third place ribbon (also woven by myself). Since I've been on a pickup streak, I technique I decided to go for this time was Andean Pebble Weave. Luckily Anne Dixon's book has a couple of very nice animal motif patterns which I was able to use. I chose swan and rabbit patters (both medieval feast fare) with some additional patterns to separate the motifs. I also went one step further and decided to add an interesting little border pattern on either side. All in all, this is the most complicated piece I have ever woven, so it was probably not a good idea to start 2 days before the event. Once I started weaving I realized how very time consuming this technique is. Even the "plain" weave requires a lot of pickup. Since it was just a short demonstration pattern, though, it did not take as long as it could've. The Andean Pebble Weave technique for inkle is not exactly the same as the authentic South American craft, which is done with a backstrap loom. Rather it is a recreation of the same motifs and styles adapted for use on an inkle loom. The basic idea is to have the loom warped such that the shed is separated into background and pattern threads. Background will always be heddled and pattern will always be unheddled. This means that by doing a plain weave, you will actually get alternating bars of pattern and background. The pebble texture is created by pickup and is ultimately achieved by alternating two steps: Weave one pick of plain background. Weave one pick of the pattern by dropping/picking up alternating pattern threads. Repeating this will create a "pebble" pattern, with dots of pattern staggered every other pick, and the background threads forming a sort of diamond shaped pattern around them. This produces a very striking and beautiful look. Now onto the actual weaving. this being a very complex pattern, the total number of warp threads came out to 90. It became immediately obvious that my heddles were far too thick to accommodate that many threads on my inkle loom. This meant that I had to make new heddles. 45 of them. The inkle loom all warped 90 warp threads means very tiny heddles Notice the separation of pattern and background threads in the shed Since I used an amalgamation of different pattern from the book with some personal additions, I had to draft my own pattern. As always, Excel makes this a whole lot easier than doing it by hand. The pattern turned out to be about two pages long. I would not exactly call weaving for this technique difficult, but it is time consuming and requires a lot of concentration to keep from making mistakes. This is just due to the comparatively huge amount of pickup that needs to be done compared to other techniques like Baltic Style. Here the background does not form naturally, so care needs to be given to picking up to create the background every other pick. Half of the pattern used The swan's head There we a few minor mistakes in picking up that I did not notice until it was too late to unweave, but the largest issue I came upon was getting the band width to stabilize. In order to keep the pebbles in the background well separated, the band needs to be woven somewhat loosely. I began way too lose and it took about a couple inches to get down to where I wanted the width of the band to be. However, even being very careful, the width of the band very gradually decreased as the weaving progressed. Fortunately, it's not noticeable unless you fold it over itself. Since this is just a presentation piece, I am not too worried about it. Below under the cut are some additional images with closeups of the motifs. Rabbit Swan Background pebble weave and separator pattern, also visible is the border pattern Note the technique creates double sided bands
If you aren’t a weaver, it may be better to just enjoy the pretty pictures in this post. If you are a curious person, but not a weaver, some of this will probably stick and make sense. If you…
If you aren’t a weaver, it may be better to just enjoy the pretty pictures in this post. If you are a curious person, but not a weaver, some of this will probably stick and make sense. If you…
If you aren’t a weaver, it may be better to just enjoy the pretty pictures in this post. If you are a curious person, but not a weaver, some of this will probably stick and make sense. If you…
♥ ♥ Greetings fellow fibre junkies! ♥ ♥ First I thought I'd play around with supplemental weft. In the following two bands I have two w...
♥ ♥ Greetings fellow fibre junkies! ♥ ♥ First I thought I'd play around with supplemental weft. In the following two bands I have two w...
On my last post, I mentioned Sangre's very successful event, the Shrewsbury Faire. As the name implies, the event was themed as a medieval faire in the market town of Shrewsbury in England. As any proper faire, there were plenty of competitions. We had a very yummy baking contest, a cordial tasting, and a "Not so Livestock" competition. This last one involved people bringing in their crafts with some sort of livestock theme to be judged by the Duchess (no actual livestock need apply). I decided that I would enter this competition, and managed to land a third place ribbon (also woven by myself). Since I've been on a pickup streak, I technique I decided to go for this time was Andean Pebble Weave. Luckily Anne Dixon's book has a couple of very nice animal motif patterns which I was able to use. I chose swan and rabbit patters (both medieval feast fare) with some additional patterns to separate the motifs. I also went one step further and decided to add an interesting little border pattern on either side. All in all, this is the most complicated piece I have ever woven, so it was probably not a good idea to start 2 days before the event. Once I started weaving I realized how very time consuming this technique is. Even the "plain" weave requires a lot of pickup. Since it was just a short demonstration pattern, though, it did not take as long as it could've. The Andean Pebble Weave technique for inkle is not exactly the same as the authentic South American craft, which is done with a backstrap loom. Rather it is a recreation of the same motifs and styles adapted for use on an inkle loom. The basic idea is to have the loom warped such that the shed is separated into background and pattern threads. Background will always be heddled and pattern will always be unheddled. This means that by doing a plain weave, you will actually get alternating bars of pattern and background. The pebble texture is created by pickup and is ultimately achieved by alternating two steps: Weave one pick of plain background. Weave one pick of the pattern by dropping/picking up alternating pattern threads. Repeating this will create a "pebble" pattern, with dots of pattern staggered every other pick, and the background threads forming a sort of diamond shaped pattern around them. This produces a very striking and beautiful look. Now onto the actual weaving. this being a very complex pattern, the total number of warp threads came out to 90. It became immediately obvious that my heddles were far too thick to accommodate that many threads on my inkle loom. This meant that I had to make new heddles. 45 of them. The inkle loom all warped 90 warp threads means very tiny heddles Notice the separation of pattern and background threads in the shed Since I used an amalgamation of different pattern from the book with some personal additions, I had to draft my own pattern. As always, Excel makes this a whole lot easier than doing it by hand. The pattern turned out to be about two pages long. I would not exactly call weaving for this technique difficult, but it is time consuming and requires a lot of concentration to keep from making mistakes. This is just due to the comparatively huge amount of pickup that needs to be done compared to other techniques like Baltic Style. Here the background does not form naturally, so care needs to be given to picking up to create the background every other pick. Half of the pattern used The swan's head There we a few minor mistakes in picking up that I did not notice until it was too late to unweave, but the largest issue I came upon was getting the band width to stabilize. In order to keep the pebbles in the background well separated, the band needs to be woven somewhat loosely. I began way too lose and it took about a couple inches to get down to where I wanted the width of the band to be. However, even being very careful, the width of the band very gradually decreased as the weaving progressed. Fortunately, it's not noticeable unless you fold it over itself. Since this is just a presentation piece, I am not too worried about it. Below under the cut are some additional images with closeups of the motifs. Rabbit Swan Background pebble weave and separator pattern, also visible is the border pattern Note the technique creates double sided bands
If you aren’t a weaver, it may be better to just enjoy the pretty pictures in this post. If you are a curious person, but not a weaver, some of this will probably stick and make sense. If you…
Sinds een paar maanden ben ik af en toe aan het stoeien met het bandweven en dat is toch leuk! Als eerst heb ik voor mijzelf een Inklette in elkaar gezet, hierop kun je een band maken met een maximale lengte van 1,8 meter. Dit leek mij een handzamere manier om kennis te maken met deze techniek. Al gauw zette ik daarna een Inkle loom in elkaar, niet alleen om mee te nemen als showmodel maar ook omdat je hierop langere (max. 3,5 meter) en bredere banden kunt maken. Voor vanmiddag staat oefenen met bandweven in mijn angeda, yeah!! Ik heb mijn Inklette erbij gepakt en wil eigenlijk vandaag dit oefenproject in retro kleuren af gaan maken. Zowel de Inkle loom en de Inklette zijn verkrijgbaar in de webshop, hier vind je ook alle extra informatie. Ik ga weer fijn verder weven :) -x- Rianne
♥ ♥ Greetings fellow fibre junkies! ♥ ♥ First I thought I'd play around with supplemental weft. In the following two bands I have two w...
On my last post, I mentioned Sangre's very successful event, the Shrewsbury Faire. As the name implies, the event was themed as a medieval faire in the market town of Shrewsbury in England. As any proper faire, there were plenty of competitions. We had a very yummy baking contest, a cordial tasting, and a "Not so Livestock" competition. This last one involved people bringing in their crafts with some sort of livestock theme to be judged by the Duchess (no actual livestock need apply). I decided that I would enter this competition, and managed to land a third place ribbon (also woven by myself). Since I've been on a pickup streak, I technique I decided to go for this time was Andean Pebble Weave. Luckily Anne Dixon's book has a couple of very nice animal motif patterns which I was able to use. I chose swan and rabbit patters (both medieval feast fare) with some additional patterns to separate the motifs. I also went one step further and decided to add an interesting little border pattern on either side. All in all, this is the most complicated piece I have ever woven, so it was probably not a good idea to start 2 days before the event. Once I started weaving I realized how very time consuming this technique is. Even the "plain" weave requires a lot of pickup. Since it was just a short demonstration pattern, though, it did not take as long as it could've. The Andean Pebble Weave technique for inkle is not exactly the same as the authentic South American craft, which is done with a backstrap loom. Rather it is a recreation of the same motifs and styles adapted for use on an inkle loom. The basic idea is to have the loom warped such that the shed is separated into background and pattern threads. Background will always be heddled and pattern will always be unheddled. This means that by doing a plain weave, you will actually get alternating bars of pattern and background. The pebble texture is created by pickup and is ultimately achieved by alternating two steps: Weave one pick of plain background. Weave one pick of the pattern by dropping/picking up alternating pattern threads. Repeating this will create a "pebble" pattern, with dots of pattern staggered every other pick, and the background threads forming a sort of diamond shaped pattern around them. This produces a very striking and beautiful look. Now onto the actual weaving. this being a very complex pattern, the total number of warp threads came out to 90. It became immediately obvious that my heddles were far too thick to accommodate that many threads on my inkle loom. This meant that I had to make new heddles. 45 of them. The inkle loom all warped 90 warp threads means very tiny heddles Notice the separation of pattern and background threads in the shed Since I used an amalgamation of different pattern from the book with some personal additions, I had to draft my own pattern. As always, Excel makes this a whole lot easier than doing it by hand. The pattern turned out to be about two pages long. I would not exactly call weaving for this technique difficult, but it is time consuming and requires a lot of concentration to keep from making mistakes. This is just due to the comparatively huge amount of pickup that needs to be done compared to other techniques like Baltic Style. Here the background does not form naturally, so care needs to be given to picking up to create the background every other pick. Half of the pattern used The swan's head There we a few minor mistakes in picking up that I did not notice until it was too late to unweave, but the largest issue I came upon was getting the band width to stabilize. In order to keep the pebbles in the background well separated, the band needs to be woven somewhat loosely. I began way too lose and it took about a couple inches to get down to where I wanted the width of the band to be. However, even being very careful, the width of the band very gradually decreased as the weaving progressed. Fortunately, it's not noticeable unless you fold it over itself. Since this is just a presentation piece, I am not too worried about it. Below under the cut are some additional images with closeups of the motifs. Rabbit Swan Background pebble weave and separator pattern, also visible is the border pattern Note the technique creates double sided bands
♥ ♥ Greetings fellow fibre junkies! ♥ ♥ First I thought I'd play around with supplemental weft. In the following two bands I have two w...
On my last post, I mentioned Sangre's very successful event, the Shrewsbury Faire. As the name implies, the event was themed as a medieval faire in the market town of Shrewsbury in England. As any proper faire, there were plenty of competitions. We had a very yummy baking contest, a cordial tasting, and a "Not so Livestock" competition. This last one involved people bringing in their crafts with some sort of livestock theme to be judged by the Duchess (no actual livestock need apply). I decided that I would enter this competition, and managed to land a third place ribbon (also woven by myself). Since I've been on a pickup streak, I technique I decided to go for this time was Andean Pebble Weave. Luckily Anne Dixon's book has a couple of very nice animal motif patterns which I was able to use. I chose swan and rabbit patters (both medieval feast fare) with some additional patterns to separate the motifs. I also went one step further and decided to add an interesting little border pattern on either side. All in all, this is the most complicated piece I have ever woven, so it was probably not a good idea to start 2 days before the event. Once I started weaving I realized how very time consuming this technique is. Even the "plain" weave requires a lot of pickup. Since it was just a short demonstration pattern, though, it did not take as long as it could've. The Andean Pebble Weave technique for inkle is not exactly the same as the authentic South American craft, which is done with a backstrap loom. Rather it is a recreation of the same motifs and styles adapted for use on an inkle loom. The basic idea is to have the loom warped such that the shed is separated into background and pattern threads. Background will always be heddled and pattern will always be unheddled. This means that by doing a plain weave, you will actually get alternating bars of pattern and background. The pebble texture is created by pickup and is ultimately achieved by alternating two steps: Weave one pick of plain background. Weave one pick of the pattern by dropping/picking up alternating pattern threads. Repeating this will create a "pebble" pattern, with dots of pattern staggered every other pick, and the background threads forming a sort of diamond shaped pattern around them. This produces a very striking and beautiful look. Now onto the actual weaving. this being a very complex pattern, the total number of warp threads came out to 90. It became immediately obvious that my heddles were far too thick to accommodate that many threads on my inkle loom. This meant that I had to make new heddles. 45 of them. The inkle loom all warped 90 warp threads means very tiny heddles Notice the separation of pattern and background threads in the shed Since I used an amalgamation of different pattern from the book with some personal additions, I had to draft my own pattern. As always, Excel makes this a whole lot easier than doing it by hand. The pattern turned out to be about two pages long. I would not exactly call weaving for this technique difficult, but it is time consuming and requires a lot of concentration to keep from making mistakes. This is just due to the comparatively huge amount of pickup that needs to be done compared to other techniques like Baltic Style. Here the background does not form naturally, so care needs to be given to picking up to create the background every other pick. Half of the pattern used The swan's head There we a few minor mistakes in picking up that I did not notice until it was too late to unweave, but the largest issue I came upon was getting the band width to stabilize. In order to keep the pebbles in the background well separated, the band needs to be woven somewhat loosely. I began way too lose and it took about a couple inches to get down to where I wanted the width of the band to be. However, even being very careful, the width of the band very gradually decreased as the weaving progressed. Fortunately, it's not noticeable unless you fold it over itself. Since this is just a presentation piece, I am not too worried about it. Below under the cut are some additional images with closeups of the motifs. Rabbit Swan Background pebble weave and separator pattern, also visible is the border pattern Note the technique creates double sided bands
♥ ♥ Greetings fellow fibre junkies! ♥ ♥ First I thought I'd play around with supplemental weft. In the following two bands I have two w...
On my last post, I mentioned Sangre's very successful event, the Shrewsbury Faire. As the name implies, the event was themed as a medieval faire in the market town of Shrewsbury in England. As any proper faire, there were plenty of competitions. We had a very yummy baking contest, a cordial tasting, and a "Not so Livestock" competition. This last one involved people bringing in their crafts with some sort of livestock theme to be judged by the Duchess (no actual livestock need apply). I decided that I would enter this competition, and managed to land a third place ribbon (also woven by myself). Since I've been on a pickup streak, I technique I decided to go for this time was Andean Pebble Weave. Luckily Anne Dixon's book has a couple of very nice animal motif patterns which I was able to use. I chose swan and rabbit patters (both medieval feast fare) with some additional patterns to separate the motifs. I also went one step further and decided to add an interesting little border pattern on either side. All in all, this is the most complicated piece I have ever woven, so it was probably not a good idea to start 2 days before the event. Once I started weaving I realized how very time consuming this technique is. Even the "plain" weave requires a lot of pickup. Since it was just a short demonstration pattern, though, it did not take as long as it could've. The Andean Pebble Weave technique for inkle is not exactly the same as the authentic South American craft, which is done with a backstrap loom. Rather it is a recreation of the same motifs and styles adapted for use on an inkle loom. The basic idea is to have the loom warped such that the shed is separated into background and pattern threads. Background will always be heddled and pattern will always be unheddled. This means that by doing a plain weave, you will actually get alternating bars of pattern and background. The pebble texture is created by pickup and is ultimately achieved by alternating two steps: Weave one pick of plain background. Weave one pick of the pattern by dropping/picking up alternating pattern threads. Repeating this will create a "pebble" pattern, with dots of pattern staggered every other pick, and the background threads forming a sort of diamond shaped pattern around them. This produces a very striking and beautiful look. Now onto the actual weaving. this being a very complex pattern, the total number of warp threads came out to 90. It became immediately obvious that my heddles were far too thick to accommodate that many threads on my inkle loom. This meant that I had to make new heddles. 45 of them. The inkle loom all warped 90 warp threads means very tiny heddles Notice the separation of pattern and background threads in the shed Since I used an amalgamation of different pattern from the book with some personal additions, I had to draft my own pattern. As always, Excel makes this a whole lot easier than doing it by hand. The pattern turned out to be about two pages long. I would not exactly call weaving for this technique difficult, but it is time consuming and requires a lot of concentration to keep from making mistakes. This is just due to the comparatively huge amount of pickup that needs to be done compared to other techniques like Baltic Style. Here the background does not form naturally, so care needs to be given to picking up to create the background every other pick. Half of the pattern used The swan's head There we a few minor mistakes in picking up that I did not notice until it was too late to unweave, but the largest issue I came upon was getting the band width to stabilize. In order to keep the pebbles in the background well separated, the band needs to be woven somewhat loosely. I began way too lose and it took about a couple inches to get down to where I wanted the width of the band to be. However, even being very careful, the width of the band very gradually decreased as the weaving progressed. Fortunately, it's not noticeable unless you fold it over itself. Since this is just a presentation piece, I am not too worried about it. Below under the cut are some additional images with closeups of the motifs. Rabbit Swan Background pebble weave and separator pattern, also visible is the border pattern Note the technique creates double sided bands
♥ ♥ Greetings fellow fibre junkies! ♥ ♥ First I thought I'd play around with supplemental weft. In the following two bands I have two w...
If you aren’t a weaver, it may be better to just enjoy the pretty pictures in this post. If you are a curious person, but not a weaver, some of this will probably stick and make sense. If you…
On my last post, I mentioned Sangre's very successful event, the Shrewsbury Faire. As the name implies, the event was themed as a medieval faire in the market town of Shrewsbury in England. As any proper faire, there were plenty of competitions. We had a very yummy baking contest, a cordial tasting, and a "Not so Livestock" competition. This last one involved people bringing in their crafts with some sort of livestock theme to be judged by the Duchess (no actual livestock need apply). I decided that I would enter this competition, and managed to land a third place ribbon (also woven by myself). Since I've been on a pickup streak, I technique I decided to go for this time was Andean Pebble Weave. Luckily Anne Dixon's book has a couple of very nice animal motif patterns which I was able to use. I chose swan and rabbit patters (both medieval feast fare) with some additional patterns to separate the motifs. I also went one step further and decided to add an interesting little border pattern on either side. All in all, this is the most complicated piece I have ever woven, so it was probably not a good idea to start 2 days before the event. Once I started weaving I realized how very time consuming this technique is. Even the "plain" weave requires a lot of pickup. Since it was just a short demonstration pattern, though, it did not take as long as it could've. The Andean Pebble Weave technique for inkle is not exactly the same as the authentic South American craft, which is done with a backstrap loom. Rather it is a recreation of the same motifs and styles adapted for use on an inkle loom. The basic idea is to have the loom warped such that the shed is separated into background and pattern threads. Background will always be heddled and pattern will always be unheddled. This means that by doing a plain weave, you will actually get alternating bars of pattern and background. The pebble texture is created by pickup and is ultimately achieved by alternating two steps: Weave one pick of plain background. Weave one pick of the pattern by dropping/picking up alternating pattern threads. Repeating this will create a "pebble" pattern, with dots of pattern staggered every other pick, and the background threads forming a sort of diamond shaped pattern around them. This produces a very striking and beautiful look. Now onto the actual weaving. this being a very complex pattern, the total number of warp threads came out to 90. It became immediately obvious that my heddles were far too thick to accommodate that many threads on my inkle loom. This meant that I had to make new heddles. 45 of them. The inkle loom all warped 90 warp threads means very tiny heddles Notice the separation of pattern and background threads in the shed Since I used an amalgamation of different pattern from the book with some personal additions, I had to draft my own pattern. As always, Excel makes this a whole lot easier than doing it by hand. The pattern turned out to be about two pages long. I would not exactly call weaving for this technique difficult, but it is time consuming and requires a lot of concentration to keep from making mistakes. This is just due to the comparatively huge amount of pickup that needs to be done compared to other techniques like Baltic Style. Here the background does not form naturally, so care needs to be given to picking up to create the background every other pick. Half of the pattern used The swan's head There we a few minor mistakes in picking up that I did not notice until it was too late to unweave, but the largest issue I came upon was getting the band width to stabilize. In order to keep the pebbles in the background well separated, the band needs to be woven somewhat loosely. I began way too lose and it took about a couple inches to get down to where I wanted the width of the band to be. However, even being very careful, the width of the band very gradually decreased as the weaving progressed. Fortunately, it's not noticeable unless you fold it over itself. Since this is just a presentation piece, I am not too worried about it. Below under the cut are some additional images with closeups of the motifs. Rabbit Swan Background pebble weave and separator pattern, also visible is the border pattern Note the technique creates double sided bands
♥ ♥ Greetings fellow fibre junkies! ♥ ♥ First I thought I'd play around with supplemental weft. In the following two bands I have two w...
If you aren’t a weaver, it may be better to just enjoy the pretty pictures in this post. If you are a curious person, but not a weaver, some of this will probably stick and make sense. If you…
♥ ♥ Greetings fellow fibre junkies! ♥ ♥ First I thought I'd play around with supplemental weft. In the following two bands I have two w...
If you aren’t a weaver, it may be better to just enjoy the pretty pictures in this post. If you are a curious person, but not a weaver, some of this will probably stick and make sense. If you…
♥ ♥ Greetings fellow fibre junkies! ♥ ♥ First I thought I'd play around with supplemental weft. In the following two bands I have two w...
♥ ♥ Greetings fellow fibre junkies! ♥ ♥ First I thought I'd play around with supplemental weft. In the following two bands I have two w...
Die Bandweberei hat mich fest im Griff. 24 Schlüsselbänder sind schon entstanden. Jedes Band ist ca. 3 cm breit und die Schlüsselbänder sind doppelt genommen als Schlaufe. Einfache Länge des Bandes = ca. 16 cm. Meine bisherigen Bänder sind aus reiner mercerisierter Baumwolle und ca. 2 Meter lang. Am allermeisten macht mir das entwerfen des Designs Spaß und das Spiel mit den Farben. Ich danke Carolyn für einen fantastischen Pattern Generator mit dem das entwerfen von eigenen Muster sehr einfach ist. Ein tolles Hilfsmittel, dass sie uns kostenlos zur Verfügung stellt. Ein neues Band kann ich auch gut morgens in der Bahn entwerfen und so habe ich immer schon die nächsten 5 Bänder im Kopf und fertig entworfen, bevor ich eins abgewebt habe. das erste Lesezeichen
A couple of days ago I received this note in an envelope with a check, final payment for a custom order. What a nice reward! I'm glad tha...
Die Bandweberei hat mich fest im Griff. 24 Schlüsselbänder sind schon entstanden. Jedes Band ist ca. 3 cm breit und die Schlüsselbände...
Meet my family of inkle looms! Ashford Inklette - The cutest of inkle looms. I like this one because it is small enough to ...
Wishing you all the best in 2015! I have declared it "A Year to Thrive" and wish this for us all. For me personally, settling into my new place and making my focus on weaving as a sole means of support, has led to many new ideas which I am excited to explore. Where the magic happens. Thanks to Betsy from the Inkle Weaving group on Facebook for being the first guest in the Weaving Room. Some of my new avenues of exploration are as follows: Expand my inventory to include straps for more instruments in addition to guitars. Some of these may become available as kits for other weavers. I'm looking for some NM music shops to carry my straps. Expand inventory and advertise the straps and sashes which I make for historic reenactors. Find music festivals, fiber arts shows and Mountain Man Rendezvous events to attend! FUN! I've got a list going and it is amazing. I'll have a good time choosing which ones to apply to. Draw up more patterns to share and collect them into a book along with my other color and design ideas and theories. To see the patterns which I've already published here follow this LINK. Keep an eye out for more to come as soon as I replace the computer cable which got lost in the move! Ukulele Straps! I've added a new page on the blog which will help to answer inquiries about what yarns, looms, books, etc. that I recommend. Check it out HERE. I'll soon be doing my first giveaway on my Facebook page later this month. I hope you are following me there. The above strap was inspired by a woven tapestry from Irvin Trujillo, called "Germantown Moki". Moki patterns are characterized by alternating blue and black stripes of equal size. This is one of the traditional Rio Grande type patterns. The strap will be fitted with swivel clips at each end so it can carry anything it can be clipped to and will be given to a lucky Facebook fan. Cheers! Annie
On my last post, I mentioned Sangre's very successful event, the Shrewsbury Faire. As the name implies, the event was themed as a medieval faire in the market town of Shrewsbury in England. As any proper faire, there were plenty of competitions. We had a very yummy baking contest, a cordial tasting, and a "Not so Livestock" competition. This last one involved people bringing in their crafts with some sort of livestock theme to be judged by the Duchess (no actual livestock need apply). I decided that I would enter this competition, and managed to land a third place ribbon (also woven by myself). Since I've been on a pickup streak, I technique I decided to go for this time was Andean Pebble Weave. Luckily Anne Dixon's book has a couple of very nice animal motif patterns which I was able to use. I chose swan and rabbit patters (both medieval feast fare) with some additional patterns to separate the motifs. I also went one step further and decided to add an interesting little border pattern on either side. All in all, this is the most complicated piece I have ever woven, so it was probably not a good idea to start 2 days before the event. Once I started weaving I realized how very time consuming this technique is. Even the "plain" weave requires a lot of pickup. Since it was just a short demonstration pattern, though, it did not take as long as it could've. The Andean Pebble Weave technique for inkle is not exactly the same as the authentic South American craft, which is done with a backstrap loom. Rather it is a recreation of the same motifs and styles adapted for use on an inkle loom. The basic idea is to have the loom warped such that the shed is separated into background and pattern threads. Background will always be heddled and pattern will always be unheddled. This means that by doing a plain weave, you will actually get alternating bars of pattern and background. The pebble texture is created by pickup and is ultimately achieved by alternating two steps: Weave one pick of plain background. Weave one pick of the pattern by dropping/picking up alternating pattern threads. Repeating this will create a "pebble" pattern, with dots of pattern staggered every other pick, and the background threads forming a sort of diamond shaped pattern around them. This produces a very striking and beautiful look. Now onto the actual weaving. this being a very complex pattern, the total number of warp threads came out to 90. It became immediately obvious that my heddles were far too thick to accommodate that many threads on my inkle loom. This meant that I had to make new heddles. 45 of them. The inkle loom all warped 90 warp threads means very tiny heddles Notice the separation of pattern and background threads in the shed Since I used an amalgamation of different pattern from the book with some personal additions, I had to draft my own pattern. As always, Excel makes this a whole lot easier than doing it by hand. The pattern turned out to be about two pages long. I would not exactly call weaving for this technique difficult, but it is time consuming and requires a lot of concentration to keep from making mistakes. This is just due to the comparatively huge amount of pickup that needs to be done compared to other techniques like Baltic Style. Here the background does not form naturally, so care needs to be given to picking up to create the background every other pick. Half of the pattern used The swan's head There we a few minor mistakes in picking up that I did not notice until it was too late to unweave, but the largest issue I came upon was getting the band width to stabilize. In order to keep the pebbles in the background well separated, the band needs to be woven somewhat loosely. I began way too lose and it took about a couple inches to get down to where I wanted the width of the band to be. However, even being very careful, the width of the band very gradually decreased as the weaving progressed. Fortunately, it's not noticeable unless you fold it over itself. Since this is just a presentation piece, I am not too worried about it. Below under the cut are some additional images with closeups of the motifs. Rabbit Swan Background pebble weave and separator pattern, also visible is the border pattern Note the technique creates double sided bands
On my last post, I mentioned Sangre's very successful event, the Shrewsbury Faire. As the name implies, the event was themed as a medieval faire in the market town of Shrewsbury in England. As any proper faire, there were plenty of competitions. We had a very yummy baking contest, a cordial tasting, and a "Not so Livestock" competition. This last one involved people bringing in their crafts with some sort of livestock theme to be judged by the Duchess (no actual livestock need apply). I decided that I would enter this competition, and managed to land a third place ribbon (also woven by myself). Since I've been on a pickup streak, I technique I decided to go for this time was Andean Pebble Weave. Luckily Anne Dixon's book has a couple of very nice animal motif patterns which I was able to use. I chose swan and rabbit patters (both medieval feast fare) with some additional patterns to separate the motifs. I also went one step further and decided to add an interesting little border pattern on either side. All in all, this is the most complicated piece I have ever woven, so it was probably not a good idea to start 2 days before the event. Once I started weaving I realized how very time consuming this technique is. Even the "plain" weave requires a lot of pickup. Since it was just a short demonstration pattern, though, it did not take as long as it could've. The Andean Pebble Weave technique for inkle is not exactly the same as the authentic South American craft, which is done with a backstrap loom. Rather it is a recreation of the same motifs and styles adapted for use on an inkle loom. The basic idea is to have the loom warped such that the shed is separated into background and pattern threads. Background will always be heddled and pattern will always be unheddled. This means that by doing a plain weave, you will actually get alternating bars of pattern and background. The pebble texture is created by pickup and is ultimately achieved by alternating two steps: Weave one pick of plain background. Weave one pick of the pattern by dropping/picking up alternating pattern threads. Repeating this will create a "pebble" pattern, with dots of pattern staggered every other pick, and the background threads forming a sort of diamond shaped pattern around them. This produces a very striking and beautiful look. Now onto the actual weaving. this being a very complex pattern, the total number of warp threads came out to 90. It became immediately obvious that my heddles were far too thick to accommodate that many threads on my inkle loom. This meant that I had to make new heddles. 45 of them. The inkle loom all warped 90 warp threads means very tiny heddles Notice the separation of pattern and background threads in the shed Since I used an amalgamation of different pattern from the book with some personal additions, I had to draft my own pattern. As always, Excel makes this a whole lot easier than doing it by hand. The pattern turned out to be about two pages long. I would not exactly call weaving for this technique difficult, but it is time consuming and requires a lot of concentration to keep from making mistakes. This is just due to the comparatively huge amount of pickup that needs to be done compared to other techniques like Baltic Style. Here the background does not form naturally, so care needs to be given to picking up to create the background every other pick. Half of the pattern used The swan's head There we a few minor mistakes in picking up that I did not notice until it was too late to unweave, but the largest issue I came upon was getting the band width to stabilize. In order to keep the pebbles in the background well separated, the band needs to be woven somewhat loosely. I began way too lose and it took about a couple inches to get down to where I wanted the width of the band to be. However, even being very careful, the width of the band very gradually decreased as the weaving progressed. Fortunately, it's not noticeable unless you fold it over itself. Since this is just a presentation piece, I am not too worried about it. Below under the cut are some additional images with closeups of the motifs. Rabbit Swan Background pebble weave and separator pattern, also visible is the border pattern Note the technique creates double sided bands
On my last post, I mentioned Sangre's very successful event, the Shrewsbury Faire. As the name implies, the event was themed as a medieval faire in the market town of Shrewsbury in England. As any proper faire, there were plenty of competitions. We had a very yummy baking contest, a cordial tasting, and a "Not so Livestock" competition. This last one involved people bringing in their crafts with some sort of livestock theme to be judged by the Duchess (no actual livestock need apply). I decided that I would enter this competition, and managed to land a third place ribbon (also woven by myself). Since I've been on a pickup streak, I technique I decided to go for this time was Andean Pebble Weave. Luckily Anne Dixon's book has a couple of very nice animal motif patterns which I was able to use. I chose swan and rabbit patters (both medieval feast fare) with some additional patterns to separate the motifs. I also went one step further and decided to add an interesting little border pattern on either side. All in all, this is the most complicated piece I have ever woven, so it was probably not a good idea to start 2 days before the event. Once I started weaving I realized how very time consuming this technique is. Even the "plain" weave requires a lot of pickup. Since it was just a short demonstration pattern, though, it did not take as long as it could've. The Andean Pebble Weave technique for inkle is not exactly the same as the authentic South American craft, which is done with a backstrap loom. Rather it is a recreation of the same motifs and styles adapted for use on an inkle loom. The basic idea is to have the loom warped such that the shed is separated into background and pattern threads. Background will always be heddled and pattern will always be unheddled. This means that by doing a plain weave, you will actually get alternating bars of pattern and background. The pebble texture is created by pickup and is ultimately achieved by alternating two steps: Weave one pick of plain background. Weave one pick of the pattern by dropping/picking up alternating pattern threads. Repeating this will create a "pebble" pattern, with dots of pattern staggered every other pick, and the background threads forming a sort of diamond shaped pattern around them. This produces a very striking and beautiful look. Now onto the actual weaving. this being a very complex pattern, the total number of warp threads came out to 90. It became immediately obvious that my heddles were far too thick to accommodate that many threads on my inkle loom. This meant that I had to make new heddles. 45 of them. The inkle loom all warped 90 warp threads means very tiny heddles Notice the separation of pattern and background threads in the shed Since I used an amalgamation of different pattern from the book with some personal additions, I had to draft my own pattern. As always, Excel makes this a whole lot easier than doing it by hand. The pattern turned out to be about two pages long. I would not exactly call weaving for this technique difficult, but it is time consuming and requires a lot of concentration to keep from making mistakes. This is just due to the comparatively huge amount of pickup that needs to be done compared to other techniques like Baltic Style. Here the background does not form naturally, so care needs to be given to picking up to create the background every other pick. Half of the pattern used The swan's head There we a few minor mistakes in picking up that I did not notice until it was too late to unweave, but the largest issue I came upon was getting the band width to stabilize. In order to keep the pebbles in the background well separated, the band needs to be woven somewhat loosely. I began way too lose and it took about a couple inches to get down to where I wanted the width of the band to be. However, even being very careful, the width of the band very gradually decreased as the weaving progressed. Fortunately, it's not noticeable unless you fold it over itself. Since this is just a presentation piece, I am not too worried about it. Below under the cut are some additional images with closeups of the motifs. Rabbit Swan Background pebble weave and separator pattern, also visible is the border pattern Note the technique creates double sided bands
