Borders

 

Day 134: When making bands, it's good to keep in mind that an attractive border can be as essential to the overall design as the central motif. A border can also be used to add width to a piece, but care should be taken that it doesn't dominate the work (unless, of course, you intend it to do so). Border designs can be employed as spacers between patterned segments, and don't have to be identical to the outer edges. Borders are generally loom-controlled when doing pickup in the middle section, but that's not a hard-and-fast rule, either. Here, I am using white 16/2 cotton for the ground and 10/2 for both the borders and the center motifs, and am weaving this band on my Leksand loom, Jutta. The heart design is pickup on nine pattern threads, with the center section of the adjacent chains in the border echoing the main colour.

Another Band Done

Day 130: And here's another project done and dusted! This band is roughly three yards long and has four different motifs repeating A-D-B-D-C-D. It was woven with 10/2 cotton for the ground and border with 8/2 (white) for the nine single pattern threads. It is a pickup design, meaning that I have to select which pattern threads I want to have on the face of the band each time I pass the shuttle. On the inkle loom, this means that sometimes I lift pattern threads up from the lower shed, or push them down and out of the way from where they occur in the upper shed, and on some passes, I both raise some and suppress others. The same technique can be used with the Glimakra band loom when it is set up to function like an inkle loom, but I prefer to have all my pattern threads suspended in the center of the shed so that I can select the ones I wish to have on the surface. The end result is the same: floats creating the surface design which gives Scandinavian/eastern European band weaving its characteristic appearance. Designs need not be geometric. The weaver can also create "pictures" of birds and other creatures, or even an alphabet given the appropriate number of pattern threads.

Fantasy Trim

Day 124: Looms seldom stand empty in this house for more than 24 hours. Almost always, there is a "warp in waiting" wound on a warping board, next in line to follow whatever project I'm close to finishing. I'd been thinking about krokbragd sheep as I approached the end of the red-and-green band I posted a few days ago, but then remembered that the "Crackle Weave Fantasy" tablecloth (HPB, green version, p. 196, VI) needed trim. The sheep would have to wait. Using two of the four colours from the tablecloth, I ran eight yards of warp with nine doubled pattern threads for my design. The border chains are threaded singly. When I weave a patterned band on Nelda (my Glimakra band loom), I put the ground and border threads through heddles, but I run the pattern threads straight through with empty heddles on either side of them to keep them from twisting together. This arrangement means that when I open the shed, the pattern threads are suspended between the top and bottom layers of background. Between the posts, I use the band knife to pick up the ones I need, transfer them to the shed with my hand, reiinsert the knife in the shed and then pass the shuttle. It's a little slower going than if I had heddled the pattern threads, but I find it much easier to see what I'm doing, and there's no danger of accidentally picking up a ground thread while manipulating the pattern threads.

Inky-Dinky Inkle

Day 32: I seem to be on a teal jag lately. Since I already had a cone of teal 8/2 cotton out to work closed blanket stitch around Merry's new bed, I decided to use it as the ground colour for an inkle band on my inky-dinky inkle. The Ashford Inklette is a tiny little thing, but it holds enough warp to make a band almost two yards long when it's fully loaded as it is here. It takes up about as much space in my lap as Merry does, and doesn't have to be set on the piano bench or a table like my full-sized inkle loom. That said, there are smaller ones out there, but for as fussy as Inky-Dinky is to warp, what with cracking knuckles on the pegs and all too often missing one out, I can't imagine that a smaller inkle loom would be practical (but some of 'em are awfully cute!). When my lap isn't needed by Small Cat (who misses the definition of "small" by a wide margin now), Inky-Dinky can take his place until he needs another mama-cuddle.

Finished Placemats

Day 146: Quite a few people have asked me what I do with all the bands I weave. Admittedly, I have dozens of them rolled up and tucked away, but here is one way I put them to use. I wove the placemats as an afterthought when I had wound more warp than I needed for the primary project, but to me, they looked unfinished. I decided to weave a band in matching colours to apply as a border around the edges. I turned the raw ends to lie beneath the band, stitched down the outer edges, then mitred the corners and stitched along the inner margin of the band. I'm not a fan of machine sewing (although I like to sew by hand), so it took me a while to get around to applying the edgings. I like they way they turned out enough that I might make more with the same variegated weft. I accidentally doubled the length of the band when I put it on the loom, so I have enough left over to make another pair.

A Passion For Weaving

Day 122: My grandmother set me on my fiberarts journey before I was old enough to attend kindergarten. She started me off with stem-stitch embroidery (oddly, not cross-stitch), and put me to work on pillowcases and linen handkerchiefs with the admonition, "Over four threads and back two." It was a lot to ask of a four-year old child and, although I couldn't achieve her level of expertise at that age, I was inspired by her own exquisite work to try. In the following years, she taught me to knit and crochet and to expand on my embroidery. By the time I was seven, I had made at least one knit sweater, multiple crocheted potholders and doilies, several embroidered dresser scarves, and I had gone on to explore needlepoint and crewel. Still, knitting was what drew me most, and by the time I was in my teens, it was my primary craft. After leaving high school, one of my first jobs was as an art-needlework consultant for a fabric store chain. It was there that I learned to tat. But I had only just cast off from the dock as far as the seas of textile construction were concerned, and the farther I paddled from the shores of its more commonplace forms, the deeper the waters became. At some point in my twenties, I reached the island of weaving, and was so taken with the plentiful fruits thereon that I established myself firmly in its community, having found my true home. Oh, I still visit all those other places: bobbin lace, smocking, macramé, marlinespike work, kumihimo, or anything which can be executed in thread, yarn or cord, but it is weaving which is my primary passion: passing a shuttle to and fro, watching a cloth develop beneath my hands, entranced by the simple, magical act of taking one thread across another to become fabric.

All The Trimmings

Day 101: I'm frequently asked, "What do you do with all those bands you weave?" Well, here's one example. I didn't have enough 3/2 cotton to finish out the warp I'd hung for the King's Flower coverlet, so I grabbed a skein of heavy cotton variegated craft yarn from my knitting/crocheting supplies and was able to get two perfectly-sized placemats out of the remainder (visible behind the vertical portion of the band in the photo). I thought they needed a little extra touch, and I was fortunate to find colours which came close to matching among my weaving cones. This band will be applied around all four sides of the mats when it's done. Quilters will understand what I mean when I say that it takes a lot more material than you might think to put a border around an item. I warped ten yards to be sure I would have enough trim for both mats. If there's any left over, it will go on a bag, a towel, a throw pillow, a table runner, or whatever else strikes my fancy.

Ten Foot Band

Day 95: I was so pleased with the new warping system for my Leksand loom that I was very anxious to start another band as soon as I took this one off the roller. I've spent the first hours of today hanging a new warp, and I've drafted a cute little shamrock pattern to carry me into St. Patrick's Day. This has been a good week for winding up projects and beginning new ones. Very shortly, I'll have both the floor loom and my 16-inch rigid heddle empty again. Planning! Planning! That's half the fun of weaving: planning the next project.

New Year's Weave

Day 79: Happy New Year's Weave! This demented little project is something I've thought about doing for a long time, i.e., making a band using sewing thread for the ground. The red pattern threads and white border are 10/2 cotton (single), and I chose to hang it on Pippin because I'd just taken a band off her. Jutta, my Leksand loom, would probably have served this exercise better. The distance between the heddles and Pippin's breast beam makes picking up the pattern threads in this method rather awkward since they are suspended between the upper and lower layers. I could have used a different system, specifically threading them through heddles rather than between them, but besides utilizing sewing thread, I also wanted to test the method. Some of you will spot the pitfall in the scientific protocol here: never change more than one variable in an experiment. "Eh," I said as I was pulling threads through heddles, "what's the worst that can happen? So maybe I have to cut it off and try again. It's just sewing thread." Now that I've confessed, I have to say that it's working out okay, not perfectly, but okay. I simply have to be a little more careful that I am picking up the proper threads from the free-floating layer.

Scale - Upping My Game

Day 74: I am always looking to "up my game" with new challenges, particularly in fiberarts, so when I had devised a new and hopefully foolproof way of warping my Leksand loom, I also decided to change the scale of the weaving to one using much finer threads. The band on Pippin (right) uses 8/2 throughout, doubled for the red pattern. Jutta's band (left) is made over a 16/2 white ground with single strands of 10/2 in the border and single 8/2 for the pattern. Obviously, Jutta's delicate band is more suitable for clothing than the 8/2 bands I apply to bags and straps, and is progressing rather more quickly than I'd expected, given the weight of the weft thread (also white 16/2). Many traditional Leksand bands used even finer threads for the ground, something closer to the weight of modern sewing thread which, in fact, present-day Leksand weavers frequently employ. Given the success of this experiment, I may graduate to sewing thread next.

Up, Down Or Both

Day 66: When weaving a Scandinavian-style band, pattern threads must be manipulated with the fingers or a pickup stick to bring the design to the surface. In the simplest form, these threads will either be lifted from the lower layer or pushed down from the upper, but in more complex bands, the pattern requires both "selecting" and "deselecting." In this band, the pattern threads are red. The border design in lavender, green and yellow is entirely loom-controlled, i.e., the threads were brought through the heddles in a manner which places them in the proper position in the two different sheds. They take care of themselves. These are doubled to give more volume to the pattern. Treating each pair as a single thread for simplicity of explanation, they are separated from one another by two dark blue ground threads ("ground" as in "background"). The ground threads must be kept in their natural shed, lifted or lowered as the case may be. We are only concerned with the red threads, of which there are 11 in this design. When Shed 1 is opened, pattern threads 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 are on top. However, in this step, I need to select threads 1 and 11 from the lower layer, and to deselect thread 6 from the upper layer in order to have a shed containing 1, 2, 4, 8, 10 and 11. Threads 3, 5, 7 and 9 are already in the lower layer. Inserting my fingers in the newly created shed, I can then pass the shuttle through the gap. In this manner, intricate patterns and even lettering can be made with the pattern threads, with the caveat that each one must be tied down by the weft every seventh throw (preferably every fifth) to eliminate long floats which might snag if applied to a garment.

Warping With Murphy

Day 63: I finished weaving Pippin's first band this morning (borders), three yards of a simple design using only five doubled pattern threads (the lavender "broken S" running up the center). The borders were loom-generated, i.e., I just had to thread them through the right heddles and the loom did the rest as I changed sheds. It went very quickly. I had already measured a longer warp (four yards this time), and as soon as I took the finished band off, I began winding it on. I had just reached the point where I was going to divide the threads as they passed through the raddle (a spacing device), but I seemed to be one short. Sure enough, I'd missed one when I was measuring. Because I wasn't very far in, this was an easy fix: just pull the warp back through, tie on the necessary thread and begin winding again, and it would have been just that simple if Murphy hadn't been paying a visit. "POP!" Suddenly, I had a slack thread, and it was the one I'd just tied on. I knew exactly what had happened. I'd tied it around one of the lease sticks as well as the warp rod. Fortunately, I'd allowed extra when I cut the thread. Murphy vanquished, I finished winding the warp and am now ready to get serious with the threading.

Polliwogs On Parade

Day 192: After roughly 20 hours spread out over two days as I tried various warping systems for the Leksand loom, I finally hit on a combination of techniques which, while not perfect by any means, at least let me put a new band on the rollers. During the experiments, I used up a phenomenal amount of "throw-away" crochet thread (those partial balls too small to use for a project) and the full range of my father's tractor-starting vocabulary as I tried to coax slack threads into behaving. Once warped, I settled in to weave, drawing out any remaining droop once I had an inch or so completed. I had in mind to use two different patterns alternately (they shared a common break point), but as luck would have it, the transition between the elements was less than attractive, so I abandoned the idea to use only one of the two elements. I dubbed it "Polliwogs." Having completed a foot or so, I set the loom where I could take a picture of the band against a dark background, and that was when I noticed a mistake five and a half motifs back. Don't bother looking for it. It's not there any more. Yes, I picked my morning's work out to fix the "oopsie," and wasn't satisfied until I had woven it all again. This band is 1" in width, with 13 pattern threads. All coloured threads are 8/2 cotton on a ground of 16/2 perle cotton. The weft is also 8/2.

Meet Jutta, My Leksand Loom

Day 179: Meet Jutta, my Leksand loom. None of my other looms are named, unless you count the Bonker, but this distinguished lady deserves more than to be called simply "the Leksand loom." I spent several years of my youth living in Ballard, Seattle's Scandinavian district, and I think that must be where I first heard the name. I loved the sound of it as it flowed from a Norwegian or Swedish mouth: "Iyuuutt-ta," a distinct pause separating the two t's, and a U formed deep in the back of the throat and so round you could roll it across a pool table. It stuck so firmly in my mind that I gave the name to a character in a fictional piece about park rangers, Jutta Arnestad coming into being in the storyline long before there was an Arnie in my life. In any event, before I retired last night, Jutta had been given her name, but we were still struggling a bit with her job performance. Like so many things I've learned over the years, I had to sleep on it to let everything Ed had taught me soak in. This morning's session produced a much better band. Jutta produces many of the same type of bands I weave on the bonker (not sure about krokbragd yet), but she arrives at the destination via a different route in the same way that weaving with two heddles and two pickup sticks on a rigid heddle loom can give you the same four sheds you'd open on a standard loom by operating treadles. The end result is the same, but the process is different. You'll be seeing more of Jutta as we become better acquainted, each of us learning the other's foibles.

A Band Of Rangers

Day 130: As you can see, I revised the colours in my latest krokbragd design, and I'm quite happy with the results, given the limitations of the weave and thread options. I thought I'd give it a little context here so there would be no mistaking the figure. I think it could easily be adapted to other professions, say a fireman or police officer. I have another design in the developmental stage, which is to say I have it on paper, but any loom I could weave it on is currently occupied. That said, it shouldn't take me longer than today to finish up the band of rangers on the inkle. It's only two yards long, and I'm over halfway done. Weaving on the inkle is significantly slower than using the bonker loom, but it's good for trial runs.

Custom Weaving

Day 70: More weeks ago than I care to admit, a friend asked me if I could weave a strap for her mandolin. I was more than willing because it gave me an excuse to try weaving a wider band on my "bonker" loom (Glimakra band loom). Unfortunately, the colour scheme in the first warp I hung didn't live up to my expectations, but since it was on the loom and I didn't want to waste the thread, I went ahead and finished it. It's attractive, but just not what I wanted for Elaine's mandolin strap. Having overcome that setback, I hung a new warp in different colours and knew within a few throws that I was going to be pleased with the results. I still have a few inches to weave, but here you see the improved version. It's two inches wide, and has two sets of five pattern threads (the hearts) separated by design stripes which require no pickup. Overall, it's fairly easy to weave, although I found the black background threads hard to distinguish, and had to be extra careful not to pick them up along with the pattern threads. Meanwhile, I've been making matching cords using a variety of techniques, unsure what size will work best for attaching to the button at the base of the mandolin. The finished band will be backed with cloth and will have grommeted ends for cord attachment.

Rollin' Right Along

Day 71: Compared to an inkle loom which can only be warped to the length governed by its pegs, the "bonker loom" (Swedish band loom) can hold a much longer warp. The maximum length I can weave on my inkle is roughly nine yards. Here, I have almost fifteen yards of completed band on the cloth beam of the bonker. It would easily hold double or even triple that amount, were I possessed of masochistic tendencies. Admittedly, weaving on the bonker is much faster than weaving on an inkle loom. I only started this piece shortly before Thanksgiving and will be taking it off some time in the next few days. That said, weaving the same pattern gets old, and unless I have a pressing need for an unbroken length of decorative band, I think I'll stick to shorter projects from here on out.

Woven On The Bonker Loom

Day 3: Since the acquisition of that lethal-looking implement in the foreground, the Glimakra band loom has earned a new name: the "bonker loom." The band knife is actually blunt-edged, although it has a point you wouldn't want to feel at the small of your back. It is used to beat the weft in place, a process which, in this particular type of weaving, is done with some force. While I was teaching myself the rhythm of the weave as I made these three bands, I kept repeating to myself, "Pass, treadle, bonk...pass, treadle, bonk," referring to the three steps involved. The shuttle is passed through the shed, then any slack is drawn out when the shed is changed and opened, and the throw just made is beaten ("bonked") against the fell with the knife. The left hand controls the shuttle, the right wields the band knife. The treadles, of course, are run by the feet. I must say I find something eminently satisfying about that "bonk," especially since I have been rather peeved at the world of late, and if some of the warp floats seem a bit tighter than others, it may be due to the level of frustration I was experiencing at the moment. It's amazing how therapeutic weaving can be.

Baltic Inkling

Day 319: Long-time followers might possibly recall Crow's Project Rule which states that I may not have more than one project piece of any specific type of fiber art in construction simultaneously. There is some flexibility in the Rule when it comes to weaving because there are so many different techniques by which a cloth can be manufactured. At the moment, I have a lap throw on the floor loom, a scarf on a rigid heddle, and this Baltic-style band on the inkle. The floor loom is operated by my feet. The rigid heddle requires much arm/shoulder motion, and the threads on the inkle are largely manipulated by my hands. I prefer to have this variety so that I can change up the physical stressors as well as the mental focus necessary for each style of weaving. To me, they qualify as "different," if not perhaps as different as knitting is from crochet, even though they all fall within the category of "weaving." Baltic patterns such as this one demand a heavier single or a doubled thread for the design floats. These pattern threads are raised from below or pushed down from the upper warp layer as needed. The back side (visible in the lower background in the image on the left) is often as attractive as the charted design.

Mönsterhoppor

Day 310: "Mönsterhoppor." It looks like the name of a rock band, but it means "floating threads," according to the instructions which came with the specialized Stoorstålka heddle which makes weaving traditional Sámi bands much easier than using the good old-fashioned pick-up method. I have to admit it's faster, but each Stoorstålka heddle is designed to hold a specific number of floating threads, and acquiring a full collection would be cost-prohibitive. There are a few draft variations possible within each warping, and of course changing up the colours would give each band a personalized touch, but by and large, the range of patterns possible with any particular heddle are quite limited. While the apparatus could be installed on a rigid-heddle loom to allow the weaver to work while sitting in a chair, I prefer using the backstrap method so that I can work standing up. Traditionally, the weaving is done with wool. However, I am using cotton so that I can apply the bands to pieces which are intended to be fully washable, e.g., fingertip towels where they will give a nice weight to the hem.