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.