I made another belt in Sulawesi style, but I need to experiment with some other weaving styles a bit. It is not the same as before, I don’t have a lot of new ideas for new designs, even it I honestly haven’t woven all I have drawn. I have 100s of designs in various folders, but I lost the motivation to weave the same style over and over. I tried playing with some brocading, but it was not a great success. I think it would work better with a 2 hole weave.
So here is the belt, and I will be back (soon I hope) with a belt using another weaving technique. I have some ideas, but let’s see how it works out.
I have to admit that the weaving with 6-hole cards required a lot of concentration, so after weaving a bit, I decided to change to regular 4 hole cards, cutting out 2 threads. The results is below. The 4 hole is nothing spectacular, but more relaxing to weave. I took the opportunity to weave some designs I drew 3-4 years ago but didn’t really test, mainly various dragons and keltic knots.
After 2 tests with hexagonal cards in Sulawesi style, I can conclude that it works, but it’s a pain to weave. Is it worth it to get that extra colour? I will show you and let you decide wether to try it for yourselves.
My first attempt, where I used the rest of an old warp. 12 motif cards (3×4). More explanations below.
I also tried to cut out 3 threads (blue and red) out of the 6, to try 3 thread weaving (1 white and 2 brown). Result below:
I decided to set up a larger weave with 24 cards (3×8). I actually made some cardboard paper cards, since the wood cards were quite bulky. This is the result of Sulawesi weaving with more background colours.
So how is it done??
With hexagonal weaving, 3 cards make a “pair”, instead of 2 cards (in regular Sulawesi). If you see the setup below, you have 3 cards with the same orientation (S or Z), they need to be turned together always for 3 picks. So, when you weave, you do 3 picks instead of 2, before you change your cards between front/back pack. You need to test weave 6 picks to see where your starting position is. For me it was when 3 or 6 was towards me. (note the 6 dots around the hole towards me in the photo above).
To make the background repeat I started with hole 6 towards me, 3 picks forward -> hole 5 -> hole 4 -> hole 3 -> 3 picks backward -> hole 4 -> hole 5 -> hole 6.
Now with 24 motif cards, I have 8 pairs (3×8=24), which means I can use the designs for 16 cards (8 pairs x2 =16). I used a truncated version of the below to make my weave above. Each square in my weaving diagram then represents 3 cards and 3 picks (white forward and dark backwards).
To use the designs for “24 cards” (12 pairs), you actually need 36 hexagonal cards (12×3=36).
The silver-blue belt in silk and wool is finished. I really love the feel and look of it. The wool is matte and the silk shiny, which means that the two quite similar shades of dark blue appear quite different and contrasting. Here are some pictures:
I wanted to weave with some lovely pinkish-mauve yarns for a while, so I set up a regular 16 cards weave with Oseberg edging using these these colours (even though I don’t really use much pink, but the colours spoke to me). But when I started weaving, I feel that it turned out a bit too pink and I hesitated to change it by cutting out one or 2 threads per card. In the end I flipped the motif colors (mauve) and the background colour (green) and continued to weave approximately 2 m. I also worked on some variations of the leaf theme for 16 cards, which I will upload on the design page.
Then I attached the weft and cut out the accompanying colours to do some pebble weave with 2 missing holes, and it turned out much nicer than my initial weave. I regret not doing it sooner, since I only had enough warp to weave around 60cm.
The 1st belt looks like this:
The second, shorter pebble weave looks like this:
It’s amazing how the mauve colour looks so different (nicer) when the lighter thread is gone.
I like to weave in silk, but I also feel limited with the colours I have (since it does cost a bit more). Well, I am slowly advancing on this one. A lot of see creatures and some horses.
It looks better in real life, since the yellow looks really golden, but on the photo it is somehow “flat”. I will add some of the new designs to the design page (and below).
After this one, I plan to take a summer brake. C U in September.
It took some time to complete, but now it is done. I like it, but not my favourite. Maybe it is a bit to complicated with all the colour changes going on. It is nearly hypnotising when you look at it.
The belt I talked about in my last blog post is finally finished. I am happy with how the gradient turned out and I had quite some comments on the “fire” aspect. I like how the fire is flanked by “water” from the blue border.
I have also been drawing quite a few alternative designs lately. I could not weave them all, but at least some of them. I will add the weaving diagrams asap here on my page for 24 card designs.
