Workshop Week three: Designing and Recording Stripe Patterns

Here is one way of varying a pattern. 

These two exercises are from the online workshop.  I hope you enjoy these new patterns. 

1.  Analysis of band pattern from Peruvian bag.

Here is a simple bag strap from Peru.  There are only two colours but the four central red warp ends are doubled.  This makes them stand out more on the woven band.
There are 31 warp ends.

Warp Chart.

Exercise 2 from Week 2 

Altering a design by changing colours.

Here is my new design from the Finnish band in the booklet for week one of the online workshop. The original band is woven in wool using three colours, red, white and black.

The original band

I decided to use red, blue and white as my three colours.
Warp and weft is Robin Cotton Glace which is a double knit cotton.

My new design

Total number of warp ends is 41
Warp: red, blue and white   Robin cotton glace, double knit, cotton
Weft: white  cotton glace
The width is approximately  27  mm.

Designing bands

In the workshop, I demonstrated how to use a commercial program to analyse colours in a photograph.  Here is one of the programs that I used.  

https://labs.tineye.com/color/  

I uploaded a picture. The analysis shows the proportions of each colour. These can be made into a simple stripe pattern. 

This is the analysis. 

I joined two halves of the analysis together. I ignored the brown, beige and grey stripes at the right.

I designed this band. I altered the proportions and used only a single warp end of green inthe centre. This produces a dotted effect.

new design for cotton band

There are 59 warp ends in 16/2 cotton. The width of the band is 13 mm. Here is the warp chart. 

Warp chart

Pale blue 8                                                   8

Yellow        2                                           2

Green              6                                  6

Burgundy            6                        6

Purple                     4                4

Pink                            3        3

Green                               1

Drawdown and threading chart

Making yarn wraps.

Here are three yarn wraps made by Durham Guild members on a workshop I ran several years ago.  I brought two boxes of coloured cottons so that after they had made a final choice, they could make a warp for an inkle loom. I asked everyone to think of their favourite colours. 

I have made a chart for the final band. There are three colours and 48 warp ends. It is very easy to record your pattern using this Loom Weaving Pattern Editor   http://www.raktres.net/seizenn/loom_weaving_editor.html

Here is the band on my Swedish band loom.

The Crios from the Aran islands

At the beginning of the workshop and on my blog, I mentioned the red sash of Tutankhamun.

This lovely example of a single colour crios was sent to me by Sue. It is 184 cms in length excluding the fringes.  It was very dramatic when worn. I have been researching the crios from the Aran islands for a number of years. If anyone has any information or better still a picture of an old crios, I would love to see it. There is still so much more to find out.

Red crios from Sue C. 

When I visited Dublin I was fortunate to see a 1936 painting which depicted a crios.  The artist painted the crios in such a way that I thought that it would be possible to analyses the pattern and a weave a copy.

Close up of painted crios.  

This is a close up of a small part of the crios.  It depicts the front where it overlaps so two bands can be seen, one behind the other. Knowing how crios patterns are made enabled me to analyse the picture.

Close up of the crios from the 1930's painting.

Here is my analysis of the crios.  Of course, it is only an interpretation but I like the pattern.
.
Drawdown

crios pattern from painting.

Here is the crios I wove using 4 ply sock yarn which gave me the range of colours I needed.

Warp ends: 52

Width: 54 mm

The final woven crios.

A Peruvian variation

The coloured cottons used for the bookmark

I thought that I would weave another variation of the Peruvian inspired band using 16/2 cotton.

Here is my variation of the Peruvian inspired design using 16/2 Swedish cotton.
There are 37 warp ends of 16/2 cotton.
The width of the bookmark is 10 mm.

For the central section I used three warp ends of each colour.  This gives a lovely graded colour variation in the finished band.

Here is a close up of the finished bookmark.

I made several bookmarks and a lanyard from this band.

Happy Weaving.  I do hope that you have enjoyed these three blogs about weaving simple narrow bands.

Susan J Foulkes May 2020.