A friendship bracelet for Ukraine

A few years ago I bought a beautiful handwoven belt from Elena Shevtsova in Ukraine from WovenSlavicBelts her Etsy outlet.  

Here it is. The tassels have been finished in a lovely way and must have taken a lot of work to do so neatly and effectively . 

Belt woven by Elena

On my Pinterest board I have been collecting pictures if Ukrainian folk costume.  The belts for these costumes are usually warp -aced plain weave stripes in beautiful colours.  Their embroidery work is stunning but there is not a wide-spread tradition of pick-up patterned band weaving. 

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/DurhamWeaver/

A few days ago I was asked if I had any Ukrainian patterns. Someone in the UK is working with Ukrainian refugees and wanted to teach them band weaving.  It would be a way of keeping their culture and heritage alive whilst in exile.  Elena has a booklet of Slavic patterns in her Etsy shop. She also has a booklet about tassels as well.

Here is the address:  https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/WovenSlavicBelts

Friendship Bracelets.

A friendship bracelet is given by one person to another as a symbol of friendship.  According to tradition, the bracelet should be tied onto the wrist of a friend  (who may make a wish for something at that moment).  The wish of course should be secret.

I thought that I would design a friendship bracelet in blue and yellow with 9 pattern threads which might be suitable for beginners when learning pick-up pattern weaving. It is pattern of joined hearts. I used fine cotton but they could also be woven in wool or thicker cotton. Beginners should sue thicker yarn until they are familiar with patterned band weaving.

Although they were woven as friendship bracelets, they would work equally well as bookmarks.

 I wove four picks of plain weave to start then 15 cm of the pattern.  The length will depend upon the size of wrist for which it is intended.

Remember that the pattern repeat is pick 1 - 22.  Picks A, B, C and D are only woven once at the beginning and once at the end. 

There are different ways of finishing the ends. To finish the bracelet, the warp ends were plaited.   Here are two variations. At one end, I divided the warp ends into two groups and plaited them separately.  The ends were whipped to finish. The end can also be plaited as a single plait for an alternative end.

At the other end, I divided the warp ends into two groups but only plaited them for a short length.  I then overlapped the two groups and plaited them as one.  This gave a loop at one end for fastening the bracelet.  Here is the result.

The beauty of the Baltic weave structure is that there is a pattern on the reverse.

Here is a variation of the pattern in blue. Here the pattern repeat is pick 1 - 26.

Of course a warp-faced plain weave band also looks good.  See my blog entry for April 2016 for a pattern idea. 

https://durhamweaver64.blogspot.com/2016/04/durham-guild-open-day-for-spinning.html

Weaving is fun and it is very enjoyable to teach others.  Why not weave a friendship bracelet for your friend?

Happy weaving everyone. 

Susan J Foulkes  July 2022

Handtowel in M's and O's

Handtowels on the loom

I wove some of these handtowels in 2017 ( see my blog for 15th June 2017)  I decided to weave another set and used the same pattern. However, I realised that I had not threaded the coloured warp ends correctly. I wove one handtowel and then corrected the threading. I had not realised this mistake when I wove the previous set so it was interesting to see if a revised threading would make a noticeable difference. 

The warp sett is 24 epi.  It is important to weave each block as a square.

M and O pattern with stripes - corrected threading

Mistake

Previously I had not recorded the pattern colours correctly for threading and I made an error.  M & O is a block pattern with two blocks. Each block had 8 warp threads. One block is threaded: 4,3 - 4,3 - 2,1 - 2,1 and the second block is threaded: 4,2 - 4,2 - 3,1 - 3,1 . The threading has three blocks with a stripe of 2 warp ends dividing the the pattern for the next three blocks. My threading mistake was to have the two coloured threads as the first two warp ends of a block.  

Threading error for the two coloured warp ends

Corrected mistake

I think that the correct colour order should have one coloured thread as the final warp end of one block and the first warp end of the next. Here is the correct warp plan.

Corrected warp colour error. 

I wove the first towel before I realised that this could be a mistake. Fortunately I did not have to rethreaded the entire warp. I rethreaded the two coloured warp ends and one of the background warp ends. 

Does this make a difference? The dividing warp ends form a wavy line down the cloth when it is washed. In the first handtowel when the two coloured ends are in one block the stripe is flattened although when washed it does appear wavy. 

Here I have overlaid two handtowels.  In the pictures, the towels on the right have the corrected threading.  The towel on the left has the incorrect threading.

Two handtowels: incorrect and correct warp threading for the coloured ends.

The warp line of blue threads has some wavy qualities in both threadings but I prefer the corrected version. 

There is always something to learn.

Susan J Foulkes  July 1st 2022