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