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Category: Braiding

close up of part of jacket and braid closure
Morning Has Broken

Morning Has Broken

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My sister Jean was a very competent spinner and weaver. She started her spinning journey in Wales, to where she was evacuated in WWII. She was staying with my mother’s family in Ogmore Vale, South Wales and in those days everyone walked everywhere. Every time she came across bits of fleece from the local Welsh Mountain ewes attached to fences and brambles, she collected it and taught herself to spindle spin, using a stick and a potato.

Fast forward to the mid 1960s and she was living in Dorset (UK), a teacher, and in her ”spare” time a spinner, with eyes on getting a weaving loom.  She was an active member of the Dorset Guild of Weavers Spinners & Dyers which met in Dorchester, and also belonged to a local group of spinners meeting regularly in a nearby village.

In due time she acquired several looms, including one large floor loom, which was set up in her workshop.

By this time, Jean had prepared and spun fleece from various breeds of sheep, making scarves and “twit” hats (I think they are called “beanies” these days) from Jacob fleeces. She progressed through various types of tops purchased from Wingham Woolwork on several of their visits to the Guild bringing with them vast amounts of their stock.  These were a wonderland of opportunity to see and purchase all sorts of ready prepared and blends of fibres, not easily seen unless you lived in Yorkshire.  In those days fleece and fibre festivals were only a glint in wholesalers’ eyes!  I do remember that she spun and wove sufficient Welsh Black and silk tops into a length of fabric large enough for me to make her a skirt.

Eventually Jean turned to spinning silk tops with the idea of making sufficient fabric for a jacket.

skeins of spun silk - but not showing actual colour of natural silk
Some of the spun silk – I don’t know what’s happened to the colour – most odd

At about that time the idea of using music as a basis for fabric design was circulating amongst the weaving fraternity.  There were articles in the Journal – the magazine produced by the Association of Guilds of Weavers Spinners and Dyers – and also the American magazine Handwoven.  Jean decided that she would design the fabric for the jacket by making a threading draft and subsequently a draw down based on the hymn “Morning is Broken”.

I daresay that these days there will be umpteen video clips on YouTube with step by step instructions on how to do this.  It is a bit complicated to explain unless you’ve got a couple of hours – especially if you haven’t done much in the way of weaving on a loom with a minimum of 4 shafts.  Basically you assign each letter of the alphabet to each shaft in turn, having numbered the shafts 1-4.  The simplest “code” is AEIMQUY = shaft 1; BFINRVZ = shaft 2; CGKOSW = shaft 3; DFILPTX = shaft 4.

Then you translate your phrase or title into numbers accordingly.  However, just to make life more difficult, you can’t have the letters on the same shaft adjacent to each other (don’t ask) so you need to add a different shaft number between them. This gives the threading sequence on the loom for the warp threads.

To see what your phrase will look like when woven, you can draft it out on a piece of graph paper, making what is called a draw down.  This will have on it not just the threading sequence but also the lifting sequence of the shafts when you are actually weaving the fabric.

I don’t have the draw down which Jean made for her fabric, but I do have some which I made when we were playing around with other ideas and making name drafts.

I suppose it must be possible to look at a woven pattern and work out the words the pattern represents.  Perhaps this is one way that textiles may have been used to pass secret messages, though it’s not likely to be a quick way of getting information back to base!

Anyway, Jean designed her draft and draw down for Morning Has Broken and dressed her large floor loom so that the pattern would appear in bands throughout the fabric she wanted to weave.

Once the fabric had been removed from the loom and any loose ends woven in, Jean passed it to a friend who had offered to make up the jacket.  In the meantime, Jean used some of the left over yarn to make some lengths of kumihimo  braid.  From this braid I made some “Monkey Fist” buttons and braided fastenings sewn onto the jacket fronts.  Unfortunately the jacket, not having been lined, did not really hang properly or keep it’s shape. Jean asked me to take it apart and, using habotai silk as a lining, put it together again, which I did and included some hand made shoulder pads.

 

 

Counselor in Training Backpacking Trip from Camp Judy Layne
Making Jellyfish Bracelets – Kumihimo

Making Jellyfish Bracelets – Kumihimo

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This summer I am volunteering at Camp Judy Layne in Kentucky for a week. I grew up in Kentucky and went to CJL Girl Scout camp every summer for years. Girl Scouts and this camp made me who I am and I have many fond memories and friends from more than 45 years ago. I will be helping with arts and crafts and also teaching wet felting to the campers. In preparation, I decided I needed to make some friendship bracelets to give away. Here is the tutorial that I found on Instagram for “Jellyfish” bracelets (Kumihimo).

Kumihimo means gathered threads and was historically used for samurai armor ties. The round ones that are made with this technique are kakugumi. The seven color bracelets are considered lucky and ward off misfortune. Mainly, I wanted something simple and easy to make.

Variety of #3 perle cotton threads in different colors.

I started with some wool yarn that I had in my stash and made a few bracelets. But I thought they were a bit too “hairy” and might be itchy for some people to wear. Suddenly, I remembered the embroidery threads that I got from my mom. There were a bunch of #3 perle cotton threads that I rarely use in my stitching/embroidery. She had already cut most of them into lengths and I found that I could make two bracelets from the cut lengths.

Cardboard circle used to create "jellyfish" Kumihimo bracelets.

The nice thing about the Instagram tutorial was that the disc used was made from cardboard and was simple to create. There are Kumihimo discs that you can purchase with more slits and you can create more intricate patterns, but this was something that can be reproduced to teach the girls at camp.

Cardboard circle with #3 perle cotton threads separated into slots on edge of circle.

Here’s the top of the circle once the threads are “loaded”. If you put similar colors together as shown above when you start, the pattern is different than if you randomly place the colors.

And here’s why it’s called a jellyfish bracelet. It definitely looks like a jellyfish when you’re making it. The directions are quite easy and it is a simple pattern. The bracelet slowly developing is quite satisfying to see.

Finished jellyfish/kumihimo friendship bracelets

Here are my finished bracelets so far. You can see the “fatter” ones on the right are the wool yarn bracelets. I think I will use small rubber bands to connect them although I will also look into a sliding square knot closure. But I was supposed to leave long ends for that type of closure which I didn’t do.

Closeup of different patterns of bracelets

Here’s the difference in the patterns using this method. The bracelet on the left is loaded with the orange threads together and the blue threads together. The one on the right is random blue and orange mixed when loading.  I have been making these at night while watching television. Not sure how many I will get finished but it’s been a relaxing activity.

Here’s the square knot closure for the bracelets. The bracelet needs to be long enough to easily slide over the hand for this to work correctly. The video I viewed used long lengths of extra thread for the closure but I had already cut off those ends. I will use this type of sliding closure for the longer bracelets and use a small rubber band for the shorter ones.