Completed: October 2015
I made this neckband as a present for an avid mineral collector, who loves to wander through the wilderness looking at specimens through a portable field loupe. The band ends in a snap hook to which he can attach the loupe.
I picture mineral collectors far and wide being jealous of the dashing figure he presents in the field with his custom-made strap, bedecked with the tools of his trade.
I picture mineral collectors far and wide being jealous of the dashing figure he presents in the field with his custom-made strap, bedecked with the tools of his trade.
In general, it worked out pretty well. I ran into serious tension and tangling problems, which I solved by creating home-made weights for my warp threads (described in this earlier post). And the final assemblage was a little dicey, since I'm apparently not nearly as good at working my sewing machine as I am the loom. But I feel pretty proud of it, overall.
The Pattern
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| Cards set up on the loom |
I used 10/2 pearl cotton yarn from Halcyon Yarns. The main color is Ruby (#1220) and the foreground designs are in Pistachio (#1880).
The pattern uses 22 four-hole cards. The 20 middle cards are for the design itself, while the outside-most two cards (cards 1 and 22) are for the selvedges.
The pattern uses 22 four-hole cards. The 20 middle cards are for the design itself, while the outside-most two cards (cards 1 and 22) are for the selvedges.
The selvedges are done by constantly turning the cards forward one turn with each pick, no matter what is happening with the cards in the design section of the strap.
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| It's a pleasure to see your design come into existence |
I warped the loom with 88 warp ends 70" long. I figured that would result in a 52" strap plus 18" of loom waste, and that would give me plenty for me to experiment with and still end up with a band that was a total of 34" in diameter.
The warp ends for the outside selvedge cards 1 and 22 were all Ruby; all the other cards were warped so that holes A and B had Ruby threads in them and holes C and D had Pistachio threads.
I created the designs for the rock hammer, the shovel, and the wearer's initials myself using Guntram's Tablet Weaving Thingy. (I will forever thank you, Guntram, for creating your Thingy.) I designed each element separately and then combined them together into one template, making sure that there were the proper number of spaces between each design element so that the edges of the shovels and hammers weren't offset by one space got kinky.
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| My final design; click to enlarge |
In some cases I couldn't get the elements to be spaced out evenly and not have them be offset by one or three spaces so the twining was wrong and the edges got kinky. So I borrowed one of Guntram's fancy knot patterns (interlace1.gtt) and interspersed it among my hammers and shovels to make the spacing work better.
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| Blocking the strap |
After that, it was just a matter of finishing up the weaving itself, blocking the strap, and then attaching the snap hook.
I used a 5/8" snap hook (or, to be specific, a "Metal Silvery 0.65" Inside Diameter D-ring Lobster Clasp Claw Swivel Eye Lobster Snap Clasp Hook for Strap."
I used a 5/8" snap hook (or, to be specific, a "Metal Silvery 0.65" Inside Diameter D-ring Lobster Clasp Claw Swivel Eye Lobster Snap Clasp Hook for Strap."
Due to some mistakes in the execution of my original plan for attaching the snap hook, I ended up cutting the strap into two pieces, one about 4" long and the other about 30" long. I fed the hook through the shorter piece, and then sewed the two pieces together, end to end, with a lot of purple thread and using the buttonhole setting, so that the cut edges of my weaving wouldn't fray.
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| The finished product |
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| Close-up on the adequately-finished snap-hook end |
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