I have once
before tried to learn band weaving - with very poor result. So I decided I
would give it one more chance and signed
up for a course at Sätergläntan.
And Sätergläntan always delivers: this was a
week of pure joy thanks to our teacher Elisabeth Johansson. Elisabeth
led a week starting with braided bands continuing with simple woven
bands and then patterned bands on a rigid heddle (with backstrap). The week also
included the basics of setting up your warp, different types of yarns for
different kinds of bands and so on.
There were also traditional small looms for bandweaving for those who wanted to
try that out.
I stuck to
the rigid heddle since my main goal was to learn how that worked. And I had a
really enjoyable week. Of course my bands do not look perfect, they are uneven
and contain mistakes. BUT they were great fun to make.
At the end
of the week I also learned how to make/weave a napped edging (kavelfrans in Swedish) often used on
traditional mittens. This will be useful for
decorating knitted mittens in the old traditional way.
We also got
to see some old woven bands. Below are some bands from a private collection.
They are incredibly detailed (most of them are ca 20 mm wide) and use very
complicated patterns.
Bonus: this
was my view out the window while weaving:
