Card Weaving

DSCN0853, originally uploaded by alicen.

Only a couple of years after Laura sent me a book on the subject, I got around to doing a test card weaving project.

Card weaving is a way of weaving without a fixed loom. You have a series of cards with holes in them. Different color thread is threaded through each hole, and the cards are twisted to put different combinations on top. There's a pretty good explanation here.



It's a very old idea and can be done with all sorts of materials. I used cotton thread purchased for something like $1/ball. My strap (which is 4 or 5 feet long) is a simple diamond pattern, but you can quickly get much more complicated.

The process is surprisingly fast - this only took me an hour or so to set up and weave. I'm not sure how much call there actually is in my life for narrow bands of fabric (and the width of these things is sort of naturally limited by the nature of the weaving process), but it's definitely something I'll do again.