Christmas band patterns
Every year in preparation for Christmas I like to set up a Christmas band, that can be woven on in the weeks before the actual decorating fun begins. To me, a part of the deep rooted, safe and warm feeling that is the essence of Christmas has a lot to do with the preparations and I love to see handmade decorations I made previous years when I unpack my “Christmas box“. The power of that kind of repetition is so strong I think, and I could write a lot about culture being a mix of inherited ideas and preferences and the things we create ourselves, and how that can apply to songs, decorations, food, dance, and and….
But I wanted to share some bands with you today. I haven’t had time to set up a Christmas band this year as I am working on my 6’th book but I can show you the two I wove last year, plus a little sweetheart that I thought would fit right in. These first two are repp bands, a weaving technique where you kind of program the pattern while treading the heddle, and then when you weave you just lift and lower the heddle and pass the yarn through. The last band is a little more complicated though!
As much as I would like to give every one of my readers a personal instruction on how to weave bands, the day doesn’t contain enough hours for me to do so. That’s why I have written a book called Simple Weave where you can learn about warp and weft, weaving repp bands, pick-up bands and other styles, how to read the warping charts I have posted here and also how to make your own weaving tools. The book is available in Swedish and English in my webshop, and you can also find it in Danish and German in local webshops in respective country. The linen yarn mentioned in the blog post can also be found in the webshop on this site.
Holly berry band
This sweet little band uses a 10 hole heddle and it’s a variety on the “Mimosa“ band in my Simple weave book. It has double warp threads in the red sections, where I have placed one thread of Brick Red and one of Burgundy together. That gives the berries a bit of color variation: Sometimes only one color is showing, and sometimes they are mixed. Of course you can use only one red if you want to, but make sure to still use double thread in those places, because that helps the berries “flesh out“ a little bit. I used two strands of yarn for weft.
I have used the yarns Natural linen, Fir tree, Burgundy and Brick red for this band.
If you want to take an online class where I teach you how to weave this type of band I have one scheduled in January. Sign up here!
Holly berry warping chart: The white squares in the threading chart marks where to put natural linen, and the colored where to put colored threads. I painted two red colors in the holes + slits in the red sections to mark out that these are double threaded with two types of red.
Fireside band
This band was originally woven to be a belt for a dress, but it would work just as well to hold curtains away from a window, tied around a sheaf of oat straw for the birds to eat during the holidays or as a handle for Santa’s gift bag. It is woven on a heddle with 21 holes and all the warp threads are threaded double, so as to give the band extra sturdiness.
The weft is also intended to give the band extra bulk, and I have woven it in the “thick+thin“ style with two wefts, one thick consisting of 6 threads of yarn and one thin, consisting of only two threads.
The yarn colors used in this band are Burgundy, Brick red, Black, Gold and Natural linen. At first I tried making the white dots with the White yarn, but that made the white spots too hard, almost glaring, and I decided to go with the Natural linen instead.
Fireside warping chart: For a slimmer and more supple band you can of course use only one thread per warp, and use one single strand of yarn for weft. PS. Sorry about the wobble, drawing squares in a straight line was hard!
Tiny hearts band
This band is woven with another technique than the two ones above. The technique is called “pick-up”, because you choose which pattern threads are to show and which ones are to be invisible every time you lift or lower the heddle and that’s where the pick-up chart to the right comes in! In other words, the pattern is not defined when you thread your heddle like it is with warp repp bands but you still need to follow a threading chart. The white threads in this band are a no. 8/2 cotton, but if you want to use a linen yarn the White in my shop would do very well. Use that double stranded in both the warp and weft.
The red threads in the band are wool yarn. You can also use cotton or linen for the pattern threads but then you should use 3 or 4 strands together, as they need to be thicker than the white “background“ threads.
Tiny hearts warping chart: This sweet little band only needs a heddle with 9 holes!