Fumiyo Kitahara’s Kumihimo with Loops (in Japanese and English).
I got to meet Fumiyo Kitahara at the International Braids 2016 conference, where she showed me how she makes the Itsukushima braid as a solo braider with 22 hand-held loops. She is now up to 56 loops!
Ten flat braid color patterns for 6-loop braids! Six-loop braids can have some great color-patterns that are only possible with an even number of loops. + Tips for braiding neater-looking flat braid patterns…
5- loop square and flat braids are easy to learn, and make great-looking cords and bands. Check out my photos and video… Or, for an even easier intro to loop-braiding, click on the link to my new tutorial for 3-loop braids.
Loop braiding is a fun, fast way to make many types of beautiful cords and bands. Click on Tutorials in the upper menu for links to all my tutorials. Please comment in any of the posts! I’d love to hear about your textile/ fiber interests, talk braids, or just say hi.
I’ll be teaching a 2-day “Loop Braiding Potpourri” workshop at the Lace Museum in Sunnyvale (California) the last weekend of this month – October 29 and 30…
I’ve been trying to reproduce a Japanese national treasure braid known as the Itsukushima braid. It’s described in Masako Kinoshita’s big book on Kute-Uchi: 日本組紐古技法の研究 (Study of Archaic Braiding Techniques in Japan). This is a work-in-progress…
“How I spent my summer vacation” and some braiding ideas from camp!
Dominic will be teaching knotting at Braids 2016! His 2-day class is called Cylindrical Braids, which refers to nautical-type knotted ‘braids’ that can be formed around solid objects—like handles of tools, etc.
The first photos I’ve received back since sending my Nun’s Book letterbraid tutorial out into the braiding ether! —Of knots as well as letters…
I’m already very excited about the upcoming international Braids conference: Braids 2016. The loop braiding workshop I’ll be teaching there is on braiding and planning designs and motifs—like the so-called ‘letter braids,’ but with a braid that is much easier to make…
Just a nudge, if you live in or near the S.F. Bay Area–Maker Faire is this weekend at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds!
I’ll be there, not as “Loopbraider”…
Four color-patterns for the 7-loop, D-shaped braid. These color-patterns look very different, but they have almost the same starting setup. If you want, you can switch between any of the four patterns within the same braid…
This is a 7-loop, D-shaped braid with a rounded upper surface and a flat lower surface. And a lot of different color-pattern possibilities. The upper surface always looks very different from the lower surface…(video tutorial)
Video-based tutorial on my workaround method for braiding the 17th Century Nun’s Book letterbraid of 10 loops as a solo braider. I learned the traditional method from Noémi Speiser and Joy Boutrup’s Instructions for Letter Braids in 17th Century Manuscripts. Includes printable charts for my versions of the letters J, V, and Q…
I promised a long time ago to make a tutorial for one of the two known 10-loop letterbraids…
Tips and ideas for using beads with loop braids. Finger loop braiding allows for some beading strategies that aren’t possible with kumihimo or other braiding techniques…
Here’s another “too-many-loops” video. This one is a demo showing how I braid the flat version of a 13-loop square braid, but with extra color-linking moves in each loop transfer.
Here’s a video that shows how I make twelve-loop double braids. If you are new to my site, please don’t be put off from loop braiding because this video makes it look too complicated! – I have many tutorials for easy and beautiful loop braids, see my Tutorials index.
In the first part of the video I show some braids in my twelve-loop double braid sample book…
Free, local (east sfbay area) loop braiding get-togethers, for learning and practicing…
I’ll be teaching a Loop Braiding workshop at CNCH this spring. For those of you in California, that’s the Conference of Northern California Handweavers. CNCH isn’t only for weavers—aside from weaving classes there are always great workshops in a wide range of other topics — dyeing, braiding, basketry, spinning, knitting…and a Market Hall with venders,…
New: Rodrick Owen will be teaching a two-day class on Peruvian flat braids at Braids 2016!
Buried textiles rarely survive even a few hundred years.
But in sites in and around what is now Peru, treasure troves of amazing textiles have been found that are thousands of years old—including beautiful and intricate loop braids!
Here are some fun color patterns for the square braids I teach in my 5-loop, 7-loop, and 9-loop Braids tutorials (Click the Tutorials tab above for links to all my tutorials)
This video-based tutorial teaches several color-pattern variations of a 7-loop flat braid with an extra move in some of the loop transfers. It’s a way to link loops of different colors, to force them to stay within one section of the braid, instead of migrating across the whole braid. I taught this earlier for flat double braids–this is the same technique, but here I’m teaching it with the flat variation of a 7-loop square braid.
Also tips on how to make yet another double braid shape than the flat, hollow and rectangular ones of my double braid tutorials—the side-slit double braid.
Set-up instructions for 11 color patterns for flat double braids, plus 1 solid double braid color pattern, 1 hollow, and 2 side-slit rectangle color patterns.
Thanks Chris, Caroline, Dan, Terry, Traci, Colleen, Faustine for sending me your braid photos!
