Pickup patterns for Lucy's belt

I was asked for the patterns used in the pink belt below. Click on them for a larger, clearer picture.

They are made with my pick-up program (available in the Files section of the Yahoo Inkle group). Every thread with a 'A' mark is a pattern thread picked up from the bottom half of the shed and every thread marked with a 'V' is where a pattern thread on the top half of the shed is dropped to the underside.

For Kimi (and Lucy)

This afternoon I was reluctantly trying to do a little work to compensate for the fact that as I get older weeks also seem to get shorter, when I was unexpectedly and pleasantly distracted by incoming Yahoo messenger from Kimi, a new inkle weaver. During our chat I mentioned I was working on a new pick-up belt for my daughter Lucy. I tried to describe it over the messaging chat but a picture is worth a 1000 words:



The band is about 1-1/4" wide and is approx #5 perl cotton in coral colour for the background and approx #3 white cotton doubled for the pattern. The weft is the coral warp but doubled (to make a nice basketweave in the background only areas).


The warping is:
  b b C b b b b b C b b C b b C b b C b b b b C b b
b b C b b b b C b C b b C b b C b b C b b b b C b b

The pattern does not extend the width of the band nor does it run continuously through the band - it is separated by approx 4" (36 picks) of plain weave as shown below.



The weird width variations are an artifact of the camera - the selvage is straight and the band is constant width (as verified by my pencil marked toothpick used as a visual temple)

BTW - the reason that I only have an approximate idea of the size of these yarns is these, like most of my other yarns, were found in a local charity shop (thrift store, to you folks in the USA). The total cost of the belt will be in the order of a few pence.

A pick-up belt

The Helene Bress Inkle Weaving book has a fantastic pick-up belt by Doramay Keasbey - it is awesome and I wanted one!!! Trouble is I'm not an artist and had no idea how to design all those fabulous motifs... but I am a programmer (or was once) and so I wrote a simple program to facilitate inkle weave pick-up design. It's available directly from me or from the Yahoo Small Loom or Inkle groups.

So here's my homage to Doramay


(click on the pictures if you want a more detailed view)