A Simple Weaving Tutorial

Here's a simple weaving tutorial, though I'm still not quite sure what I'm going to do with the finished piece. :)

I don't know why, but I'm on this braiding kick lately. It's something very relaxing for me to do while watching TV. Plus, it's a great way to use up a stash of yarn someone gave me, since I don't know how to knit or crochet. :(

I've had this desire to do some weaving, too. My son built me a loom of sorts for Christmas, but the braided yarn is just too thick for it, making it unwieldy. Hmmmm...what to do...what to do with this long strand of braided yarn and how can I weave it?

Hmmm...there's this nice sized cardboard that I could wrap it around. Maybe I can weave that way!

I wrapped the cardboard piece until it was almost full. I didn't wrap it tightly because I needed some room to get my yarn and weaving "tool" through. Then I looped the end.

Since I'm not a knitter, I didn't have any sort of hook to pull through to weave. Luckily I had this nifty little kitchen gadget. I think it's a citrus peeler.

I tied one end of yarn to it and then started weaving over, under, over, under through the braided yarn.

At first, I did the whole row before pulling the yarn through, but that made for a looser weave, and I didn't like that. So then I did a little at a time, pulling the yarn through and pushing it up towards the other row. You have to kind of push and pull at the same time, which was hard to take a picture of.

I initially started out with some silky lavender yarn, but it was really subtle.

So the next side I used a red yarn.

I folded the cardboard a bit with the yarn wrapped around it and slowly and carefully slid the yarn off. Whew...wasn't sure if that would work, but it did. :)

With a loom, you can weave the yarn all the way to the end, because you have more room to get your weaving tool through, but with the cardboard...no such luck, despite wrapping the braided yarn loosely to begin with. So I could only go so far with the single colored yarn before it got too tight to put my weaving tool through. This made for an unwoven part.

I was going to put a dowel or stick through this unwoven part and make this into a wall hanging. I planned on adding some embellishments to it, or maybe some painted letters spelling out "Spring," since these yarns are so spring colored!

But then I thought...I really like how thick it is, and I really need something to put my hot casserole dishes on. I have some ceramic trivets, but they're smaller squares, and I'm never confident that my oblong casserole dishes will stay on them. One little bump from a curious puppy trying to stretch her neck so she can reach the dish, and there would slide the casserole dish off. This woven piece is nice and flat and will clearly accommodate my oblong casserole dishes. So it's gonna be a woven braided trivet...at least I think so! Pretty and functional as a trivet!

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