Creative Friday: A Stick Weaving Tutorial

Welcome to Creative Friday!
When I was little, about seven or eight years old, my mom bought me a plastic weaving kit. It consisted of a few straight pieces of plastic about the same length as these wooden dowels with small openings on the ends. Long lengths of wool were attached through the openings on the ends of the plastic sticks. Do you remember these? I used to weave myself and my dolls scarves and little carpets and after all these years, I can still remember how much I loved this process of weaving. I don't know what happened to my little weaving set, perhaps I must ask my mom if it is somewhere in her garage, it's possible:) Yesterday, I thought it would really be fun if I made my own set using wood. I bought a few dowels and my wonderful man helped me to cut and drill the dowels last night.

We have been having tremendous fun today weaving this rainbow scarf. It really is a wonderful project that anyone can do, even Kye who is 5, sat down and loved wrapping the wool around each individual stick. I am going to cut another six pieces and make a table runner, should be fun.

This is how we made our weaving sticks:

I used a 10mm dowel that I bought from the hardware shop.
We the dowel into six pieces, each measuring seven inches long.
Sand off the rough edges.
Sand the one end to make a slight curve.
Drill a hole about half an inch up from the base of each dowel, drill straight through each dowel.

Weaving:
I used chunky, natural wool and threaded it through the holes in each dowel, I doubled the wool and it is about 1 metre long, hanging double. This is what your weaving will go around as you move it down the dowel sticks.
Tie your first colour of chunky wool to one of the side dowels and hold them all of them together. This can be a little tricky as nothing is holding them firmly yet, but as you weave they become sturdy.

Wrap the wool in and out of the individual dowels, going around the outer ones and then weaving in and out of the others. I weave near the base of the dowels, it makes the work firm and it is also easier to slide the weaving down when it is near the base.

Once the weaving is about half way up the dowels, you can just gently move it down one dowel at a time. Hold your work and gently pull up each dowel, make sure you leave some weaving on the sticks, don't move everything down because this will make the sticks loose.

When you want to add a new colour, tie it on at the back of the work and cut the old colour, leave long pieces so they can be sewn in and continue weaving.

Once you are finished weaving, tie the colour to the work and tie the white wool together, through the end of the colourful weaving, leaving tassels, so that it does not unravel.

Happy weaving!

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About Creative Friday:

Thank you so much to everyone who shares the love and posts their links to their amazing work:) Please feel free to post your links to anything you have created and would like to share, it can be a recipe, sewing tutorial, knitting tutorial, felting, crochet, crafts, art, spinning, weaving, working with fibre, photography, poetry...etc...

I also love to hear from you, so if you have a moment, please leave a comment:) Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful talent with us! Just add the name of your blog to the widget and then add your blog link with the http:// at the beginning of your link address:) I have added a Creative Friday button on the sidebar of my blog, please feel free to add it to your blog for Creative Friday and link it to http://www.naturalsuburbia.blogspot.com/ so others can find this space and share their creativity too:)

1. I have started a Creative Friday Flickr Group where you can post your beautiful photos that you link to each Creative Friday, to join the group, please go here.

Yay!! Thanks so much to those who have joined the Creative Friday Flickr Group, it is wonderful to see your photos!

2. If you would be so kind as to link back to Natural Suburbia in your blog post that would be lovely:)

Have a wonderful day,
xo
Linda