When people are starting out weaving, a big question that comes up is ‘how do you make shapes?’. There of course are a lot of ways to weave shapes. One of the easiest ways, which I of course wanted to re-share for those of you who are newer to the blog, is weaving angles and waves.
This technique is not only really easy, but gives you a lot of freedom and impact in your weave design, so it’s a win-win in my book.
Weaving Angles
step 1| weave a few rows of plain weave straight across your warp threads. This is kind of a base for your angle.
step 2| using your hand, push the weft threads up (or down) the warp threads in the angle shape you want. You may have to push one row at a time, if your wefts are tight, but they will move. And boom, you’re done! Well for the most part, of course there is some more.
Tip: if your weft threads aren’t moving, then they are waaaayyy too tight and would probably give you tension issue even if you left them straight. Make sure to weave your weft threads with an even relaxed tension. If you need more tips on how to weave a relaxed tension, check out this post.
step 3| you will probably want a straight edge to the angle (top and bottom). To make this I wove one row straight across the warp threads (add as many rows as you like, and it can be the same color or whatever you want to do).
step 4| I now have a gap between my white thread and my angled pink thread, so I’m going to fill that gap using the plain weave. I plain weave back and forth, decreasing my rows as they “hit” the pink thread. Using the pink thread as a guide, allows you to fill in the gap without thinking too hard about it, which is really nice.
step 5| my base shape of the weave is established with an angle, so now I can continue to plain weave whatever colors and shapes and follow the angle as I go. And when you want to stop the angle, just weave a filler row, like I did in step 4.
Weaving Waves
step 1| just like the steps above, weave a few rows of plain weave
step 2| use your hand to push the weft threads up (or down) the warp threads in the shape of a wave. I just put one in for an example, but you can make it wave all the way across your weave.
step 3| to add your straight edge, again weave a row straight across, under your waves.
step 4| fill in your gaps between the straight row and the waved rows with the plain stitch, using the waves as a template to know when to decrease your rows. Sorry I didn’t have a visual for this step, I included the wave shape last minute since it’s so similar making an angle, but you just fill in the gap the same way.
step 5| with the base shape of the weave established you can continue weaving, following the waves you have created.
I really love to use this simple technique for setting up my weaves, because it lets me approach the design more directly and my whole weave builds off the angles and waves (depending on what I’m making). If you’ve added angles and waves to your weaves in a different way, I’d love to hear about it.
Happy Weaving!
Kate
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