Sunday, September 6, 2009

Weaving Mats

Materials Required :
  1. Wool (Different shades)
  2. Frame
  3. Big Needle
  4. Ordinary material of any shade
  5. Wool brush
Frames can be round, hexagon or square. You can make beautiful mats by weaving the wool on the square and hexagon frames. With the round frame you can make flower patterns and join them to make a shawl or table cloth according to your choice.
Procedure for round shaped frame : 
Click on the pictures to see an enlarged and clear version.
  1. Hold the frame and the end of the wool below with your hand as shown in the figure on the right. Take one strand of the wool up from below through the inside opening of the frame.
  2.  Wind it through the opposite nails of the outer circle in the shape of number eight (8) thrice.
  3. After finishing the three winds, take the wool to the next opposite pair of nails in the outer circle. Repeat the process till all the nails in the outer circle are completed. The end of the wool should be brought down and tied. 
  4. Take a contrast colour wool and follow the same procedure to weave the inner circle.  
  5. Tie all the ends of wool below, together .
  6. Insert a strand of wool through the needle. Pass the needle alternatively through the gap between the windings bring it back through the middle gap of the two windings.  Repeat the stitch till all the windings are fastened. Put a knot in the end. This fastens the flower pattern in place. 
  7. Carefully remove the windings from the frame. Now one flower is ready. You can make more flowers and join them to make a table cloth or shawl according to your choice.

Procedure for Hexagon / Square shaped Frame:
Click on the pictures to see an enlarged and clear version.
  1. For a hexagon shaped frame, the number of nails should be odd numbers. Here the frame used has 9 nails on all sides. 
  2. Take the wool, put one knot at a corner with the stepa.gif (153873 bytes) wool and immediately take it to the second nail as in figure.
  3.  Then wind the wool thrice through the opposite nails tightly (the windings can be three or six or more according to your choice). After finishing the three winds, continue with the next opposite nails. Repeat this process until the whole frame is completed.
  4. Take any contrast shade wool and repeat the above procedure once more.
  5. Take another shade and repeat the same. Altogether at least three shades of wool should be wound on the frame.
  6. Insert a thread in a needle to tighten all joints, of windings of the three shades of wool.  Tighten all the joints continuously without putting knots after each joint. After tying, you will get a star shape in each joints as shown in figure.step1a.gif (251347 bytes)
  7. Without cutting the base colour (first shade winding), cut all the other layers around the joints. After cutting you will get a shape of a flower.
  8. Take the wool brush and brush the flowers with it to make the mat bushy.
  9.  Remove the mat carefully from the frame by cutting the base shade wool, along the nails around the frame. 
  10. You can fix the mat on any ordinary shade of material.
 
My Patterns

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