January 22, 2012 Hexipuff Update and a Free Inkle Pattern!

I’ve been avoiding my hexipuffs lately after puffing myself out with 3-9 per day for the first couple weeks of the year. Today, I did manage to finish the second yellow tonal puff though so I can start winding the remaining yellow tonal into minis for sale and trade! For today’s puff photo, I decided to let the two yellow tonal puffs try to help my US flag puff use my inkle loom.

This new loom is a work in progress. Guy pal and I built it on Saturday, and I warped it and started weaving that night while babysitting for some wonderful sleeping kids. The loom needs some changes to be really sturdy and functional. Right now, it has some EZ-grip clamps holding it together! The body is made entirely of maple with half lap joints. The pegs are the problem. They don’t stay in well enough and the cheap hardwood dowels from Home Depot just aren’t very good. I went through the whole bin at the store to get the least warped ones, but they still had a bit of curl and they’re splitty. I standed them by hand with 400 grit Abranet, but I’m still not happy. The current plants to upgrade the loom include purchasing some walnut dowels at Woodcraft, and instead of having the dowels screw into one side, we will glue them through the side supports. Thank goodness guy pal has a set of Forstner bits to do just that. My drill bit set only goes up to a half inch. Our goal is to have one side of the inkle loom be removable for ease of warping, but if it has to have both sides be permanently attached for peg strength, so be it. I just want to weave!

This is my first ever inkle project. I’m making some US flag bookmarks. I read up on different designs and the basics of inkle weaving on various websites and then came up with this design myself based on a dog collar I saw.

It’s actually a very, very easy design to weave. I’m doing it here in Red Heart Super Saver yarn which I DO NOT recommend using for inkle weaving. I had it on hand, and it was easy to grab on my way to my babysitting gig. Now I know better! Anyhow, the beauty of the pattern here is that it is all done in the warp. You don’t have to do any picking at all! Warping of course takes a while, but it does with any design with color changes. If you’ve got the patience for color changes in your warping, it makes a fantastic beginners pattern because the back and forth weaving is easy while the finished project looks advanced.

Here’s the warping pattern I came up with for you to try out if you’d like. Just don’t use Red Heart Super Saver. Cotton works much better because it glides easier when you’re making your sheds. The finished project will also have better definition of the design because the cotton isn’t so fuzzy as the cheap acrylic I’ve used here.

Bold strands should have a heddle. You will need a total of 19 heddles in this project. Use gold yarn on your shuttle as the weft shows along the edges of the project and the edges are gold. This way, it all blends together perfectly making your weft invisible!

G = Gold

R = Red

W = White

B = Blue

G G R R W W R R W W R R W W R R B B W B B W B B W B B W B B W B B W B B G G

Good luck with your patriotic weaving!

Tags: design, flag, free, hexipuff, inkle, knit, knitting, maple, pattern, puff, US, USA, weave, weaving, woven, yarn

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