Loop braiding is a way to make beautiful cords and bands, using only your hands and some yarn or string. It tends to be much faster than knotting or fingerweaving. It has a long, worldwide history, going back thousands of years, some of which has been preserved in manuscripts from medieval and later periods, in both England and Japan.
Loop braiding is fun, easy to learn, and is a great addition to any craftperson’s bag of tricks. Check out my list of tutorials (tab at top of screen) and come back for more, I add to the list frequently. Please comment under any of the posts! I’d love to hear about your textile/ crafts interests, talk braids, or just say hi.
You can read more about about loop braiding, and about me, under my “about” tabs in the top menu. The other tabs lead to my home page, tutorials, color-pattern instructions, and loop braiding history. My sidebar has more information, including a list of links to other braiding websites, and a list of links to various other textile sites. If you’re curious about the braids in my header photo, there is info about each of them in the comment field below.
Thanks for visiting Loop Braiding!
–Ingrid
12/27/2010
Loop Braiding 
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Thanks for the quick response, Ingrid! Do you have references for #15 &/or #16? I have most of the books…
#15, what I lazily call the Spiral Braid is on p. 63 of Speiser’s Old English Pattern Books for Loop Braiding (IIC 1 “A lace bend of 8 bows, one fellow, 2 colors”).
[edit: I now have a series of videos on how to make 4- to 10-loop Spiral Braids! Find them in the list of video links at the bottom of my tutorial page.]
#16–A 7-loop square braid is just like the 5-loop square/or round braid, but with 2 more loops.
[I now have a video-tutorial for the 7-loop square braid.]
Edited on Feb 21, 2024 to remove the long description of all the braids in my banner photo, and substitute this link to my info page about them
(re a request from Carol for a description of the braids in the header photo at the top of the blog)
My banner photo at the top of this site is just a decorative header, not an index to my tutorials. It’s cropped from a photo of some random braids of mine back when I started this site in 2010. Some of them are braids I don’t make anymore, but was very into back then – all the plain-weave ones for example (see my page in the link above). My tutorials cover more braids than shown in the header photo, and include braids #10, 14, 15, 16 (counting from the left). I haven’t made tutorials for the other braids in the header photo, but there are links in my page about them to sources for some of them. Others I came up with on my own, though anyone could do the same, those are mostly just plain weave in various forms. The round versions were done using well-known methods from other braids to change a flat braid into a tubular one.
Wow, Ingrid, the letterbraid is gorgeous! It’s perfect for the theme. Do they send it back to you or is it gone forever?
Anja
Thanks! No, they’ll send it back next year. The traveling exhibition changes every year. That’s assuming it doesn’t arrive too late for their deadline, I probably should have sent it off right away without taking the time to wash it.