The braid was referred to as “spanish” in the original 17th C. (English) manuscripts. Spanish braids were a mysterious class of braids of 5 or more loops that Noémi Speiser had trouble decoding from the original directions—here’s an example:

“Do the spanish breadth, but without taking the private stitch.”

The so-called ‘directions’ in all the 17th C. loop braiding manuscripts assumed a lot of previous knowledge on the part of the reader!

The 14-loop letter-braid of my two previous posts is a doubled (two-braider) version of this 7-loop spanish braid. Apparently, this 7-loop braid was never described on its own in the old manuscripts, only as part of this doubled version, in the directions for making a particular type of letterbraid. (Two braiders cooperating—each braiding a 7-loop spanish braid, and trading their nearest index-finger loops after each cycle in order to connect their work into one braid).

I made a few of the 14-loop letterbraids using a solo-braider workaround method, and following Joy Boutrup’s charts for the letter-shapes. Then I got curious about how this braid would look without the letters.

I decided to start with the component 7-loop braid. (The only difference was that I turned all the loop transfers—since I wanted a solidly rectangular braid-shape rather than the two-divided-layers of the letterbraid version.) Seven loops, bicolor, in just two colors. You don’t have to use bicolor loops to make this braid, btw, I was just curious to see what patterns they would make. First I made a few pattern samplers of the 7-loop braid, then I made a sampler of some of those patterns doubled into a 14-loop braid.

A spanish braid requires four loop-transfers with each braiding cycle—twice as many as a square braid. Even though these transfers are performed by a single braider, this is very similar to the 2-braider, doubled square braids of 10 loops in the old braiding manuscripts, the ones called “purse-string with the wave” or “with crowns”, etc. Those also have four loop transfers per braiding cycle… The old documents didn’t have a general term for these braids, only for some of their color patterns. I’ve been calling them double braids, based on Masako Kinoshita’s term “double-square braid” for a similar kute-uchi braid. A double (or Spanish) braid is in fact two conjoined square braids* **.

You can see two of the traditional 10-loop double braid color patterns in my two 7-loop samplers (see above). The sections with lengthwise bands of color are like the “Edge” pattern, and there’s a slightly lopsided “Crowns” pattern – lopsided because here I’m using an odd number of loops (8 or 10 loops would give a symmetrical pattern).

The only thing I varied was the dark/light arrangement of loops at the beginning of each pattern section, the braiding method is the same throughout all the patterns.

I liked the 7-loop braid variations in themselves, but it was really fun to see how they came out when doubled into a 14-loop braid.  Whole new patterns emerged. I’m starting to think about making a long, less crowded sampler in heavier yarn for an instrument strap that a friend has been requesting. There are still more patterns to try….

This braid is a two-layer structure, and because of the bicolor loops, the colors are reversed on the back of the braid. (The only reason you see a thin line of white on the edges of the braid in the lower photo is that the back side of the braid is very slightly narrower than the front – so that apparent line of white is actually a glimpse of the wider front layer of the braid peeking around the edges.)

Even in a square braid there’s always a slight widening of either the top or bottom layer of the braid depending on which direction you turn your loops – turning them from above makes the back wider, turning them from below makes the top wider (see pics above).  It gives this braid a  tendency to curve a little. I think that’s also why the weave looks different on the two sides.  I should probably try making some samples with half of the loop-transfers in each cycle turned from above and half from below. [see footnote in purple below] This is not a very appealing idea… I’d much rather try some more color patterns!  I also want to try doubling some of these same patterns, but off-center so they don’t have mirror-image symmetry.

Notes:

*A square braid doesn’t have to be of 5 or 7 loops – the basic interlaced structure of a square braid can be made with as few as 3 or 4 loops. I now have tutorials here on this blog for making them with up to 11 loops. I’ve made them with even more loops than that but they’re a bit overgrown and messy the more loops you add. At 11 loops, each loop is being pulled through 5 other loops in each passage. That’s a lot of strands for one loop to go through – the “through” loops start to bunch up in a more hodgepodge manner in the braid instead of lying neatly side-by-side. By that point it might be better to switch to a neater and more impressive Spanish or double braid of the same number of loops. They have more loop transfers (more moves) in each row of braiding, so the taken loop goes through fewer loops in each loop transfer. This gives a more intricate ‘weave’ and a neater appearance to the braid.

**Square braids can be made with an odd or even number of loops. In cross-section none of them are truly ‘square’, since one surface is unavoidably a tad wider than its parallel surface on the other side. This is especially noticeable in a 3-loop square braid, which seems vaguely triangular rather than a square in cross-section – not because the three loops equal the three sides of a triangle, but because at that small a size, one of the two unequal parallel surfaces is reduced down to almost nothing, more of a rounded point than a ‘surface’.

***To make a double braid the traditional way, two side-by-side cooperating braiders share one loop bundle. Each performs the braiding moves of a square braid, then after each row of braiding they exchange their neighboring index loops (one through the other) to connect the two halves of the larger braid. It comes out with a rectangular shape – flat across but two layers thick. Like two connected square braids. A Spanish braid as well is essentially two connected square braids, so a doubled Spanish braid – like the Letterbraids, and my 14-loop braid above – is like four connected small square braids.

–ingridcc
1/11/2011

2-14-12 New info: it turns out that indeed a Spanish or double braid will be completely straight in cross-section if all the loop transfers on the left side are turned clockwise and all the ones on the right are turned counterclockwise. Or vice versa. The two wide surfaces of the braid are exactly the same in width. Some of the individual ridges (lengthwise columns of thread slants up and down the braid) are still of different widths, but on each side they add up to the same overall width. Thanks to Gary in the Canary Islands for pushing me to confirm this!

This means a completely even mix of turns from above and turns from below on both sides of the braid. On the left half of the braid, all the loops that are being pulled toward the right will get a turn from above, while all the loops that are being transferred toward the left will get the equivalent of a turn from below. In both of these cases the resulting turn is actually in a clockwise rotational direction, as seen from the braider’s point of view. The opposite will hold for the right half of the braid. This principle holds even for the component 7-loop braid–in fact so far I’ve only tried this on the 7-loop braid, haven’t actually warped up and made my 14-loop trials yet. [Yes, same result with the doubled braid.]  But the results are very conclusive with the little 7-loop braids, they are so straight, with such neat, squared-off edges when the turns are done this way… And I had already found this to be the case with my “Rainbow Girl” braids, which have even more loop transfers per cycle than the 14-loop doubled spanish braid.

I don’t know why I was so reluctant to try this out initially! It’s very simple to do, no big deal, and makes a big improvement in the appearance of what are already very attractive braids.

Here’s how this would be done for two braiders cooperating – it likely wasn’t ever done historically as it’s not very intuitive, but it has nice results:

Both braiders would turn loops from ABOVE on all the outer hand’s loop transfers, but turn from BELOW on the inner hand’s loop transfers.
(Or vice-versa.)

Left braider’s left hand is outer, right braider’s right hand is outer.

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Notes

Updates — My next post “Why Spanish?”  has instructions, now including a video tutorial,  for the 7-loop Spanish braid. It’s just for the braiding moves—you would still need Boutrup’s letterbraid monograph, and a braiding partner, to make the letter-shapes. (There’s a chart for each letter that shows when to turn which loops).  I made the tutorial so this great 7-loop braid could be more widely known, and also to help readers with the instructions in the Boutrup/ Speiser monograph. The instructions assume a familiarity both with loop braiding, and with interpreting written instructions for loop braids. That’s because the monograph was written as a supplement to Speiser’s OEPBforLB (see below) which includes detailed loop braiding instructions.

European Loop Braiding: Investigations and Results–Part II Instructions for Letter Braids in 17th Century Manuscripts by Noémi Speiser and Joy Boutrup
[Parts I and II are separate publications—II is the one on letter braids.  Available from BraidersHand. They are supplements to OEPBforLB, with new research and discoveries] —NOTE: Vol.s III and IV are now out, but I haven’t read them yet—will be buying them in Aug at Braids 2012.

Noémi Speiser’s Old English Pattern Books for Loop Braiding, 2000 —link to my review of this book, as well as her Manual of Braiding.

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posted Jan 11, 2011
last updated Feb 1, 2024

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