The V-fell fingerloop braiding method that I teach on this blog is very useful for braiding simple 2-transfer braids (“square”-type braids) of more than 7 loops, because it’s possible to use all 10 fingers to hold loops. This isn’t possible with the other two common methods for braiding simple square and flat braids, because with those methods, the thumbs are on the wrong side of the active finger. Using all ten fingers, along with the V-fell loop braiding method (a.k.a “Method 2”) has been done in Finland, and in China, as well as by the person who first taught me loop braiding here in California.

Another advantage of V-fell braiding is that the active braiding finger is on a different hand than the loops it reaches through. This makes it much easier to aim and reach through multiple loops in one pass, especially if 2 or 3 loops are stacked on a finger.*

This 9-loop tutorial shows how to hold and shift loops on the thumbs. (see note** re adding more loops than you are used to braiding with!) Learn 5-loop and 7-loop braids first, though – that will get you and your fingers ready for 9-loop braids.

This 11-loop tutorial shows how to braid through multiple loops on the little finger.

Those 2 techniques are the basis for most of my “too-many-loops” methods for making fingerloop braids of up to 18 or 20 loops.

Note: There are at least two other ways to braid with “too many loops”:
Braiding as a team with other loop braiders: photo of 3 braiders co-operating with 15 loops. See also my team loop braiding post.
Hand-held loop braiding:
as in Kute uchi (Japanese loop braiding), and Andean loop braiding (in Andean link, see photo of one person braiding with over 50 loops near the bottom of the page.)

My solo-braider nine- and eleven-loop square braids can become very easy and automatic to braid. They allow longer pattern repeats and more colors in square and flat twill braid patterns.  What I find even more interesting are the complex and varied unorthodox braids that they make possible. 13 to 17-loop two-transfer braids (“square”-type braids) are possible, too, though the 15 and 17 loop ones are slower to make. I only make them as Unorthodox braids, or as one-layer plain-weave braids. As square braids, they aren’t much different in appearance from square braids of fewer loops, so to me they don’t usually seem worth the extra work. But unorthodox and plain-weave braids of many loops can be very different in appearance from braids of fewer loops, which gives more of an incentive for making them.

Double braids:
Once you’re used to using thumbs, it also becomes possible to make what I call double braids of 9 to 18 loops. These have four loop transfers, twice as many as a square braid. These also become very automatic to braid, even the 18-loop version.

Note: It isn’t simply the number of loops that makes one braid harder or easier than another, it’s more about the particular moves that will be done with those loops. For example, my 18-loop double braid method is faster than my 15-loop square braid method, because the loop-shifting moves are simpler.

Even with braids of only one loop per finger, some types are intrinsically slower to make than others. Twined loop braids for example – the ones that tend to be called Bends or Chevrons (and the ‘lace endented of viii loops) in the old loop braiding manuscripts. Those braids require that each loop be twisted/ turned on each finger before the actual braiding move (drawing a loop through all the twisted loops) occurs. This makes each braiding cycle take much longer than the equivalent cycle for a twill braid (square, double, spanish, etc braids).

I hold one loop on each finger – including thumbs – for the classic 10-loop double braid. For double braids of more than 10 loops, I hold any extra loops on the outer fingers (little fingers and thumbs). This might sound strange since those are the shortest fingers! But it makes the loop-shifting moves much easier. The video in this post demos how I hold and shift loops when making a 12-loop double braid (two loops on both little fingers).

The traditional method for making double braids requires 2 people braiding together on one braid. It’s much easier than any solo-braider workaround—can be learned immediately after learning a 5-loop square braid. Each braider does the same left and right moves of (typically) a regular square braid, and then they do a swapping move, in which they exchange their neighboring index-finger loops. That connects the two braids into one. ***

My solo-braider method entails holding all the loops of the left braider on the fingers of my left hand, and all the loops of the right braider on the fingers of my right hand. I do the two ‘left braider’ moves first, then the two ‘right braider’ moves, then an exchange move to link the left and right braids together. So, unlike a square braid, there are two loop transfers with the left loops—in opposite directions, and two transfers with the right loops. (Very similar to the traditional “spanish braids”!)

“Quadruple” / Double-double braids?
The 17th C. so-called letter braids are like doubled “double braids”. When I braid one as a solo-braider, four loop transfers occur on each hand’s loops — eight altogether. Square braids, double braids, ‘spanish’ braids, and letter braids are all two-layer twill or plainweave (or a combo of twill and plain weave). Each loop transfer builds onto one of the lengthwise “ridges” (twill or plain-weave columns) along the upper surface, and onto a mirror-image column along the lower surface of the braid.

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Notes:

I have occasionally been asked for the names of my braiding methods, I guess on the basis of the so-called A-fell, V-fell and Slentre methods. I guess you could call them “thumb methods” since I use my thumbs in making any braid of more than eight or nine loops. I figured out how to use thumbs on my own, but others have done it before me–it has been done in Finland, China, and probably elsewhere, as well as by the braider who first taught me a five-loop square braid here in the U.S.

There are many traditional loop braiding methods besides the A-fell, V-fell, and Slentre methods, btw, and most of them don’t have names other than the name of the braids they make…which can often be made by more than one method, in fact. (twined braids like many of the medieval “bends” and chevrons, the “hollow lace of 7” braids, spanish braids, “loop exchange braids” like the Spiral braids and Lace Maskell, etc)

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*With the more widely known A-fell braiding method, the index finger reaches through the loops of its own hand to perform the braiding moves. This works fine for reaching through only 3 loops (one each on middle, ring, little fingers). More than that becomes problematic.

It’s especially problematic when the index finger starts out holding one of the loops that it really should be reaching through—as in the classic A-fell method for the 8-loop Lace Dawns/ Daunce. See my post on Laces Dawns and Piol for a more efficient, V-fell method for making these braids.

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**It’s not uncommon for loop braiders who have already become very proficient at loop-braiding with five, or with seven loops to feel (initially) more slowed-down by adding two more loops than braiders who have learned more recently.

I don’t think it actually takes experienced braiders any longer to learn the new step–probably the opposite in fact—but they often do seem to feel more stymied by it to begin with. I think it’s because they are so used to braiding fast and automatically. When they add two more loops, and suddenly find that they can’t braid automatically, they feel as if they have banged into a brick wall. They often decide that there is an insurmountable physical problem: “See?!! My little finger is too short!”— or “My ring finger is physically incapable of lifting high enough”, or “My thumb bends the wrong way”, etc. Yet the initial difficulty usually passes with a little practice. Often it turns out that there is a slightly different way to accomplish the move than they first thought when they hit the brick wall – tip the hand back to help the ring finger get out of its old loop, etc. Then gradually the new moves become as automatic as the old ones were.

But that’s why I suggest, if you enjoy loop braiding, that you go ahead and try a 7 loop braid fairly soon after you learn to braid with 5 loops, and try a 9-loop braid after a few successful 7-loop ones. (This is what I did, myself—I was still a slow and deliberate braider when I moved on to 7 and 9-loop braids.)

11-loop braids would be better to learn after your fingers have become very automatic at braiding with 9 loops. With 11 loops there is no new finger to train. Rather, all the fingers need to have smooth, automatic control over their loops, so you can focus on the new step in the loop shifting, and on carrying two loops on the little finger.

Double braids are a good next-step after 9-loop square braids. Start with 6 loops and add loops up to the full 10-loop version. Like a 9-loop braid, it can be made with simple and efficient loop transfers and loop-shifting moves if the thumb is used along with the other fingers.

When I braid double braids that have more than ten loops, I usually carry extra loops on the little fingers first, as I show in my 11-loop square braid tutorial, and in the 13-loop tutorial (in the same link), then on the thumbs (using similar braiding moves).

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***The combined braid has a total of four loop transfers per braiding cycle, and can have either a W- or an AA-shaped fell.