Other terms for loop braiding are:
Fingerloop braiding, finger loop braiding, finger-held loop-manipulation braiding, Kute-uchi, Peruvian (or Andean) hand-held loop braiding.
Fingerloop braiding is done with loops held on separate fingers, hand-held loop braiding is done with loops held over the whole hand, lined up in order.
Almost all the posts on my site are actually about loop braiding, even the ones I haven’t placed in this category!
Here’s a video that shows how I make twelve-loop double braids. If you are new to my site, please don’t be put off from loop braiding because this video makes it look too complicated! – I have many tutorials for easy and beautiful loop braids, see my Tutorials index.
In the first part of the video I show some braids in my twelve-loop double braid sample book…
Free, local (east sfbay area) loop braiding get-togethers, for learning and practicing…
I’ll be teaching a Loop Braiding workshop at CNCH this spring. For those of you in California, that’s the Conference of Northern California Handweavers. CNCH isn’t only for weavers—aside from weaving classes there are always great workshops in a wide range of other topics — dyeing, braiding, basketry, spinning, knitting…and a Market Hall with venders,…
New: Rodrick Owen will be teaching a two-day class on Peruvian flat braids at Braids 2016!
Buried textiles rarely survive even a few hundred years.
But in sites in and around what is now Peru, treasure troves of amazing textiles have been found that are thousands of years old—including beautiful and intricate loop braids!
Here are some fun color patterns for the square braids I teach in my 5-loop, 7-loop, and 9-loop Braids tutorials (Click the Tutorials tab above for links to all my tutorials)
This video-based tutorial teaches several color-pattern variations of a 7-loop flat braid with an extra move in some of the loop transfers. It’s a way to link loops of different colors, to force them to stay within one section of the braid, instead of migrating across the whole braid. I taught this earlier for flat double braids–this is the same technique, but here I’m teaching it with the flat variation of a 7-loop square braid.
Also tips on how to make yet another double braid shape than the flat, hollow and rectangular ones of my double braid tutorials—the side-slit double braid.
Set-up instructions for 11 color patterns for flat double braids, plus 1 solid double braid color pattern, 1 hollow, and 2 side-slit rectangle color patterns.
Thanks Chris, Caroline, Dan, Terry, Traci, Colleen, Faustine for sending me your braid photos!
Just an announcement: my first double braid tutorial now includes the set-up instructions for all the braids in photos! These are solid rectangle double braid color patterns for 10-loop braids, as well as a few 6 and 8-loop color patterns. In my first Double Braid Tutorial, scroll down to Color planning and loop set-up (below…
Update on my earlier tutorial on the super-easy, fun, and kid-friendly 3-loop braid: The free pdf download now works!!! I finally figured out how to insert a direct link so you can download the 3-loop pdf tutorial straight from this blog instead of from Scribd (copyright restrictions still apply, see end of document). For a…
Tips on braiding as a team – the traditional way to make what I call “double braids” — ten-loop braids that are twice as big and complex as a square braid. Yet all you and your partner need to know first is how to make a 5-loop square braid! Video and photos.
This is a ‘what I’ve been braiding lately’ post. It’s a letterbraid variation that I came up with last summer on a camping trip—an eighteen-loop version of the 17th Century letterbraid of fourteen loops. (Click on photos for more detail)…
Requests from readers, my answers and updates, also a note on European loop braiding history.
Thank you everybody who clicked in on my sidebar poll! There’s been a lot more response than I expected…
A few links to new info …and a poll! Short and easy—scroll down my sidebar to see it →. I’m trying to get an idea for which way this blog should be heading. [update – Thanks everybody who filled in the poll! It gave me more incentive and a lot of ideas. Poll results here.]…
I wasn’t trying to make a Year of the Snake fingerloop braid when I made the first of these curvy braids last month, shortly after Chinese New Year…
Hollow/ tubular ‘double braid’ – my solo method, plus openwork, color tricks, and jewelry ideas. Several color patterns taught for 6- to 10-loop hollow braids.
These are what I’ve been working on recently while I’ve been away from my computer— warp-faced, plain weave finger loop braids that I’ve been making with a new (to me) method…
My second tutorial on “double braids”! Here I show you how to braid a flat, ribbonlike double braid, twice as wide as the rectangular braid of my earlier tutorial, but made almost the same way. The tall braid photo located somewhere in my right sidebar is of a 10-loop flat double braid, made with color-linking – a color-manipulation trick that I demo in this tutorial.
The braids in this photo are like square braids, but twice as wide! They are nice and substantial, not ribbonlike, and can have very different designs on the upper and lower surfaces if you use any bicolor loops.
I call these braids “rectangular double braids” because the traditional way to make them required two people to braid square braids side-by-side and joined together (the braids, not the braiders!). Here I teach my workaround method for one person to braid a double braid without a helper.
The class I taught at Braids 2012 was two days on how to make double braids as a solo fingerloop braider. I also learned a lot from my students, including that one of them had learned how to braid 9-loop braids using thumbs as well as fingers in China during the mid 1900’s! This is totally new information for the history of loop braiding!
