More Inkle Weaving

 I've done a little bit of pickup pattern weaving on the Inkle Loom, but using Monk's Belt threading.  I found it pretty straightforward and fairly easy.  It was a tad tedious though, because it was much slower than regular inkle weaving.  It made a lovely pattern though.  I'd never tried Baltic  (also called Norwegian and I've seen it as Lithuanian) weaving.  It's also a block weave, although a bit different set up.   I'd found written instructions somewhat confusing and unclear.  I ended up watching a few videos, some of which were of limited help, one which seems like it was just wrong, and then a couple were clear in both instructions and in photography.   It was  a light bulb moment.  

 I dressed up the loom in a simple pick up pattern.  After a few mistakes and some fiddling, I ended up just weaving a simple part of the pattern to get my hands understanding what they had to do.  Then poof, it was good.  That being said, I have learned to unweave quite a lot, because if you miss a pickup row, everything goes to pot.  It is slower than just plain weave, but some of the results are well worth the efforts.

This is the simple part of the pattern.  It practically weaves itself for the centre part of the pattern.  You can see my fiddling about to see how the threads come up and down at the very bottom of the photo.  

 The main thing is that in this "pick up" weaving, you both pick up and drop the pattern threads.   The background threads remain the same, to be the actually weaving and stabilising aspect of the bands.  As the pattern colours get picked up, they show on top of the background.   When you drop them, it does leave a gap, that is filled in by the weft thread.   It makes a sort of basket weave or half basket weave and when using the same weft colour as the background, you can't see it at all. 

  You can't beat too hard or parts of the pattern will be squished and uneven.   

The pattern threads should be thicker than the background threads.  In this example, I used 4/8 cotton.  I used a single strand of blue for the background and weft and a double strands of natural for the pattern threads.   

This is the complete pattern.  The nice thing about Baltic pickup is that the back of the tape is just as pretty as the front.