Pin loom a cotton purse for spring

Weaving with cotton on a pin loom proves a little more challenging than wool or acrylic because the cotton has less give. But you can get the give back by adding a pattern-- which means that you will also be skipping up 30% of the weaving. It goes faster, its just as easy as weaving with wool and you get lovely patterns! Check out two ideas for small purses below and a couple of my favorite pin loom weaving patterns.

The Envelope Purse is made with four squares plus a couple 2 x 2" squares for the flower and attached leaf. I used an Eight Rib Pattern for the top and bottom squares. The Eight Rib Pattern is shown in my first book, Pin Loom Weaving.  The little flower and leaf are attached to the front of the purse. Stitch a hair band to the flap of the "envelope" and loop it around the flower to keep the purse closed. For the handle take two ends of your preferred color of yarn and make a chain. Stitch the ends of the chain to the insides of the purse.

 The Zipper Purse was made with eight squares, a block of four each for the front and back. I used a diamond pattern on each square which turned into a lovely "X's & O's" pattern.

I wanted a little bit of dimension to the purse and decided to use a zipper (almost) all the way around. To install the zipper, add a running stitch to the sides- do it more evenly than is shown in the illustration. This makes it very simple to stitch the sides of the bag to the zipper.

This bag is woven with two shades of yarn. I wound a heavier green yarn on to my loom and wove through with a lighter, turquoise yarn.

This is the pattern woven in the green bag. You may have another pattern that you prefer.

Diamond In The Rough pin loom pattern
 1R Weave plain
 2R U3, O1, U3, O1, U3, O1, U3, O1, U3, O1, U3, O1, U3.
 3R W2, U3, O1, U3, O1, U3, W5, U3, O1, U3, O1, U3, W2.
 4R U3, O1, U3, O1, U3, W9, U3, O1, U3, O1, U3.
 5R W2, U3, O1, U3, W13, U3, O1, U3, W2.
 6R U3, O1, U3, W17, U3, O1, U3.
 7R W2, U3, W21, U2, W2.
 8R Weave plain.
 9R Weave plain.
10R Same as row 7.
11R Same as row 6.
12R Same as row 5.
13R Same as row 4.
14R Same as row 3.
15R Same as row 2.
16R Weave plain. 

Just for a little more interest, add one square in windowpane lace pattern to the outside of the bag.  I love using the Windowpane lace pattern because it is so pretty and yet so simple!

Windowpane Lace pin loom pattern
Row 1: plain weave
Row 2: U3 (under 3 threads); O1 (over one thread); repeat from * across the row, finishing with U3.
Alternate Rows 1 and 2, through Row 14.
Row 15: plain weave
Row 16: plain weave

I turned the the edge of the windowpane lace square down and stitched it in order to make a nice edge to the pocket. This pocket is not very secure unless you add a button or velcro but I added one 2 x 2" flower on a long stem. The purse might look very cute with a bunch of posies blooming from the pocket.

The bag is finished off with a crocheted handle that attaches on each end to the zipper. To make the handle- 1) decide how long you want your handle to be and chain that length. 2) Single crochet down the chain. 3) Single crochet up the other side of the chain. 4) You now have a crocheted band that has a "ditch" in the center. Take a contrasting yarn color and slip stitch up the length of the band. Attach one end of the band to the bag and stitch the other end of the band to the zipper pull and you're done!

Pin Loom Backpack by Linda Wolf

Its been forever since I have posted and that is not because there aren't wonderful things happening in the pin loom world. There is so much happening that its hard to stop and take a breath (and post something). 

Case in point, this backpack was made by Linda Wolf of Oregon. She created it in parallel with my book, Pin Loom Weaving To Go, which just shows that great minds think... about backpacks, I guess. 

Linda allowed me to share her creation, which was shown at the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. Here is what she had to say about it:

This little project backpack began life as a rug. When I was a weaving student in 77-78, we were given the assignment to dye the yarns for our weaving project. I dyed commercially spun wool yarn with commercial dyes (manufacturer of dye and yarn long forgotten) and made a rug which I used for many years. 

In the long run the warp chosen was not a good choice and gradually looked pretty ragged. I really didn't want to just toss the rug or give it to the dog so I pulled it apart. Some of the yarn was very tender so to maximize the yarn, I used my pin looms to create the pieces, sewed them together, then crocheted the large pieces together to form the backpack. I found the jingle shell on the beach which seemed like the perfect closure. I twisted a rope of the yarn for the straps using, "The Incredible Rope Machine".

The judges were particularly impressed with the nice color placement of squares, the "upcycle" aspect of the project and the woven patterns in chosen squares, as was I.

I am blown away by someone actually taking the time to pull apart the rug in order to make these wonderful squares. If it had been my rug, it would still be sitting under several bags of other projects where I would point it out to people and explain how I was going to take it apart and turn it in to something wonderful... the difference being that Joyce actually did it and entered it in a competition.

One more item from the Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival 

This is a snapshot of my book vendor display with an extra element, Sara Cross's hippo frolicking with my pin loom hippo. Don't they look happy together? Sara pointed out that hippos do have tails, as is demonstrated in this illustration.  (Due to an error on my part, Sara is only now getting credit for her amazing hippo, hopefully the first of many artful pin loom animals. MS)

Weave a summer camera bag

Cameras have always been an important part of summer activities and this camera bag captures that sense of summer adventures while being an easy to weave accessory. Phones have taken over all the duties of picture taking, but this bag reclaims the spirit of the camera.

This pin loom woven camera bag is constructed from 4" x 4" squares. The brown side and bottom panels have been turned in to make a slimmer side profile. On the inside there is plastic needlework screen stitched to the side and bottom squares to give it a more rigid frame. I wanted a very easy and carefree finish for the inside, so the interior is finished with bright pink duct tape. Its waterproof, makes it easy to see into the bag and adds some stiffening to the sides.

The turquoise body of the camera bag was joined by using a single crochet around each square, then whip stitching them together. The brown sides were joined using a double overcast stitch (you can find more information on the joins in Pin Loom Essentials) turned in around the plastic screen and stitched to the turquoise front and back with a whip stitch. You can see that there is a crocheted tab in the back. The black button on the tab covers the top section of a purse magnet. The little red button on the top of the purse is just a little red button that appears to have been created specifically to look like an old camera shutter button.

I wanted the purse strap to look like an old-fashioned leather camera strap. It is a 32" crochet chain with one line of half double crochet. The ends have a long chained loop to allow them to loop easily over the brass buttons on each side.

This is the camera before final assembly. I was in the process of sewing on the purse magnet closure when I took the picture. The yellow stitching was to help me determine where the top should fold down the back.

I am hoping to someday put together a whole collection of funky, pin loom woven faux camera bags. These are other cameras that I would like to recreate as woven bags.  After all, can the world have too many fun handbags?  I think not.

Ellie's First Purse

Happy New Year! Its been a busy season here with the introduction of pin loom classes. After years of weaving on my own, it has been enormous fun to play with pin looms with other people. Pin looms have brought me a lot of joy and its twice the fun to see others enjoy it too.

I am learning a lot from my students. I have had the opportunity to work with a number of moms and daughters and have come to realize that kids can take to pin looms as quick or quicker than adults. Here's the proof.

Ellie T., age 11, was in my class a couple months ago. Here is her first purse.

The purse was made with 6) 4"x 4" pin loom squares (love the colors) with a braided string handle looped on each side of the purse. Of course the shining feature is the jean pocket-- which works beautifully to contrast with the woven fabric of the purse. 

I should mention that we did not cover purses in  the pin loom class. While I hope that my book, Pin Loom Weaving, was helpful to her, this is Ellie's own design.

I will leave it to each of us to reflect on our capacity as artist or craftsman at the age of 11. I know that I did not make anything half as well thought out or well done until I was considerably older than 11, maybe more like 40.

Ellie, thank you so much for sharing your work with us.

Weaving with weird stuff

I love the idea that almost anything is weavable on a pin loom. Here are two of my most recent experiments.

We're coming up on the holidays and I have been looking at the multitude of spun and woven fibers intended for scarves with the intention of making some pretty little bags for the holidays. I think they would be great as part of a gift or as the basis for a holiday purse.

I found this particular fiber in a "Please get this out of our store" bin. It is flat and ribbon-like with a generous amount of gold colored fiber woven through.

Here are the specifics:
Red Heart Boutique Sashay Metallic
Fiber Content:     66% Acrylic, 23% Polyester, 11% Metallic
Skein Weight:     3.5 oz (100 g)
Yardage:     30 yd (27 m)

So the question becomes, can you weave with it on a pin loom?  The sample you see to the left was woven with two layers of the gold fiber and two layers of a wool sock weight yarn. I found that it was best to roll the fiber against my leg just before laying each 4" piece between the pins in order to turn it into a rounder package. I don't think it makes any difference to the outcome, but that made it easier to wind on.

I always wind on the difficult fiber first and weave through with something easy to handle.  As you can see this produces a wider shiny stripe of gold and with a smaller stripe of white. I think that it would be possible, but not easy, to wind on three layers of gold and then just weave through with the lighter wool yarn.  I think it would be possible to wind and weave all four layers in the gold fiber but the effort, for me, would not be worth the tremendous amount of difficulty.

Second strange fiber-

As I may previously mentioned, I am fond of shopping at thrift shops because the items are so interesting.  They represent a cross section of American passions over the past thirty or forty years.

I don't know that I can call this particular item a passion, perhaps more an infatuation, a reflection of an earlier age that introduced the slogan "Better Living Through Chemistry". 

From that earlier time I found one skein of a very weird yarn.


This is Phentex, a knitting yarn made of 100% polypropylene. It is reported to be:
stain resistant
machine washable and dryable
will not stretch or shrink
keeps the shape you knit in
non-fading fast colors
long wearing and
non-allergenic

It looks as though it is made from exactly the same stuff as pantyhose. I did a search online and found another person who had discovered a skein of this stuff, but it was white rather than brown. A newer version of this yarn is listed as "slipper and craft yarn" which makes sense because it is very hard to the touch and might work well for knitted slipper soles.

Comments in Ravelry notes the hard, scratchy feel of anything that is made out of this yarn, noting that it is extreeeemly durable, seemingly impervious to wear. There are 40 year old slippers still out there that were made from it. Of course, that may have as much to do with the fact that the slippers were so uncomfortable that they never had a chance to wear out.

There is no twist to it, so it splits very easily-- not quite such a problem for me as for a knitter, but still difficult to work with. The greater difficulty for me was that the yarn was a little too thick to comfortable weave on my 4" pin loom. I finally wove two squares on a Weave-it 5" rug loom which I crocheted together to make what appears to be an impermeable pot scrubber-- which is shown above.

Have you run into some strange fiber that has offered an unexpected gift? What unknown or underestimated fiber is out there, just waiting to share its gifts?  Please share your experience. 

My intention, metaphorically, is to spin flax into gold, to show each fiber in its best light.

A Second Look at the Pin Loom Weaving Book

We are getting near the June 1st publication date and I am about two weeks away from being able to post an organized view of all of the project items from Pin Loom Weaving; 40 Items for Tiny Hand Looms.  In the meantime, this is a look at a few of the pin loom patterns.  Meg