Tonto's Sash - the Story of a Custom Order

Did you see the movie "The Lone Ranger" starring Johnny Depp? If so, did you notice that he was wearing a woven sash? No? Me, neither. But my customer, Ron, from Switzerland did. And he wanted one like it.
When he first sent me pictures, I wasn't sure that I could match the pattern using the kind of pickup techniques that I am familiar with. It looked to me like the original might be Pebble Weave, but the photos were not clear enough to tell for sure.

When he sent me this graphic illustration showing the desired pattern in detail, I knew he was serious about wanting this sash! I enjoyed his illustration and wish that I knew how to make this sort of thing myself!

I told Ron that I would experiment with pattern motifs and see if I could come close. I had recently taken Susan Foulkes' tutorial on Sami bands in the Braids and Bands Yahoo Group. The motifs that I played with there reminded me of the motifs in the center of Tonto's sash.

So, I did a little experimenting. Okay, I'm on to something here!

Then I warped up in the right colors. Ron approved the colors in this photo which I had sent him.

The next problem I had was that in the end sections, the pattern needed to have a brown background with the pattern motifs in red, and the center section needed to have a red background with brown motifs.
At first this didn't work out well. I wanted the brown dots to fill in the background area better.  Why didn't I think of doing a pickup of the brown threads?

So, I backed up and started over. Oh, this is much better!

Here is the finished sash showing both sides. It does not have as much detail as the original sash. I am happy with the result and when I sent Ron pictures of the final changes, here was his response  "Wow looks fantastic, thanks a lot for made this correction. I'm very happy with your work - this becomes fabulouse. Thanks Annie!"  

Click on this photo to make it larger and see the detail of the sash on the front and back.

I ended up with long floats on the back side, but I think that's okay.

Since the whole sash was 98" plus fringe, I didn't think one frame really captured it, so I took this video.