Two Pickup Patterns

After seeing the last post, someone asked me to share the pattern for the strap with the rainbow diagonal pickup, so I drew it up to share here. And since the chevron is a very closely related pattern, I thought I'd include it also. It would be great to see how other weavers use these patterns to create their own designs, so send me photos if you do!! The following information assumes that you already know how to do the Baltic style pickup patterns and to read the charts commonly used with them.
If you are new to pickup patterns, I recommend that you start with something simpler and have a tutorial over here that you might like: Greek Key Pickup Tutorial

The above pattern uses a progression of 5 pattern colors, almost a rainbow, against a black background.  The visual effect makes the color bands appear balanced to my eye in spite of the fact that they don't all use the same number of threads. With some of the colors, I used 3 of each and some 4 of each. Below is the threading draft for this pattern. The top row are heddled and the bottom row are open warps.

The pickup pattern is below. 

Background threads are not represented on the pickup chart, only the pattern threads. 

The strap shown in the picture below was done as a custom camera strap for a very colorful guy. You can read the story about that here: From Oaxaca City to New York City - Sharing My Love of Color With Other Artists.  See how the pattern on the front and back sides appears very differently.

Below is the threading draft for it. The top row are heddled and the bottom row are open warps.

The chart for the pickup pattern is below.  The colored squares correspond to the colored pattern threads in the woven design and the background threads are not represented. You can see how I achieved a nice effect by picking up two chevrons and then creating a space in between. 

When the pattern threads are not picked up, they show as speckles in the design. 

Weaving The Rainbow

I like playing with color! 

My husband tells me that I can't have too much yarn. How can I create beautiful designs if I don't have all of the colors of the rainbow to choose from? I love him! So, I am forever adding to my stash. 

The photo below is of a guitar strap I made a few years back. It was inspired by a yarn bomb discovered in Santa Cruz, CA.   Read that story HERE.  While it includes all the colors of the rainbow plus a few, they are not in typical rainbow sequence. 

Once upon a time, I decided to use up small bits of may colors by creating a rainbow using as many shades of each color as I could find in my stash. 

As it turns out, I put together these 22. 

Several people, having seen photos of the first one, have asked me to make them a 

version of it.  This one is slightly different. I never want to make any two exactly alike. 

For the one I just finished this month, here's what the yarn selection looked like when I started. I swapped out a couple of colors after taking the photo. Then, once I started

 weaving there were two that just seemed too dark. So, I unwove, replaced them

 and moved the order of a couple of others. It was worth it. 

Really like this one! 

It looked amazing on the loom while I was weaving! 

Here are few other straps which have used some version of the rainbow.

The one below with diamonds just sold last month at the Tempe Guitar Show. 

It was woven in a pickup pattern using the horizontal bar background. 

One shed was all black and the other shed incorporated red, orange, golden yellow, 

yellow, yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue and purple. 

The below strap was a custom order inspired by an album cover from the band MGMT, called "Electric Feel". It also uses black as the background color with a pickup pattern. 

This pattern was done on the "Basketweave or Baltic" threading.

Below, this strap, also a custom request, used 5 of the 6 colors of the rainbow, 

 but with the 6th, red, being replaced by pink.

Weaving the Mountains

These are the Sandia Mountains which we see from our house in central New Mexico, USA. 

During sunset, they are known to light up in various shades of red on the west face. 

This earned them their name, "sandia" which is the Spanish word for watermelon.

 Recently, I was asked by an Albuquerque native to weave him a mandolin strap using the colors of the Sandias. After some consideration and two tries, I came up with a nice landscape type pattern which we thought created the look and feel of the mountains. 

At first, I selected 9 colors to represent the vegetation, earth, mountains, sky and clouds as seen in the photo. I have some pretty great colors! In the end, I used only 5 of them. 

In this photo, you can see both the front and back of the strap. 

The back side appears quite differently than the front. 

The customer sent me this photo of the strap on his mandolin. You can see how he used the long braids on the one end to tie around the F-scroll on the mandolin. 

This week I got confirmation that I will be a vendor at the Albuquerque Folk Festival.

Check out their logo and how fantastically it shows the "Watermelon Mountains".

Love this! Looking forward to a great musical time! 

Check out my Events page to see where else I will be showing!