New Alpine Macraweave Kits!
We love Sarah Elizabeth Fibre Works kits! Last week we tried the elegant plant hanger kits and this week we learned how to macraweave with the new Alpine Macraweave kits we have in the online store. This is the perfect blend of macrame and weaving. No loom or special equipment needed, and at the end of a few hours you’ll have learned lots with an alpine-inspired wall hanging to show for it. There will be no two alike.
The kit come in 13 different colourways and includes everything you will need to complete the macraweave wall hanging:
- 50g of roving: 3-5 knots in assorted colours
- 45m (50yds) of rope: 27m (30yds) primary skein, 18m (20yds) secondary skein
- 30cm (1ft) copper pipe with end caps, and
- the detailed instructions (downloadable here).
You’ll also need to have a pair of scissors handy, two ‘s’ hooks and something to hang the hooks on to keep the pipe steady while you do the macrame and weaving. We found that over the door hooks can work in a pinch if you don’t have any ‘s’ hooks readily available.
Top macrame portion complete with lark’s head, square, barrel and hitch knots done. On to the weaving portion!
The kit gives you a chance to learn some of the basic macrame knots, like the lark’s head, square, barrel and hitch. Each are beginner-friendly knots and YouTube has a ton of fantastic resources to help you learn each of them. The weaving portion has you weaving with tabby, bubble and soumak techniques with rope and roving which gives your weaving beautiful texture and dimension.
The instructions provided are clear and helpful, giving you just enough detail but aren’t prescriptive and encourage creativity. Creativity really is the theme of the day when macraweaving. You get to choose where and how the mountains are placed, how high you want them to be and the weaving section is a blank canvas for experimenting with the different stitches, combinations, colours, heights and patterns. There are no mistakes to make in this project, it’s just about whether what is unfolding in front of you works for you or whether you want to go back a step and make some changes.
Almost there, just a little more weaving at the top of the mountain to go!
Here are a few tips and things we learned while making our alpine macraweave wall hanging that might help you in the process of making yours:
- Find a space for your computer or phone next to where you are going to be doing your macraweaving. It makes watching videos and trying the techiniques at the same time much easier.
- When setting up your lark’s head knots on the copper bar, we found that the ideal spacing between them was 1/8th of an inch. This made the square and hitch knots section perfectly spaced with no bunching.
- If you’ve done weaving before you may be thrown off by weaving with looser warp threads (the vertical ones). Trust the process, it totally works and gets easier after the first few rows.
- The diagonal hitch knots can be a little tricky when making the outline of your mountains and after the first few it gets a lot easier to find the right tension and spacing between each.
- To get lots of dimension with your roving try fluffing it once you loosely weave it in place. Try using smaller pieces of roving as well, it will give the roving sections lots of different textures.
We loved making this kit, it was the ideal combination of directions and room to let creativity take over. It’s a 10/10 in our books! Now all we need to do is find the perfect place to hang it.
Sarah Elizabeth Fibre Works is based in Rossland, BC, and we are lucky to carry Sarah Elizabeth’s Easy Eco Wash, Silk Linen, batts for spinning and felting, and a number of kits from her (like felted soaps, macrame plant hangers, and weaving kits). If you are new to her yarn, fibre and kits, check them out in the online store, you’ll be glad you did.
