In a social media ad, targeted I’m sure, I saw an add for a wrapped leather belt. There’s a gently curved wider leather center section, which you wrap like a cummerbund, and bring the narrower end sections to the front to tie, twist, or whatever. Hmm. Maybe I can weave that.

In my planning, I started with the length of the leather belt, about 100″ long. I planned it to be about 3″ wide warped, knowing I would lose width and that I would be fine with whatever width it became after wet finishing. I planned about 32″ of weaving, with about 67″ of unwoven warp before and after the weaving. I also planned a warping pattern for subtle stripes, using a loosely twisted silk blend, a wool knitting yarn, and a cotton weaving yarn. I wove with a mohair blend. Mixing fibers like this is a challenge.

First, the silk frayed in the reed. I didn’t know whether I should advance the warp more often, or leave it be as long as possible. I did manage to not break it while weaving, but I did break it once while twisting the fringe. I finger plied/spun it back together. Second, the knitting yarn was stretchy and the rest were not. Keeping decent even tension took some finesse when tying on the warp. I left it overnight after warping, and came back and tightened those warps a little. Finally, I knew that this wasn’t going to shrink evenly, so I decided to wet finish before I did whatever with the ends – fingerweave or braid (I didn’t know yet). I wanted to wet finish with plenty of agitation, without tangling the warp too much, so I wouldn’t get uneven shrinkage when washing the finished piece later.

I also wanted to experiment with pulling a few of the warps on one side to create the curve of the belt. That worked well, thankfully.

So, when I warped the loom, I also tied on a different color weaving yarn (non-stretchy) with the warp at the front. I tied a knot in it where I wanted to start the weaving, and advanced the warp to that point. I then tied another knot in that “warp” at the 32″ point, so I would know when to stop weaving. I advanced this unincluded warp as I was weaving until I hit the 32″ knot. That worked.

I wove with the mohair, finessing the silk to try to reduce damage, and then took it off the loom. I pulled the warp on one side to get a slight curve. I then wet finished, and then cut the loose warp to an even 60″, which was about the length of the shortest warp after finishing. Now, to make the warp ends into something narrower, like fingerweaving, to lay on top of the weaving to tie the belt. I did a tiny sample of fingerweaving in a chevron pattern perhaps two years ago, and that’s what I envisioned first.

I started by twisting the 60″ ends into eight fringes and knotting them. Now, because the warp yarns are so disparate, my fringes are different lengths again; I’ll manage that at the end.

I got out my sample of fingerweaving and instructions, and had a go. Because I had a subtle pattern in the warp, this could be nice, as you would see the arrows of darker and lighter colors. In fingerweaving, you have all the yarn on non-dominant hand, and in the process of weaving, move it to the dominant hand. You transfer your warp back to your non-dominant hand, and go again. For a chevron, you weave from the sides to the middle (or the middle to the sides). It wasn’t working easily this time, and I wasn’t firmly tied to fingerweaving. So, time to braid.

Braiding is easy for me, as I braid my hair. Not in eight sections, however. So, I don’t know exactly what I did is called, but I overed-undered from the sides to the middle. Rather than the imagined chevrons of fingerweaving, I have a speckled light and dark narrow braid with a knot at the end. I knotted and trimmed the longest twisted fringe ends to balance them.

I have a belt! Have I worn it? Do I have something to wear it over? Nope. I see a future sewing project…