Norwegian Pick-Up Bandweaving

Here’s a technique that’s fun to weave and well-suited to both geometric and representational designs.

I wove this band in the early 1970s when I was learning pick-up from the Inkles chapter in Mary Meigs Atwater’s Byways in Handweaving. She describes the weave as one of the “Native American, Mexican, Peruvian Weft Pattern Techniques”.

I used a one-color wool warp and three wool weft yarns—one foundation weft and two pattern wefts. All three wefts are carried through each shed from selvedge to selvedge. The two pattern wefts are brought out of the shed to float over the surface as needed to create designs. When there is more than one float in a shed, one or more warp ends separate them. The reverse side is a solid color with no pattern.

The foundation weft is the same yarn as the warp. I wound it on a belt shuttle which I used to beat after each shed change. The two pattern wefts are thicker wool. I wound these into butterflies and used a pick-up stick to form the path for each according to the design I wanted.

I always wove the wefts in the same order, with the foundation weft first, then the orange, then the green. With the foundation weft, I controlled the width of the band. With each pattern weft, I created a neat turn at the selvedge then laid it in the shed at a relaxed tension. Before removing the pick-up stick, I used it to gently tap the pattern weft into position to make sure no adjustment was needed.

In 1975, this band was part of a juried show in San Diego (Fabrications ’75) sponsored by the Handweavers’ Guild of America.