Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Kumihimish Bracelets

I've made several bracelets with this technique. Here are some:





Kumihimish continued: 7-strand braid for guild project

My guild is working on a project involving the 7-strand braid. I've done some experimentation and wanted to share my results, so here is what I've come up with. I think others may have better ideas, this is just to share my drafting method & give a jumping off point for your experimentation:

The drafting notation is given for the first braid on the first page, at top left above. These numbers are clockwise around a braiding disk, assuming slot 8 is empty, and that you are doing a right-hand braid, as explained on kimadagem's Simple Kumihimo page.
 
Some of the drafts on these 2 pages are repeats, I only sampled the unique ones.


The graph paper I've been using is from Incompetech. They have many graph paper generators, this diamond is just one of them. I set the line color to gray & printed a few sheets to play with.

The 7-strand braid draft is a double-diamond or double-lozenge shape. I just draw in some of those, and number one set, and then fill in colors in the repeat to see what the result will be.

Below is a collection of braids I did with the guild project colors, just seeing what they do together. The yarns are mostly things I picked up at a recent estate sale for a member. She had a marvelous collection of sparkly threads in many colors, so I tried incorporating them. They don't scan well, but you get the idea.

 
The last braid at the bottom is an 11-strand braid, which is made the same way as the 7-strand braid, except you use a card with 12 slits, and you skip 4 threads, instead of skipping 2 as in the 7-strand braid. I have done several bracelets in the 11-strand braid, with nice results. I'll post some of those next time.