Reading Susan's post
earlier this week about her technique for finishing kumihimo ends
gave me a push to try something I've had on my 'to do' list for ages.
Kumihimo with wire.
I visited the Stitch &
Hobbycraft fair in Manchester about 15 years ago and was lucky enough
to meet Jacqui Carey who was demonstrating the art of Japanese
braiding. I was instantly mesmerised. She explained the origins of
the art before going on to demonstrate on a beautiful wooden marudai
with wooden bobbins and miles of gorgeous hand dyed silks.
Kumihimo braids were
originally used by Samurai soldiers. They were used to connect the
various pieces of armour. Being made from silk, they were strong,
light and allowed the soldiers to move freely.
With the abolition of
the Samurai class, the focus then shifted to fashion. The braids were
used to make obi-jime, the ties used around the fabric sash of a
kimino.
And more recently, the
marudai has been adopted by jewellery makers for making cords in
their designs.
One of my own kumihimo
creations with beads.
After the
demonstration, we were given the opportunity to have a go of the
Marudai and purchase our own. My budget at the time wouldn't stretch
to the traditional wooden design (it was gorgeous, but a fortune!), but I absolutely had to have one, so I got an acrylic version with plastic weights.
It's really difficult
to take a picture of with it being see through, but hopefully you can
make it out.
It did have a pretty
satin bag for adding stones to weight down the cord from the centre,
but that has been misplaced, so I've repurposed and old knitting
machine weight that has the same effect.
I've used 0.4mm copper
wire and wrapped it around the spools, these are connected in the
centre and the weight added to draw the finished cord through the
centre hole of the marudai.
To start, I tried with
a simple weave, square braid. It's not quite as easy with wire and I
found that to get a neat finish, you had to be careful to keep an eye
on the centre of the cord as it makes up. The process of weaving is
to place your bobbins in pairs at North, South, East, and West. They
are then moved into different positions across each other to create
the cord.
Here you can see it appearing below the Kagami (mirror) of the marudai.
As the weight touches
the bottom, the cord can be wrapped up to keep the tension.
After trying a simple
weave, I got a bit braver and decided to try a more complicated flat
weave. You don't need to set up the marudai again with the wire, just
start in the new pattern and then snip the sections off when you're
finished.
I really like how the
flat weave turned out, it's not the neatest, but reminds me of Celtic
knots. I think a thicker wire could make a better finish. I need to order more wire and experiment!
The top weave here is
the square braid. If you look closely, you can see on the left hand side where I changed
the weight. The heavier the weight, the more it will draw the wire
through and the longer the stitches in the weave, a lighter weight
will make them closer together.
The final square braid
ended up around 2mm thick. I snipped the ends and pulled it through a
drawplate to pull in any loops that were a bit wider than they should
have been.
I raided my stash for
anything with a hole large enough to fit over the braid and found
some ceramic beads I've been hoarding from Lesley Watt. They were
perfect. A Bit of liver of Sulpur to darken the copper and a bit of a
polish and here's the (nearly) finished design.
I was hoping to use Sue's technique for finishing the ends, but the weave was tighter than if it had been done in thread, so unfortunately the wire wouldn't push through. To hold the ends, I've just wrapped them with more wire for now.
If you'd like to find
out a bit more about using a marudai, I can recommend Jacqui's book,
Beginner's Guide to Braiding.
Thanks for reading!
Caroline
