Jean Williams, who blogs as Jean Weaves was kind enough to leave a comment on my blog post about inkle weaving. It’s great to have guidance from a more experienced weaver. Thank you Jean, for suggesting I try working with some smooth cotton instead of sticky linen.
Progress!
The photo to the left shows the progress I’ve made since my first experiment.
I heeded Jean’s advice and took myself off to my least favourite yarn store, Spotlight, to buy some cotton yarn. Spotlight being Spotlight the best I could find was 50% cotton 50% acrylic, but they had a 30% off promotion running, bringing the cost of my next experiment down to single digits.
The other thing I did was check in with the inkle lady at the Handweavers and Spinners Guild weaving open day a couple of weeks ago. The event was a huge success, drawing all manner of people off the street to come in and have a go at weaving on the range of looms they had set up. Good on the organisers for having the passion and drive to try an open day. I hope they felt the planning effort was justified.
Here are the results of my latest efforts. The blue toned one is the Spotlight yarn, the pink one is made using crochet cotton.
Crochet cotton, top garment weight cotton and acrylic blend, bottom.
Next step, pick up.
A Journey with Fibre 
I’m very intrigued by inkle weaving but haven’t had the nerve to try it yet. Glad to see your progress!
Do try it. You get great results just from the warp colour choices you make, even without pick up and it’s simple enough to do by the TV or any time you don’t have the bandwidth for more complicated weaving on your big loom. There are some good tips online for achieving a neat finish by leaving a sewing thread loop in your 2nd and 3rd to last picks and then pulling your weft back through the loops. I can post about that if you would find it helpful.
I would like to read anything you posted about this! As a new weaver, using a floor loom, I’m intrigued about all the variations–inkle, tablet, backstrap, etc–although I don’t really know how they differ. It’ll take me awhile to work my way through the possibilities but I look forward to the process!
My favorite stuff to weave with is crochet cotton. It’s smooth, pretty cheap, and comes in every color. Pick-up patterns are so much fun. Good luck!
Thanks for the tip and nice to hear from you. I’m looking forward to trying pick up. I recently also bought a Sami-style rigid heddle for back strap band weaving which I’m busting to try – as soon as I’ve made the back strap and my beloved has had a chance to make me the mini lease sticks, the harp to attach to the back strap etc.
Nice bands! It looks like the Spotlight yarn produced a softer band, which may be perfect for some uses. I’ve used crochet cotton (from my mother’s and grandmother’s stash) and it makes a nice, crisp band. I think it will work nicely for your pick-up experiment.