Weaving a guitar strap - A Kazakh design from Mexico

Kazakh Guitar Strap

March 2023

Materials: Maysville Carpet Warp (8/4 Cotton)

Tools: 41 weaving cards

Length: ~ 107 cm (42 in)

Width: 5 cm (2 in)

 

Inspiration can come from some unexpected places. In this case, it was an ad encouraging tourists to visit Kazakhstan, which I saw walking down the street when I was visiting Mexico City. It depicted some sort of traditional Kazakh dwelling, and a piece of fabric in the corner of the picture caught my eye - it reminded me a lot of the bands I'd been weaving. I still have no idea whether or not the original piece was tablet woven, or even whether Kazakhstan has a tablet weaving tradition, but I got it into my head that it'd be fun to try to recreate this design.

 

So, when I got home, I zoomed into my photo of the ad, opened up Tablet Weaving Draft Designer, and set about trying to match the picture thread-for-thread (I think I ended up getting it pretty spot-on). In hindsight, this was a really valuable exercise, and I think it really helped improve my pattern drafting skills. Previously, I had more or less "doodled" - playing around with the software until I got something that looked cool. Working to recreate a particular pattern forced me to learn a lot more of how different arrangements of threads and sequences of card-turning can produce different visual results.

One thing that quickly became obvious, which I hadn't realized just from looking at the ad, was that, at 41 cards, this would be a much wider piece than anything I'd woven before. My credit card shuttle was no longer going to do the trick (also it was falling apart under the stresses of weaving anyway). I ended up making some new shuttles out of some old disposable wooden cutlery, and they worked well enough, at least for a few projects. 

As for what to do with it, the 2-inch width made this piece perfect for a guitar strap, so I took apart a cheap guitar strap and replaced the boring black webbing with my hand-woven band. To date, this is one of my favorite pieces that I made. I think that the pattern came out looking really nice, and the colors look super vibrant and provide a nice contrast to my black electric guitar. Plus, I still can't get over the fact that I stole the design off of a random Mexican ad for Kazakhstan.

Weaving Pattern

• As a TDD file (for importing into and modifying in Tablet Weaving Draft Designer)
  
• As an image (ready to be followed for weaving)
  

References

1. Tablet Weaving Draft Designer software: https://jamespbarrett.github.io/tabletweave/