After long admiring Julie Beers’s beautiful pebble-weave projects, I gave her a two-part challenge. First, I asked if she could write an article explaining the basics of how to read and weave pebble-weave patterns. Second, I wanted her to design a beginner-friendly project to go with the article. Julie agreed to the challenge with enthusiasm, and the results were exactly what I’d hoped for. You don’t need a single lick of experience with pebble weave to take on the project, especially after reading the tutorial. How do I know? Because I tried it out for myself.
Alison Irwin used pebble weave for her Follow Your Star bookmarks from Winter 2022. Photo by Matt Graves
Julie’s I’m with the Band Bracelets are the second pebble-weave pattern we’ve published. Back in the Winter 2022 issue, we featured Alison Irwin’s spectacular Follow Your Star Bookmarks. At the time, I wasn’t a bandweaver. I understood the process of bandweaving on a theoretical basis and, therefore, understood that while I loved these bookmarks, they were not yet for me.
Now, four years later I’ve woven multiple bands and in the process discovered a deep love for pick-up patterns. So, as I first read Julie’s tutorial and saw her beautiful bracelets, I knew I had to try it out for myself before I put it in the magazine.
First Impressions
Pebble weave is a structure that, in many ways, is easier to do than to describe. Rather than let myself feel intimidated by the foreign feeling, I decided to jump in and follow the pattern one step at a time. I didn’t have the colors Julie used, so I picked different ones of a similar value and grabbed my inkle loom, band shuttle, a pick-up stick (I used a double-sided knitting needle), and two weaving swords (I used small craft sticks).
Christina's version of the I'm with the Band Bracelets. Photos by Christina Garton excepted where noted otherwise.
Once my loom was warped and I started following Julie’s weaving steps, I realized pebble weave was much simpler than I’d imagined. Pebble weave is built on a simple four-step weaving sequence. Once I wove through that sequence a few times, I found I didn’t need to reference the tutorial anymore. By the time I started weaving my motif and the extra pick-up it required, I had found my rhythm. After finishing my first heart, I'd fallen completely in love with pebble weave.
Pebble Weave Tips
As I wove, I incorporated the tips Julie gave in her tutorial and came up with some of my own. Here are a few tricks I found that made my first pebble-weaving experience easier:
Use two distinct weaving swords. You should be able to tell at a glance which is Sword 1 and which is Sword 2. I took this a step further by painting my craft sticks to match the layer of warp they’d be lifting. If my purple stick had pink warp ends on it, I knew something had gone wrong.
Using distinctly different weaving swords let Christina know at a glance whether they were in the correct shed.
Check the picked-up ends before you pass your weft. After I’d finished picking up a row, I’d pull the pick-up stick down toward the fell line and compare the current picked-up ends to the ones in the previous row. If the pattern looked offset, I knew I’d made a mistake.
Before passing the weft, you can check your work by comparing the ends on your pick-up stick to the previous row. If they line up according to the chart, as shown here, you're good to proceed.
If your row finishes on the wrong end, check your warp layers. I can’t tell you how many times I would carefully pick up a row and then find that the final picked-up warp end didn’t match the chart. In almost every case, I could trace the problem to a warp end not on its designated weaving sword.
While it’s easy to weave, pebble weave does take more concentration than your average pick-up pattern—and that’s why I love it. All my worries and anxieties temporarily melt away as I focus on the pick at hand.
If you enjoy weaving pick-up patterns in your bandweaving but haven’t yet tried pebble weave, I can’t encourage you enough to read Julie’s incredible tutorial and try out her I’m with the Band Bracelets. Just take it one step at a time, and I have a feeling you’ll fall as deeply in love with this structure as I have.
Happy Weaving!
Christina