December 2023 – Piglet's Potholder Patterns

On Credit for “Original” Designs

I wanted to follow up on a conversation that happened in a Facebook group earlier today about giving credit to the “original” creator of a design.

For the record, Piglet and I didn’t invent the pattern discussed in that case, and we don’t own it. If you weave potholders that look like that, you aren’t obligated to mention us or give us any credit.

People have been weaving things out of string for thousands of years, and they have been weaving potholders out of stretchy loops for nearly a hundred years. Given that history, I think it’s very likely that every technique we’ve explored has been tried before, and I am confident that if you could somehow go through all of the millions of potholders that have been woven over the last century, you would be able to find earlier examples that look a lot like nearly every design we’ve posted.

Clasp Weave: American Flag

When I bound off the French flag this morning, I stared at for long enough to realize… half of a traditional loop plus one full length traditional loop *also* equals one pro loop, which means, VOILA!!! US FLAG!

[Added by Matthew:] This example is woven on an oblong (18×27) loom, but you could use the same technique to make a square pro (27×28) potholder with more stripes.

Warp the lower eight pegs with alternating red and white pro loops. Warp the upper ten pegs with alternating red and white traditional loops, using a folded-over blue traditional loop threaded through the loose ends of each pair.

Weave the first eighteen rows with alternating red and white traditional loops woven in tabby plain weave to form stripes.

To weave the last ten rows, fold a red and blue traditional loop over each other and place them on the loom with one empty peg between them. Weave them into each side, with the blue loop weaving into the blue square and the red loop into the red and white stripes. Then place a white traditional on the empty pegs and weave it in, in between the split legs of the red and blue loops. Do the same with another white loop next to them, then repeat the process to the end of the loom.

Bind off as usual.

Clasp Weave: Tri-Color Flags

Flags, you say? *You* get a flag, and *YOU* get a flag! Everybody gets flags!

Tricolors, anyway.

Matthew noted that the 7″ traditional loop is 2/3 the size of the 10″ pro loop. So… 3 traditional loops folded in half equal one pro loop. Therefore, we can use this ratio to create three colorblocks across the width of our potholder!

We wove the French flag with denim, white, and cayenne traditional loops.

(You could use this same technique to make a square pro-sized potholder with matching colors of traditional-size loops in one direction and pro loops in the other.)

The photos below show the process, starting with warping the loom with loops folded over and threaded through each other. I wove the center section first, as I always do, but you could also start from either end. Before transitioning from one section to the next, check the next section for twisted loops and untwist them so they all line up nicely.