#sprang

This is a very old, but almost dead, textile craft called sprang. It's not exactly weaving - I'd say it's closer to braiding in that it only has warp threads, no weft. I'm using some metal rods as shed sticks, and also to keep the holes open enough to be fishnet-y.

My original goal was to make fingerless fishnet gloves/sleeves, but I think the material's going to be way too wide for that; it has a LOT of horizontal stretch. It's hard to tell exactly how much with it still tensioned, but if I'm lucky I might be able to make a short tube top of it!

I dried them into shape (they probably don't need the rubber band now but I am not taking it off just in case) and added the strings. I have since remembered why I strongly prefer using sticks instead of string. Ah well.

Warped it with some cottolin that I chain plied for a project a few years ago. Just kept warping until I ran out of space. In retrospect, thin white yarn sucks to use in this situation. Can't see a thing lol.

Currently here. Harder than I remembered ! If my vision would cooperate there would probably be fewer mistakes. But it's coming together I think !

To nobody's surprise at all...gonna be a bag.

Some close ups of the weave. I am NOT doing well on the left side...keep ending up with tons of extra strands on top and none on bottom...im guessing I just messed up that part of the warp. I think slowly fixing it though.

It led me to make this:

Oohohoho, I'm commissioning a pair of sprang leggings.

Stretchy, warm, flashy colours and patterns!

I heard about sprang in the first couple of weeks of my fibre arts course and never found an excuse to explore it more. Obviously I'm free to do research and play around myself, but it's the sort of obscure niche fibre art that's hard to find good information. Carol James has been researching it since the 90s and I'm hunting for some of her books. (The picture above is from the advertising for an online zoom talk by Carol James)

I love the geometric patterns. The method of making sprang is fascinating. (What do you MEAN it's like weaving with only warp threads? Creating mirror-image twists that meet in the middle, and if the middle seam gives out goodbye to all your work?! And what I've read about creating patterns, especially where the two halves are different like the striped legs and patterns above, it hurts my brain. Indistinguishable from witchcraft)

I'm very aware that there's a vast multitude of cool and/ or lost fibre arts that I could have chosen, but I don't need obscenely fancy status marker fashions (thinking of goldwork embroidery) and I don't want to claim something from a culture that I have no connection to (Pacific barkcloth... I just want to know how it feels). And sprang has been in the back of my mind for so long, waiting to spring out.