Finger-Manipulated Weaves-Part 3
This post is the third installment in a series looking at finger-manipulated weaving techniques. The first post described the general attributes of these weaves and the methods of leno and Mexican lace. The following post looked at Spanish Lace. Today is the lovely Brooks Bouquet.
Brooks Bouquet was made popular by Marguerite G Brooks, a bobbin lace expert. This technique produces little “bouquets” or knots on the right side of the fabric and warp floats on the other side. Brooks Bouquet creates a stretchy fabric with open, airy lace and a beautiful pattern. A little 4-pane window separates each bouquet.
Samples
As with the samples in the previous two posts, the warp and weft are 8/2 unmercerized cotton, natural (3360 yd/lb) sett at 20 epi. The warp is threaded as a straight draw and treadled as plain weave.
The “bouquet” is formed by wrapping the weft yarn around bunches of warp threads and then pulling in tightly before moving to the next bundle. The weft wraps around three warp threads with the shed open in this sample. The bouquet is locked into place when the shed changes and the tabby weft is returned.
The number of warp threads encircled in each bundle can be varied. This sample has staggered rows of 4/4 Brooks Bouquet. So there are four warp threads wrapped. You can see the sweet little windowpanes between each bouquet.
These are single spots of Brooks Bouquet spaced across the row. The wrapped bundles are beaten down, so no fill is needed between the lace spots. One of the interesting characteristics of Brooks Bouquet is that it can be worked on any draft that can weave tabby.
Brooks Bouquet can be used to make shapes and motifs. For the heart, I followed an excellent tutorial by Leslie Ann Bestor (see Resources list). 2/2 bouquets are woven in each of the shaded squares of the graph. Cross-stitch patterns are great for design inspiration.
Brooks Bouquet to make a corner design. Here four rows are woven on each side, decreasing the number of bouquets in each row. A dark green weft is used to wrap the bouquets.
I combined the last three variations into one sampler. The corner designs frame the piece.
More Variations
use different weft threads for wrapping the bundles, varying the colors and thickness
multiple wraps around each bunch
change the number of warp threads in each bunch
split groups of bouquets (need to use even numbers in bouquets)
bouquets both weft-wise and warp-wise
Resources
Best, E. (2005). Lace by hand [free E-book available here]. great resource for all the finger manipulated lace weaves
Bestor, L.A. [WEBS]. (2014, December 31). How to weave with the Brooks bouquet technique [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Pff0tQE7jBw
Patrick, J. (2010). The weaver’s idea book. Interweave. Chapter 2 Finger-Controlled Weaves-Brook’s Bouquet, 59-63.
In Part 4, we’ll look at a fun finger-manipulated technique, Danish Medallions.
