Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Usha's Braid, Explained by Muskaan

 Usha Kota invented this tatted braid, after looking at a macrame video. I have to say that it boggled my mind for a while, but after rereading Muskaan's tutorial many times, I eventually had an aha moment and 'got' it. Muskaan's tutorial is in two parts. First you must learn to twist work , that is, make a reverse stitch (unflipped stitch) that has the caps on the left instead of the usual right. Then you can start on the tutorial for the braid. When I started off, I stuck labels on my 6 shuttles to help me keep track:
Once I got the hang of the pattern that was no longer necessary, but it helped at first.
Muskaan and Usha both put a  lot of work into this project. Thank you. It's one of those techniques that is easy once you know how, but difficult to explain. Muskaan created a number of different versions. Anyway, I'm here to say that the rest of us can grasp it with a bit of effort and it's well worth the trouble. I used 4-ply cotton knitting yarn, which is clear and gives a good size to the braid. I plan to make a bracelet, but need to practise a little longer to get my tension right.

4 comments:

  1. Jane your braid looks perfect ! Love the color combination too.
    A thicker thread does justice to this pattern, as is clearly evident from your version. I didn't have any, hence was stuck with size 20.

    To practice the macrame, however, I used wool yarn.... but it was too fibrous for a clear pictorial.

    Thanks for trying this and sharing :-)))

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  2. The wonderfull thing is that it does not look like macrame.but it looks nice i 'll try to read through to the end.thank you usha, muskaan and jane

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  3. That is really pretty! I'm not sure I could keep that many shuttles straight, even with labels.

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