Backstrap Weaving

This is a very easy five-strand braid which I have used as a zipper pull as well as on the end of a narrow band. The warp ends at the end of a narrow band can be separated into five groups to make one wide flat braid.

Above right, warp ends have been gathered into five groups without separating the colors, braided and then wrapped to finish. Above left, a five-strand braid has been made with a single color and another with five different colors. Different numbers of colors arranged in different ways will produce different effects. I haven’t experimented with this yet.

For this tutorial I used five colors to make the instructions clear.

Separate the five strands into two groups. You can see above left that I have three strands in one group on the left and the other two in a separate group on the right.

The three strands on the left will be worked just like a three-strand hair braid. The outer strand, in this case the orange one. crosses over the middle strand, in this case the blue one.

The white strand crosses over the orange one.

Now the grouping has changed. We still have two groups but now the orange has joined the group on the right to make a group of three with the purple and red and the other group of two is on the left.

The group of three on the right is now worked like a three-strand hair braid. The outer strand, in this case the red, crosses over the middle strand, in this case the purple.

Then the orange strand crosses over the red.

Once again the grouping has changed. The red has passed to the left to form a group of three with the white and blue. The other two strands form a group of two on the right. We are back at the beginning.

Braids like these can make nice zip pulls. Here is one with five strands but only four colors.