A friend of mine has found a new fiber love– ply split braiding.  She has pursued it with a passion and has become so adept at it, she wants to start teaching workshops.  So this weekend, to give her some practice, I invited a few of my friends to my house and Annie taught us about ply split braiding.

She was so organized and had such a thorough knowledge of her subject; we were all very impressed.  And what fun we had!

Annie brought us kits of 4-ply cords which she custom made for us.  Here, Elizabeth is starting a braided twill design on a key ring.  She very patiently showed each of us how to use the gripfid to split the plies and insert a cord to weave the design.

We spent four interesting hours working on fascinating designs which we still need to finish this week. Here is a picture of my efforts. You can see the gripfid pushing through two-plies ready to pull the other cord through. These gripfids were made by Louise French’s husband. She is a ply-split guru.

I still have a little work to do, but these projects go relatively quickly and are very satisfying.  Annie treated us to a wonderful workshop and I’m very grateful she made her debut at my house.  She spent hours learning the craft from books and recently took a Convergence workshop with the master of Ply-Split Braiding, Linda Hendrickson.  If you would like to learn more about her workshops, leave a comment on the site.