After weaving three small krokbragd samplers back in September, I knew I was in love with this weave structure. So I bit the bullet and ordered a ridiculous quantity of 3-ply rug wool, and set about a journey of discovery.
The rugs pictured below are all original designs of my own. They were all woven on a 3-shaft point twill threading on my 4-shaft looms. They are a standard 20 inches wide, and they range from about 30-36 inches in length (not including fringe).
About half of them are woven in the standard krokbragd fashion. This means that the treadling remains constant, 1-2-3, and the pattern is completely determined by where you place the colors. The warp threads only show at the fringes, as they're completely covered by the densely packed weft. These rugs are beat to around 36 ppi. For the layman, that means that the shuttle goes back and forth 36 times for every inch of length. Here are a few:
The rugs below this point have been woven in the same krokbragd fashion, generally speaking, but they also make use of a pick-up stick. This is an added manual component to the weaving and it requires even more picks per inch, both factors that slow down the weaving process. The benefit is that there is a little more freedom of design. This usually means more dots and large diamonds, spread out a bit over the width of the rug. I have come to understand that this technique is called danskbrogd, although it doesn't seem to have much (if anything) to do with Denmark.
Here are two more rugs that are still on the loom. See if you can tell whether they're standard krokbragd or danskbrogd:
They are both actually standard krokbragd. The rug on the bottom is a modification of the danskbrogd design that I'd used several times before; it still has lots of dots and diamonds, but notice how they're more tightly packed across the whole width of the rug, without gaps between them. The fact that there aren't any long gaps between the diamonds is what tells you that a pick-up stick wasn't necessary here. It also means that there aren't any long floating threads on the back. Although I think the danskbrogd patterns have a delicate elegance to them, their backs can look a bit messy because of the longer floats. Danskbrogd isn't nearly as reversible as the standard krokbragd.
Reverse of standard krokbragd
Reverse of danskbrogd
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