My New Obsession: Three-Color Pick-up on the Inke Loom

I have a new bandweaving obsession: three-color pick-up. If you’re an avid bandweaver and haven’t heard of this technique, there’s a good reason. Until fairly recently, three-color pick-up was a mostly unknown technique woven in a small region of Lithuania. So how did it finally make its way overseas? For that, you can thank inkle-weaver extraordinaire Annie MacHale and the Lithuanian Folk Art Institute. How do I know? I got to hear the whole story while taking Annie’s three-color pick-up class at Weave Together this past March.

A Lithuanian Mystery

It all started with a book, more specifically, Lithuanian Sashes by Anastazija Tamošaitenė and Antanas Tamošaitis, an out-of-print book originally published by the Lithuanian Folk Art Insitute. Annie, like many weavers, collects books related to her specialty (bandweaving) and managed to get her hands on a copy.

As she poured over the photos of traditional sashes, she recognized all the techniques until she got to a page featuring sashes that looked almost, but not quite, like Baltic pick-up. The only description she could find of the technique wasn’t very helpful: “Sashes woven with three-coloured motifs were usually woven from handspun wool yarn by the women of the province of Zanavykija. Only three percent of sashes was woven with three-coloured motifs because only the rare weaver had the skill to weave them.”

Unable to resist a challenge, Annie set her sights to reverse engineering these three-color motifs, with only her previous bandweaving experience and those few photos as her guide. Luckily for bandweavers everywhere, after a bit of trial-and-error, Annie was able to crack the code of what we now know as three-color pick-up. She knew other bandweavers would be interested, so with some help from some friends, she self-published two books on three-color pick-up so weavers anywhere could learn the technique and added it to her repertoire of classes.

With three-color pick-up, you can create motifs with layers of color.

Bandweaving Bliss

When I went into Annie’s class, I’d been weaving a lot of Baltic-style pick-up and felt comfortable reading pick-up charts and manipulating warp threads accordingly. Three-color pick-up felt a little like Baltic, but with a few key differences. Instead of having a warp made up of fine background ends and thicker pattern ends, my warp was all the same size—and it was colorful, too! As the name suggests, three-color pick-up uses three colors in the warp, and it’s by strategically picking up one color or another that you can create some truly breathtaking designs.

As soon as I started my first sample motif, I knew I was in love. Pick-up patterns are my absolute favorite thing to weave. I love watching motifs appear as I weave, and in three-color pick-up I was able to layer different colors in ways simply not possible with Baltic. It took only a few rows of weaving for everything to click, and I was able to enter a flow state of complete weaving bliss.

After finishing all the sample patterns, I finished the warp by repeating my favorite until I had a long enough band to make a headband. As soon as I got home, I cut the band from the loom, trimmed my headband material from the sampler, and sewed it to a hair elastic (a technique you can find in both Jennifer B. Williams Bejeweled Headband from Summer 2024 and Laia Robichaux’s Portland Spring headband from Spring 2023). I love my headband, and I can’t wait to weave more three-color pick-up bands!

Christina used her three-color pick-up band to make a simple headband so she can show off her weaving anywhere.

Ready to Learn More?

So, three-color pick-up has you intrigued, but you don’t know where to begin. I can’t recommend taking a class from Annie MacHale enough. Learning from Annie was an absolute delight, and seeing all her incredible samples gave me dozens of ideas for future designs.

I’m delighted to say that Annie MacHale will be teaching her three-color pick-up class again this October at our first-ever bandweaving retreat, Band Camp for Weavers.

Along with her three-color class, Annie will also be teaching a class on weaving landscapes (many of her landscape designs use three-color pick-up, too!) and a class on color in inkle weaving (Annie is not just a master of design, but also of color). If you’re interested, I highly recommend checking out our event website to see the rest of the amazing teachers and classes. Just don’t wait too long to sign up—only a handful of spaces are left.

Happy Weaving,

Christina

PS. If you’re interested in getting your hands on a copy of Lithuanian Sashes but don’t want to spent big bucks on a used copy, you can get a PDF download of the book by becoming a member of the Lithuanian Folk Art Institute and paying a small membership fee.