Shanel Wu
They/them. PhD student: smart textiles, weaving, computational craft, hardware hacking.
Interesting Braid Structure
by S
Cut an old Target sun hat to convert into an open-crown/all-around visor style. (aside: I discovered open-crown hats and finally have a solution for sun hats + my hair in a bun) The hat is made from this straw ribbon – mostly ramie or raffia, can’t remember and the tag is faded, and some polyester. Maybe it was hemp? I’ll just go with “straw”.
Interesting braid, comprised of 4 strands of a core thread (prob polyester) and 9 strands of the straw fiber. Possibly, if none of these strands are made of blended fibers, the material composition percentages are just 4/13 (~30%) polyester and 9/13 (~70%) straw. The straw strands form the bulk of the braid, twisting around the core strands. The core strands provide 3 “lanes” for the wide, flat braid. The 9-stranded braid can be subdivided into three intertwined 3-strand braids.
The other face of the ribbon.