Double Diagonal Weave

The following pattern is not so much about showing you how to weave a "Double Diagonal Cane" seat, as it is about convincing you that you can experiment on chairs.

Bring home a yard sale treasure. Be brave enough to weave a pattern that you've seen in a magazine or a storefront. Most patterns are not terribly complicated. The worst that can happen is that you'll have to re-weave parts that you don't like. The best that can happen is that you definitely will learn something new!

The main decision you'll have to make is:
Do you want the chair to have
a/ the top and bottom woven together in one layer, or
b/ do you want the top and bottom woven as separate layers?

When seat patterns are woven perpendicular to the chair rails- like a checkerboard pattern- it's easy to do either.
On today's chair, I wanted to weave diagonally with wide binder cane- like a seat I'd seen in a magazine. It made more sense to weave the top and the bottom layers separately. This also makes a hollow section between the top and bottom layers. Click on the thumbnail photos to see close-ups.

The chair was missing a chair rail. We cut a dowel replacement and sanded it to create the narrow ends, inserted the replacement with carpenters' glue and clamped it to dry. As you can see, the original seat had been woven in herringbone twill with splint. We decided to restore the seat with Wide Binding Cane. I like the smooth bark texture of the cane. Since I haven't seen any names (nor published patterns) for this style of seat, I'll call it my Double Diagonal Cane pattern. The cane is woven by two's, and the weaving is at a diagonal on the chair, instead of perpendicular to the chair rails. It's not meant to be the easiest solution to restoring a chair, but it's a nice one.
1. First bend TWO ends of wide cane strands over the left chair rail and clamped them temporarily at A. Carry the two strands under the front rail at the next clamp, come up on the other side rail and then carry them on top of the seat parallel with the first row.	2. Continue to wrap the two strands around the chair rungs next to each other. At the same time, this is also creating double rows of cane on the bottom of the chair.	3. As you can see in this photo, the double rows on the bottom are lying at a right angle to the top rows. When you run out of cane, add a new strand by overlapping about 6 inches and using a clamp until the ends are woven into the pattern. Or, you can knot the ends in whatever style you're familiar with.
4. When you've got the top totally wrapped -except for the wide space made by the corner posts- your cane will be at B. This is where you begin weaving the pattern "over 2 under 2". Near the "B" in the photo above, I have an error in the pattern.	5. The error is corrected in this photo and I've continued weaving over 2 and under 2 on BOTH sides of the seat. The top and bottom of the seat remain separate, creating the hollow space between them.	6. This photo shows the bottom side of the seat.
7. When you complete as much as you can fit in parallel rows, the seat will look like this. There are still two empty spaces forming an "X" on the seat.	8. To fill the "X" space, you'll need to weave diagonally from the front chair post to the opposite rear chair post. You'll have 4 rows of weaving, or two double rows of weaving. The rows will go down into the space where the awl is to get to the back side of the seat. You'll weave across the back side, and then come up on top again. Repeat on the other part of the "X".	9. The completed chair seat is shown in the previous step. Here's the finished chair with its new Double Diagonal Cane pattern seat. The part I like best is the way the cane looks as it curves over the rails on a diagonal.
Now. Shall I leave the black chair plain, or stencil something on the crosspiece at the top??? 'Til next time, Happy yard-sailing! return to TOP of page Linda Hebert www.basketweaving.com