Beautiful bands with a thousand uses. Many cultures weave bands but few weave them with the style of Scandinavia and Latvia. The materials needed to weave these bands are simple and readily obtainable.
There are groups dedicated to this type of weaving. The Braid Society in Europe and TWIST in the United States.
On the society websites you can find galleries of woven bands and instructions on how to get started weaving in this tradition. I also found a course being offered by the North House Folk School in Minnesota in May of 2013 that you may be interested in taking if you are in the area.
While the bands are traditionally woven on backstrap looms they also can be reproduced on a standard loom if you happen to have one handy. The image on the left is a Latvian design that I wove in a wide band on my AVL loom. The most important consideration to remember is that a pattern thread is twice the thickness of the ground thread. A traditional belt, band or sash is often woven using wool. My experiment was woven in cotton.
I have also been able to weave this style of band on my Morgan loom without using a rigid heddle or tablet cards.
I was able to make use of red and white beads to identify pattern threads and modified my draft to make weaving easier for me.
Here is a copy of the draft that I made for weaving the belt.
Video Tutorials: