Two-Colored Coptic Headbands

This weekend I have been experimenting with two-colored Coptic headbands. The principle is always the same: Chain stitches along the book boards.

These are so straight forward generalizations of the Coptic headband as I have learned to do them that I can’t believe it has not been done before. I don’t know of any written source that covers the making, though. If you know one, please let me know. The names you’ll see below are just my own – probably they already have different names. I’d be glad to learn these names if you know them.

When I first thought about Coptic double headbands, I thought of what I will call below the true double headband. But it took me a while (two hole days) to figure out how to make it. And on the way I found some other variations of the theme, some useful and others plainly ugly. Here are those that I think I might be doing again:

This is the most simple version and no double headband at all – it’s just two colored.

This are two versions of what I would call fake double headbands. It is really just two headbands side by side. The brown and yellow is done in opposite directions: one (the brown) from right to left and the other from left to right. For the brown-olive version I made them both from right to left.
On the left you see the view from outside the boards.

Fake double headbands, seen from inside the boards.

This is what I call a poor double headband. It is a simple headband (white) with the red string additionally looping around. The result is asymmetric. On the left you see it from outside the boards.



And this is the poor double headband seen from inside the boards.
– The treads are not cut-off properly, sorry.



This is what I would call a plain double headband and I think the most beautiful result that I have so far. The blue-white is really the same as the brown-olive that you see at the edge of the picture. It’s just less dense and more evenly woven. This is the view from outside the boards.



The plain double headband seen from inside the boards.



And finally this is what I call a true double Coptic headband: It features chain stitches with two threads, here in two colors, that are truly and symmetrically interlooped. This is the view from outside the boards.



The true double Coptic headband seen from inside the board.


So, what do you think, do you like these two-colored headbands? And which one do you like best?

Sorry that I can’t present them on a real book – I spent all the time figuring out how to do them, and didn’t have time yet to fit them on a book. I think they would look best on a book with really thick, maybe wooden, boards.

I wish you a good start into this new week. Thanks for reading!