Coiled Möbius strips

Do you remember making a Möbius strip at school? You take a strip of paper, half twist it once, and then glue the ends together.

The resulting loop has only one side and one edge – if you trace a route around the surface or the edge, you will end up back at your starting point.

I started thinking about how to create a Möbius strip by coiling. And I’m afraid I didn’t take any process shots, as I got carried away by the making!

I started by creating a coiled loop, using string and wire as the core and linen yarn for weaving. After joining the loop, I started coiling the next round above the first loop. But I then moved the coiling down across the loop so that I was coiling the next round below the first loop. This produced the equivalent of the half twist.

After that, I just continued coiling as normal. By turning the loop over or upside down, I could continue to coil in the normal orientation. The original single loop became the central loop, and each complete round of coiling produced a loop on either side of the central loop.

I then got more ambitious and decided to try a larger loop with three twists. I used the same core but used knitting yarn for the coiling.

This started out as a bangle, but as I added more rounds the hole became smaller. So to make a bangle I need to start with a larger initial loop or coil fewer rounds. Lesson learned!