Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

Warp: Perle cotton Weft: DMC embroidery cotton Brocade: Kreinik jap Pattern: 15ht century chasuble neckine, Braunschweig ( EPAC p. 137 ) Cards: 15 Width: 1.3mm Length: Approx. 40 cm What's new: Cotton ground, Kreinik jap brocade. No reversal of card turn direction. This was just a "filler" project while I waited for the materials for my next plans to arrive. The pouch is of green wool with perle cotton lucet cord strings. Perle cotton is not a period material for brocaded tablet weaving but it is a good stand-in for silk for the cheap of heart (actually, the silk I'm using is cheaper by the metre than the perle cotton, but you have to buy twenty times as much). I used the leftovers from the lucet cord for the warp. I think it is DMC perle cotton #8, which is quite a thick thread. The brocade is Kreinik jap. For most of it I used a double thickness of #5, which is pretty thin, but near the end I ran out and switched to a single thickness of #12, which has a pret...

Warp: Linen W eft: Linen Brocade: Spun silver Pattern: Birka 21 Cards: 17 Width: 1cm Length: Approx. 70cm What's new: Linen warp Coloured linen tunics are pretty iffy for the 12th century, but they're cool, so I wear them anyway. Likewise it's probably a bit early for linen tabletweaving, but I wanted to give weaving with a linen warp a go. I had a light brown linen tunic that was as yet unadorned. The pattern I used was another one from Egon Hansen's Tabletweaving . It is a simplified version of Birka 21. The fylfots are omitted, although honestly I don't think anyone would have noticed if I'd included them, and there are only two scrolly things between each repeat of the tooth motif. The ground warp and weft are both green DMC embroidery linen. The brocade weft is (again) Anchor silver lame. (The pattern doesn't exactly leap out at you on the band but this photo isn't helping) I'd been reliably informed it wouldn't be a pleasant experienc...

Warp: Silk Weft: Linen Brocade: Spun silver Pattern: Birka 2 Cards: 17 Width: 10mm Length: 114cm What's new: Doubled-up spun silver brocade, linen weft This project is for my friend Iarnulfr, in return for a chest he made at Canterbury Faire. Originally it was for the cuffs and collar of his brown Russ coat, but when coat and trim were finally in the same place it was determined that the colours clashed so its final purpose is now unknown. The pattern is Birka 2 (chosen by Iarnulfr). I got it out of "Tablet Weaving" by Egon Hansen. Iarnulf wanted the ground to be red, so I dyed some of my white silk red with Dylon- unsurprisingly it turned out sort of orange. The brocade weft is two strands of Anchor lame silver thread, which is basically a very fine jap. The original Birka bands used drawn silver, but I don't have any, so the jap will have to do. The weaving went very smoothly although again there was a fair bit of variation in the band width.