Card idling "satin" ribbon

Warp: Green silk (colourmart)
Weft: Green silk (colourmart)
Pattern: card idling monochrome twill
Cards: 17
Width: ~1cm
Length: ~1m

I decided a while ago that I wanted to have a go at the "simulated satin effect" band from Þóra Sharptooth's Three Tablet Weaving Recipes page. So I did- but it seems I did every imaginable thing wrong in the process! Here's a list:
  • No loom: because I was taking this band travelling with me, I did it backstap style. This is the only band I have woven without two fixed tension points (whether it be 2 chairs, my Oseberg loom, or an inkle loom), excluding the tubular cord I did around Christmas. The tension of this band was all over the place
  • Using a new type of silk: This was the first outing of the silk I got from colourmart. The silk from colourmart is great value and the customer service is very friendly, but this silk turned out to be a lot stickier than what I was used to (closer to how wool behaves) which didn't help anything
  • Failure to read the instructions: Well actually, I did read the instructions just fine, several months before I started on the band. Then, 10 cm in, when I was unimpressed with the result, I managed to confuse the "satin effect" band with the "monochrome twill effect" one directly above it", and decided the reason it wasn't working so well was because it was supposed to be twill. I switched to twill and continued that way for the rest of the band.
  • Overestimating how satiny the result would be: see above. I think my expectations of this band were too high which led to me getting pretty frustrated with it.
  • Warp density too low: My flatmate Sonya tells me the band would have looked better if it had been narrower
  • Band spiral: I will cover this in another post but in summary: yeah, once I switched to the twill, the band took on a pronounced spiral. I didn't notice until I had finished because I was winding the band around my belt as I wove it.
The end result of all this is that I tired of the band very quickly and ended up giving up on the card idling just so I could get the damn thing finished. Because I was so bored with it I didn't take much care when weaving it and the whole thing is very ugly and uneven (the backstrap weaving will have contributed to this. I have used the finished band as garters on a new pair of hose, where nobody will see them.

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