Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

Warp: White and green silk   Weft: Green silk Pattern: Hallstatt Inv.Nr. 89.870 Cards: 12 pattern + 1 and 3 border Width: 9mm Length: Approx. 75cm This band is covered in Bunte Tuche & Gleissendes Metall, Frühe Kelten der Hallstattzeit , and also "Tablet-woven Ribbons from the prehistoric Salt-mines at Hallstatt, Austria" - results of some experiments in Hallstatt Textiles . The former describes it as being in Hochdorf technique and the latter as being regular 3/1 broken twill. I wove the pattern in Hochdorf structure, but rather than the alternating pairs of SS and ZZ I oriented the tablets all Z on the left and S on the right. This allowed the tablets to turn as a pack 2/3 of the time (border excluded). Sorry the photo is a little blurry, but the end result is quite snappy in person especially considering its simplicity. If you're wondering about the uneven border, this was present on the original.

Warp: White and blue wool Weft: White wool Pattern: Hochdorf find no. 39 Cards: 32 pattern + 4x2 border Width: 1.8cm Length: Approx. 1m This is my first go at the technique sometimes referred to as "pebble weave" due to the sort of dimples or "pebbles" of the contrasting colour that appear in the ground areas.  "Pebble weave" can also refer to an Andean technique which is not the same thing. Excluding the border tablets, tablets are threaded in two holes, alternating in pairs of SS and ZZ. Each pair is turned as a unit.  To get the background area (white with blue dimples in my version), all rows do a quarter turn twice in one direction and then twice in the other.  To bring the other colour to the front, do not reverse the turning direction of a pair. In the pattern above right, each B or F represents 2 tablets turning backward or forward for 2 quarter turns.  Originally I just had a "pattern" showing what the finished band looks ...

Warp: White and blue wool Weft: White wool Pattern: Laceby Cards: 12 pattern + 2x2 border Width: 0.8cm Length: Approx. 1.1 metres So you may have noticed, I'm kinda obsessed with two-hole patterns at the moment, and this is one that people mention a lot.  It is described by Grace Crowfoot in Antiquaries Journal 36 (1956), in the article Anglo-Saxon sites in Lincolnshire by F.H. Thompson. The preserved fragment is only 3x1.1cm, found in the back of a 6th century brooch from Laceby, England. The original is made of linen. Crowfoot posits two different ways of weaving the band, one using a heddle (ie not using tablets), and one using "six 2-hole tablets, with two threads in each hole".  I'm utterly unable to explain how the latter system would result in the pattern reconstruction given (same as the one pictured) so I assume that the reconstruction was a bit of a stab in the dark.   This reconstruction uses a tabby weave.  You can see a similar (possibly...

Warp: Wool (fibreholics) Weft: Wool (fibreholics) Pattern: from Latviesu Jostas Cards: 20 pattern + 2x3 border Width: 1.5cm Length: 55cm   This technique came up on the SCA-Card-Weaving list recently and I was inspired to give it a go.  The pattern is from Latviesu Jostas by Aleksandra Dzérvítis & Lilija Treimanis.  Wonder of wonders, this book was in the National Library of New Zealand (Finding a book I'm looking for domestically is a minor miracle).  The book is in Latvian and English.  Mostly it covers traditional patterns but it also has some 12th century patterns, although information from an archaeological perspective is lacking.  This one is described as "Stameriene, blue wrap". The book is pretty emphatic about getting the colours to have the characteristic greenish tinge of local dyes.  I gave this a crack by overdying my blue, red and yellow wools with green dye.  It didn't really result in the rig...

Warp: Red, white, yellow and green silk (fibreholics) (original in wool) Weft: White silk (fibreholics) (original in linen) Pattern: St Maurice monestary, 8-10th century (Collingwood p. 156) Cards: 18 pattern + 2x2 border (2x3 in original).  2 holes per pattern card Width: 7mm (original 11mm) Length: 78cm This band is quite different to any I have done before.  The pattern area is woven with 9 pairs of 2 tablets, each threaded in two holes.  One tablet carries a red and a white warp thread, and the other a yellow and a green (note: these are the colours I used; discussion on the colours of the original below).  The tablets are manipulated individually to form the pattern.  The interesting point is that there is no warp twining: tablets "rock" from one colour to another but never complete a full rotation.  In the pattern to the right, the coloured squares show the colour that is up.  In the squares with the grey line through them, no colour...

Warp: Red and yellow wool (fibreholics) Weft: red wool Pattern: Snartemo II Cards: 16 Width: 1cm Length: 110cm I haven't had much time to post recently; most of my time has been going into organising the meal plan for Canterbury Faire . But the event is now over (and went very well!) so back to blogging... I wanted to have a simple-but-period band warped up for demonstration/teaching, and having just recently done Masku Humikkala, 8658:H17 I thought that Snartemo II would be good, since patterns where the cards turn as a pack are much easier for people to get their head around. I finally got the band warped up on the Thursday, halfway through the event. As usual, a lot of people came over and opined that the band looked lovely, but they couldn't possibly do anything like that themselves. In fact the majority of the people brave enough to give it a go were children! The band took form ridiculously quickly compared to other bands I've been doing recent...

Warp: Red silk Weft: DMC Cotton Brocade: Spun silver Pattern: Birka 7 Cards: 17 Width: 6mm Length: Approx. 1 metre What's new: 2 holes per card threaded This is my second project for Iarnulfr, who is now making me a bed. It is very similar to the first band I did for him, except that I have actual red silk now so don't have to dye it myself (with poor results), and I've persuaded him to let me try with only two holes in each card threaded (alternating positions on each card). There are Viking bands where this may have been done (it's also possible that they were threaded with linen and it has completely disappeared). Iarnulfr isn't sure what this band will be going on yet but it will probably be something tunic-like. Weaving a band with only two holes threaded per card requires a slightly different technique to 4-hole bands. With 4-hole bands, the warp threads are packed densely and you can pretty much walk away from the weaving without any fear that the cards w...