Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

I spent a lot of time weaving my bicep bands based on the chasuble of St Wolfgang a few years ago, but the end result was very underwhelming.  I used 120 denier loose-spun silk and it really wasn't up to the abrasion it got from the cards. This year I've re-woven it using 240 denier tight-spun silk and the thread came through it without any problems. I also used a better red. The result is so much better! The cards themselves took quite a beating just like they did last time. I think I'll try painting the edges of the cards with nail polish again next time I weave with this type of thread.  Getting enough "real" cards, like wood or bone, for a project with 400+ warp ends would be pretty expensive. I also think that tensioning would be challenging with cards that much thicker since the warp threads on the outside would need to be significantly longer than the ones in the middle.

  Yes, I have completely given up on naming these things.  Maybe it's a flower?  Anyway, here it is, the last of the 5 motifs. I took the photo below, which unusually for me managed to be in focus, and straight away noticed the knot (centre right, in red).  The knot is gone now but I'm glad nobody but the camera is looking that closely!   Here's another photo I thought I'd share.  When I finished the first of the two bands, the cards were a wreck, and when I swapped them all out for new ones I thought I'd try to improve the situation by making the cards a bit stiffer, so I painted nail polish around the edges of all of them.  Well, that worked, as far as making the cards stiffer went.  Not a one of them gave out. On the other hand, it didn't have a great effect on the warp.  This picture is of what greeted me when I moved the cards down about 10cm into the second band.  Threads dying all over the place.  Over the fo...

 This is the second motif I wove, but the first time I did it it was about 40% longer than this and I wasn't very happy with the outcome.  So here's my second attempt. I don't really have much more to say at this point other than that I'm about ready to finish this project and am very glad to have only about 5cm to go! Oh! and also, I bought brocade for the bliaut these bands will be going on and it is very pretty .

Here's another figure from the Chasuble of St Wolfgang: the candlestick. I assume.  It might be a flower, I guess. This is the first figure after I re-strung all the cards.  Most of the many, many knots I tied in my warp threads are hidden on the back of the cards, but some of them slipped into the front while I wasn't looking. For this figure I tried doing as the original seems to have done and making some of the pattern in the ground colour (the blue parts).  It looks OK here, but from many angles the blue rather fades into the background.

Yesterday, Aldygtha created a new Historic Tablet Weaving Facebook group, and it is already filling up with interesting discussions and beautiful photos of members' work.  If you like historical tablet weaving (and you don't hate Facebook!) you should join!

Sorry for the long break between posts, I've had 3 weekends in a row swallowed up by events, and also I may have got a ... little bit ... distracted ... by an embroidery project. OK, so I haven't done any weaving for the last 3 weeks.  And probably won't for another 2 or so, when I finish the first figure in the embroidery and hopefully get it out of my system. Anyway, here's another figure from the Chasuble of St Wolfgang band.  It's actually the 3rd one I wove; the second one doesn't look so great so I'm going to see how it comes out the second time through before posting it.  But this bird looks pretty much like I was hoping.  Here's the link to the photo of the original on Kopert.  Not sure why this bird is holding a boot.

 Right.  Here are some pictures of my lion from the Chasuble of St Wolfgang.  This is the pattern from pages 120-121 of EPAC . The pattern in EPAC is 125 tablets wide, although the description of the band says it has 132 tablets.  Not sure if any "lost" tablets are in the border or the pattern. There's one obvious way that this pattern differs from regular 3/1 broken twill: The vertical (lengthways) cross-sections of the regions where the red is up are not multiples of 2 passes long.  In fact to counteract the difference in warp density and weft density, the lines across the band are usually 1 weft pass wide while the lines down the band are usually 2 tablets (8 warp threads) wide.  When I started, I wasn't sure how to approach this- maybe there should be half turns to bring the red up and down at the right point? Or maybe the red should be brought up early or down late, with the brocade obscuring the jagged edges?  I couldn't tell from the photos ...

Well, it's been a month since my last post, and I've been travelling, and sick, and lazy, so I haven't got around to writing anything up yet.  So here's a somewhat blurry and out-of-date photo of the first couple of centimetres of the St Wolfgang pattern, just to prove I've done something!  There are several mistakes just in this little section of the band but it still manages to look quite pretty. Hopefully I will get  real blog post together soon!

I have a new project.  It is the band on the Chasuble of St Wolfgang (or rather, one of them).  You may have seen the pattern in EPAC on page 120, or plate 179 in Collingwood.  There are photos of the original at Kopert -taken by someone who knows it's useful to show the part of the band where the brocade has worn away!  You can see Nancy's version here but it is not 3/1 broken twill The band is approximately 3cm wide, has over 120 tablets, and is woven in brocaded 3/1 broken twill.  This is the first time I am combining both techniques so it is a bit of an adventure.  To make things even more exciting, I am weaving it using very thin (120 denier) red and blue filament silk from Devere .  For the brocade I am using real gold thread I bought from John Marshall . I'll be weaving on my inkle loom because there's no way I'll be able to keep things neat otherwise. EPAC graphs the first figure from the band, the lion (or aardvark pushing a lion mask,...