Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

Warp: Blue (fibreholics) and white (Anna Gratton) wool Weft: white wool Pattern: Evebo band, pattern by Maikki Karisto Cards: 22 pattern + 2x1 border (original has a wide border) Width: 1.5cm Length: 76cm (43 cm for 1 full repeat of pattern) I had just strung up my inkle loom with the intent of weaving the Evebo band using this pattern - which I believe is based on Lise Raeder Knudsen's pattern which is the one in Hansen- when Maikki Karisto coincidentally emailed me with suggestions of bands I might like to try- including this one, which she offered to share her pattern for.  Maikki's pattern has 22 pattern tablets as opposed to the 23 in the GTT pattern .  It also includes the partial 6th figure from the edge of the band.   The GTT pattern also does not include the zigzag region which occurs twice in the pattern.  This region is particularly interesting because the tablets lose their offset to one another so that the zigzag is...

Warp: Candy silk (devere) and sewing linen Weft: Candy silk Brocade: Spun silver (devere) and gilt passing thread (Hedgehog handworks) Soumak: Red silk (devere) Pattern: Mammen Cards: 23 pattern + 2x7 border Width: 1.5cm Length: 80cm I think this pattern is going to be my nemesis. As you may recall, I have already woven it twice , after New Zealand Post managed to lose it the first time. At the time, pretty much all my information on the band came from Hansen. However, since then I came across Lise Ræder Knudsen's article Brocaded Tablet-Woven Bands: Same Appearance, Different Weaving Technique in NESAT VII, which talks about this band and also some others in a similar style. She has a quite different idea about how the band is constructed: Hansen says that all cards are threaded with silk and the band is executed with "card idling"- ie turn the odd-numbered cards in one pass and the even-numbered ones in the next. Knudsen says that all 4 holes were ...

Warp: Red, white and blue wool (fibreholics) Weft: blue wool (the original was a plant fibre) Pattern: Humikkala H31:18 -3/1 broken twill Cards: 33 Width: 2.8 Length: 14cm OK, here is my best effort at Humikkala H31:18. This band is covered in Hansen, and Hansen's pattern is converted into something that actually works by Guido (I think he tried to reconstruct the band based on the photo of the reconstructed band in Hansen, which differs from the actual pattern given). However after hearing from Silja Penna-Haverinen that there were some problems with Hansen's reconstruction, I really wanted to have a go at this band using other sources. Silja put me in contact with Maikki Karisto, who is working on a book which covers this band and many others, and who has examined the band closely. Maikki is understandably a little cagey about sharing all her information, since a) it is still evolving as she researches, b) she would like people to buy her book when it comes out and ...

I have become interested recently in the medieval Finnish bands such as the Kaukola and Humikkala bands that appear in Hansen and the Kirkkomäki band described by Silja Penna-Haverinen in NESAT X. Imagine my delight when Silja herself commented on my previous post on the subject and said she would be willing to answer some questions I had. I thought I would share some information from her answers that might be of interest to people. 1. I feel a bit better about not being able to work out how the technique of altering the places of two adjacent tablets at the intersection of two diaonal lines works, because Silja says this research is out of date. Actually what was thought to be the two central tablets is only a single tablet (the pattern has an odd number). 2. Apparently there is no good source of photos of the Finnish bands from earlier than the 20th century (not even in Finnish publications), which is quite sad. There are some random published photos, but not any kind of compilat...

Warp: Red, yellow, green and blue wool (fibreholics) Weft: green wool Pattern: Phiala's Snartemo V pattern (6th century Norwegian) Cards: 44 Width: 3.5cm Length: 50cm OK, so I said I'd do Snartemo V and here it is. It is from Phiala's pattern, with a few tweaks, and also a few points where I lost track of where I was up to and did the motifs in the wrong order! This is one of the few bands I have done where there is actually a decent pciture of the original (click through to a larger version). You can see that my own version is a lot more stretched out than the original which is if anything about shorter than square. I found it impossible to get the weft density up using sticky wool. This is a popular band to try and it always looks great. Here are some other examples: Guido Gehlhaar ( Steinmaus ) Irene Lyng ( Brikvaevning ) Micky V Schoelzke ( les tissages de micky ) One nice this about this band is that because the eyes are drawn to the regions with long flo...

Someone asked earlier today on the SCA-Card-Weaving list whether anyone had a pattern for the Kaukola band in Hansen. This prompted me to re-visit my pattern and check it against Hansen, since I've recently found instructions on how to read his mysterious patterns. It turns out the pattern I reconstructed by looking at his band was slightly off, so I've re-jigged my pattern to reflect that. The difference to the appearance of the finished band is pretty trivial. There are just a few extra reversals in column 4. They don't change what colour is up at any point, just the direction of twist. I did have this pattern marked up for half-turns but I've been informed this is incorrect so I've removed them.

Warp: Red, yellow, green and blue wool (fibreholics) Weft: same as above (varying colour) Pattern: Phiala's demo Snartemo pattern Cards: 18 Width: 1.6cm Length: 60cm The name "Snartemo" is given to a technique where each hole in a tablet is threaded with a different colour, and tablets are offset a quarter turn from each other so that turning them as a pack produces diagonal lines. Sometimes a card is turned repreatedly backward and forward, forming "floats" where a single colour appears on the top for several passes of the weft. The canonical Snartemo band is Snartemo V, from 7th century Snartemo, Norway. Hansen lists three other bands in a similar technique. This is the band I warped up while demonstrating how to do a Continuous Warp. It is the demonstration pattern (Excel format) Phiala gives showing how to construct a Snartemo pattern, with the green and blue warps swapped because that's how I absentmindedly warped it up. I've also marked...

Note: This pattern doesn't match exactly what's in Hansen; you can see an updated version here Warp: White and light green silk Pattern: Kaukola 'S' motif Cards: 15 Width: 1cm Length: 1.1m I wanted to try a non-brocaded pattern at Canterbury Faire and this seemed like a pretty gentle introduction. This is the band from Kaukola mentioned on page 109 of Collingwood. It is from 11th-13th century Finland. It is covered in Hansen, pattern included. This is the first time I've tried to follow a non-brocade pattern out of Hansen. People had warned me that Hansen's patterns are not the clearest but this was my first personal encounter with them (It didn't help that I was working from the Danish version of the book). In the end I abandoned the pattern and just worked it out from the picture of the reconstruction. The pattern is only 7 tablets wide so it wasn't too hard to work out and would have been trivial if I'd done any patterns with Egyptian di...

Warp: Dark green silk Brocade: Spun sterling silver (Devere) Pattern: Birka 6 Cards: 21 Width: 1.2cm Length: 2m This band is for Bjorn, in return for the replica Viking beater in the previous post, as well as a bone pickup stick and some antler bobbins which I will blog about shortly. It is very similar to the other Birka patterns I have done. Bjorn supplied me with some 28 gauge sterling silver wire to use for the brocade, but I couldn't make it turn corners sharply enough. You can see my attempt to use it at left in the picture below. When that failed I turned to Devere's sterling silver metalic thread around a cotton core. It is very nice to work with, my favourite brocade thread so far. I used it double stranded. Bjorn liked the band, originally intended for cuffs around his tunic, enough to commission more of the same- this time to go around the neck- in return for a chest, so I'm about to start on a second metre of it.

UPDATE: it seems this pattern probably isn't Anglo-Saxon after all, but medieval . Warp: Red, green and white silk Weft: Green silk Pattern: Woven in diamonds Cards: 32 Width: 1 - 2.5 cm Length: 140cm What's new: not brocade OK, so this isn't a brocaded pattern. I'm getting more and more keen to try the various non-brocaded techniques and sometime next year I expect I'll drop the "brocaded" from the blog title. Not yet though because I have 3 brocaded bands queued up after this already. This pattern comes from a belt from Anglo-Saxon Cambridge. It is described on page 122 of Collingwood (2002 edition), page 53 of Hansen and on Þora sharptooth 's site. Reproductions by Þora sharptooth and Shelagh Lewins can be seen online. This pattern was calling out to me at this particular time because like the Mammen band it involves quarter-turning alternating left and right cards. It is the only non-brocaded piece I've done so far other than the bas...

This is my second go at the Mammen cuffs after my first was lost in the mail. For the specs see the Mammen band Mk I . This time through I decided to do away with the whole "edge tablets turn every pick" thing by dropping one tablet (Under the stave on the left side). This means there are an even number and as long as you're throwing the ground weft in the right direction one of the threads of the edge tablet is caught up every pass. Additionally it (theoretically) means that the two twines on the outside of the stave border looks symmetrical- although to be fair I'm not neat enough for it to be an issue. Additionally I wanted to see whether I could encourage the band to be wider by using thicker tablets- the idea being that if the warp splays slightly outwards rather than inwards as it leaves the weaving the band will be more likely to widen than narrow. Since I still don't have any proper tablets yet I achieved this by gluing multiple playing cards together....

Warp: Lilac silk Weft: Lilac linen Brocade: Spun gold + silver (Kreinik jap) Pattern: Wide Mammen band Cards: 17 Width: 1cm Length: 70cm What's new: 2 different brocades, turning alternating cards This one was executed just the same as the wide mammen band. The pattern is from Egon Hansen's Tabletweaving but I had to take a stab at the location of the silver bits myself based on the Danish National Museum's photos. I didn't take any photos of this one before sending it up to Iarnulfr so I guess it lives only in my memory :(

Warp: Lilac silk Weft: Lilac linen Brocade: Spun gold + silver (Kreinik jap) Pattern: Wide Mammen band Cards: 35 Width: 1.5cm Length: 2 x 30cm What's new: 2 different brocades, turning alternating cards A couple of months ago I came across the Danish National Museum's page on the Mammen textile finds . It lets you zoom right in and look at the detail. The arm bands are gorgeous and I decided I wanted to give them a go. They differ in 2 major ways from any of the bands I've woven previously: 1. The cards aren't all turned at once. Peter Collingwood describes this band as having the cards threaded in 2 holes and turned as a pack but EPAC says they were threaded in 4 holes and the odd and even cards were turned in alternate picks (The edge cards are still turned every pick). I decided to go with EPAC 's interpretation since I've already tried the 2-hole thing. Turning the cards half as often means you can get a higher weft density. 2. There are two brocad...

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...

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.