Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

Warp: Thin white silk Weft: Light green silk Brocade: Yellow silk Pattern: Anna Neuper #32 Cards: 27 Width: 1.2cm Length: Approx. 1.1 metres I had some time to kill while I waited for some books and materials to arrive so I did another band from Anna Neuper's Modelbuch using colours I don't like very much.  I'll donate it to something.

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: 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: 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: Dark green silk (fibreholics) Weft: Dark green silk (devere) Brocade:  Tambour thread (Hedgehog handworks) Pattern: Taplow Barrow Cards: 23 pattern + 2x2 border Width: 1.2cm Length: 85cm This is just a quick brocade pattern I did while waiting for some other stuff to come together. The pattern caught my eye when it was executed by opusanglicanum not long ago.  Since them I've also spotted a version by Gina-B which made me want to buy the metal strip she used on the spot.  Unfortunately Benton and Johnson's website is under maintenance so I will just have to be patient. The pattern is from page 45 of Crowfoot and Hawkes's Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids . I used the tambour thread which I bought after having trouble with the cornering in the Mammen band.  It's definitely more supple- whether it's supple enough I'm not sure yet because the fibreholics silk I used for this warp is about 5x thicker than the devere stuff I used for the Mam...

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 ...

I do have something more interesting to write about, but work has been a bit draining recently, and I have really not felt like sitting in front of the computer during Fun Time. So in the meantime, here's a picture of a Mouse Guard pouch I made last week with tubular tabletwoven cords. There are 3 cords 80cm each, woven on 4 cards in wool. The spiral is against the twist so the end result does not look spiral-y.