Adventures in Historical Tabletweaving

Almost 2 months since last post and not a lot to report.  I've just started a new project but it's not going to be a quick one.  I'm going to make 12th century "Pontifical shoes" with tablet woven bands on them.  The bands and their layout will be inspired by the shoes of Philipp von Schwaben and the construction of the shoes will be similar to a number of other pairs from around the same time or slightly earlier.  Some of these shoes are pretty bling, with silk coverings, tablet weaving, embroidery (mostly chain stitch and wire embroidery), gilt leather, decorative rivets, precious stones and cutouts (I don't think any of them have *all* of those things but some have most).  Here are some links if you're interested: Photo of shoes of Bishop Bernhard of Hildesheim (d. 1153) Fabulous beasts—leather, silk and gold: recent research on and conservation of 12th century footwear from the episcopal tombs in Trèves Cathedral 2005 article on restoration of one...

  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!

Well I reached the first milestone in my distracting embroidery, and managed to put it aside.  Got back to the weaving and managed to finish the first bicep band. Half way there!  Things were really going downhill near the end in terms of the integrity of the cards and the warp. So I've decided to re-string everything with new cards.  Woohoo.  That should keep me occupied far another week or so. Anyway, here's a picture of the embroidery  I've been working on.  It's going to be a buskin, based on the ones of Walter de Cantelupe .  The lion is from some manuscript I cunningly didn't write down the name of (Will have to trawl back through the University Library to find it again)

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.