Tubular Tablet Woven Cord

I saw one of those tablet-woven tubular cords on someone's website and suddenly decided I need to make one.  Today.  Right now.

So I did.

This pattern is seen on a purse strap of a 14th century German purse in the V&A Museum.  Apparently the chart/description is from an article in the Spring 2008 issue of TWIST, but I found it on an archive.org copy of a silkewerk.com page.

This one is 9 cards, all 4-threaded, all with the same orientation.  There are 3 cards each with red, yellow, and white.  (I picked the same colors as the original seems to be, more or less.)  The original is silk, while mine is the usual cotton.  I used #10 cotton for both warp and weft.

This is a cool pattern because you can get it to bias and thus make spirals.  When the cards are oriented \ (Z-threaded) and turned forward and the shuttle thread goes from right to left, it spirals to the right.  When the cards are oriented / (S-threaded) and the shuttle thread goes from left to right, it spirals to the left.  I assume that mixed directions don't spiral, or don't spiral as well.  One can also flip cards or turn them backwards to change the direction that the warp is twining -- warp twining direction and spiral-weft-thread direction go the same way, if I understand it correctly.

The basic concept is like I-cord in knitting -- the weft always goes in the same direction, and one tightens it to bring the edges together.  This makes a tube instead of a flat band.

The original zigzagged at random intervals, so that's what I did, too.

The cord is roughly 1/4" in diameter and roughly 63" long.

When weaving, the band is all stretched out and straight, though it wants to rotate.  As soon as the tension is off, the threads relax into spirals.  It's fun to watch.

I found that the weft tension was looser one way than the other.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe the thread ply direction also affects things?  Or it's because I turned cards backwards rather than flipping them?  The loose bits go away pretty easily if I wiggle the cord.  I was silly and used a white weft thread to connect the red and yellow.  I should have had white on one side instead of both being colorful, to minimize the little white weft blips.

This is really cute.  I will play around with colors and different numbers of tablets when I make more.

There's also an article in ATN 21 that shows a tubular cord, monochrome, on 16 tablets, but with half-turns between the weft spirals instead of quarter-turns.  I might try that someday to see what it looks like.  Assuming that it's a correct description -- sometimes the explanations evolve.

The photo of the purse is not particularly high resolution, but those sure look like fingerlooped braids coming off of the tassel.  They might even be the ends of the purse strap; I can't quite discern what's going on.  The drawstring looks like it could be a twisted cord.  I'm not sure if the braid on the sides is embroidery or a braid that's sewn on.

The museum's description is of course quite perfunctory where narrow wares are concerned.  Oh, well!

This is my first tablet-woven tubular cord.  It won't be the last.  I can now officially add this technique to my mental repertoire of cord-making methods.