I started with a pic from one of Aisling's instagram posts. It showed a striking 2-hole pattern of red and blue Xs, with the O's subordinate to the Xs. I liked that a lot. As far as I can tell, the etsy pattern she based her band on had only two colors. That's also true of the Antinoe/Coptic band patterns in Aisling's book (and the museum samples her book re-creates). It was quite simple to chart out the pattern just based on the photo.
My friend showed me a pic of the fabrics the band will go on and requested colors to match -- turquoise, purple, and taupe (well, a medium beige-y brownish-grayish color). So I warped up. Purple for the middle X, aqua for the outer two Xs, taupe for the background, taupe and purple for the edge tablets, and purple for the weft.
Here is where I will digress to talk about warping. Ugh, I still have so much to learn. I ended up using a warping board since I didn't have conveniently-placed areas to set up C-clamps and using my inkle loom wouldn't be long enough. I wasn't able to keep the yarn balls untangled so continuous warping wasn't working well. I don't have a set-up to keep the balls from bouncing around yet, and that seems to be key for successful continuous warping. It wasn't too bad to do a few tablets at a time, in hopes that will reduce the tangling. Mostly I'm trying to keep the unwoven warp ends from tangling too badly, since this is a long warp and the ends can be a pain to keep straight. Oh, well. Also, the floor had more cat fluff on it than I realized until I found myself removing little cat fur pills from everything. That will haunt me for the entire warp, alas. And it won't be helped by the cat's continuing assistance, such as sitting on the warp and shedding, playing with and sitting on the unwoven warp ends, etc.
Someday I'll get warping streamlined. It's not so much cutting a bunch of threads and warping. It's more about keeping things under control so they don't tangle so badly. Even continuous warping offers great scope for tangling what with the tablets bouncing around and needing to rotate or flip tablets to get them in the correct orientation for the pattern.
Anyway, off I go. It's really fun, as two-hole always is. Bright little Xs, etc. But then I looked at the backside. Ooh, I like that better! Bright little diamonds in two colors, surrounded by the neutral/taupe background!
Hmm, should I alternate areas of colorful Xs and then colorful Os? I thought about it for a little while, then decided I didn't want to keep track of how many repeats before switching. This will be a long band with simple weaving, and I'd rather zone out and enjoy the rhythm.
So I unwove back to the beginning. The purple weft was pilling a bit and picking up cat fur, and there probably wouldn't have been enough for the full band. Hmm, maybe I should change that, too. I found a bit of taupe-ish thread in the doily leftovers stash that looked reasonable as a substitute. That's what I'm now using. It's almost certainly DMC Cebelia #10. I do like the little colored blips at the edge of the band that I get when using a weft color that contrasts with the edge warp color. It's ornamental. I also like hiding the blips by matching the color to the edges, which had been my original plan. The band will look good either way.
I am booping along happily now. Yes, changing out the weft and slightly altering the turn sequence was the right choice, at least for my own aesthetics.
The above pic is near the beginning so I'm still futzing around a bit with how tight to pull the weft and all that.
It amuses me that at first glance the band is so different from the pic that inspired me. I mean, it's really the same, just two steps from the inspiration, which was itself two steps from its own inspiration, and that too was an interpretation of the original artifact.
Hmm, the band might be cuter with 4 more pattern tablets in purple/taupe to add another set of purple diamonds. But no, I think I'm good now. Time to crank out pattern repeats!
I'm already dreaming about what I might want to tablet-weave next. More two-hole? That's always an option! Or maybe I should make sure I understand Icelandic double-weave or do more Sulawesi. Broken 3/1 twill is also calling to me. Or maybe more cords or some double-face. So many options, and they all make me happy.
I still need to do some experiments to see if I can reduce elongation in my tablet-weaving. Some of it relaxes out when I soak/wash/iron the band after it's done but nowhere near all. I've seen at least one person say that it's typical for cotton. Dunno if that's true. I should try some wool to see. Also, maybe backstrap might help? I certainly do pack the weft down pretty tightly (I can tell by the difficulty I sometimes have in unweaving), my weft is not pulled too tightly, and the elongation appears to be relatively independent of weft thickness (though thicker wefts might help -- I'll have to experiment). It also appears to be relatively independent of weight/tension, at least for the set-up I have. For two-hole, I could also try the thing where the edge tablets (the 4-threaded tablets) only turn every other row rather than every row. It's also possible that I like the more relaxed feel of my bands, and that I would not like the stiffness of a band that was way more tightly woven even if the motifs were forced into squareness.
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