Brocade Sampler, 8th and maybe the last post -- it's finished!

Done!

Here are the last few in-progress pics:

The top photo is a 13-tablet pattern taken from Ecclesiastical Pomp & Aristocratic Circumstances, p.120.  It's the border from band "2. Band on the chasuble attributed to St. Wolfgang, Bishop of Regensburg, 11th/12th century".  I did two repeats.

The middle photo has two motifs.  The one on the left is a 9-tablet pattern from the Saxon Rabbit handout, from Grave 44 mid 6th century, Lyminge, Kent, pattern 10 in the Crowfoot paper.  I did 4 pattern repeats.  The longer one on the right is a 13-tablet pattern from Anna Neuper's Modelbuch, No. 76 (fol 79v), p.56.  I did 4 pattern repeats.

I ran out of background weft at this point.  The new stuff is the same color but maybe a bit thicker and softer.  It doesn't matter.

The bottom photo has the last two motifs.  The motif on the left is a 9-tablet pattern from Roslein und Wecklein, #214, p.179.  I did 2 repeats.  (Hmm, it would look nice with a pearl or pretty bead in the spot between motifs.)  The motif on the right, the last one, is a 13-tablet pattern, a motif adapted from EC&AC, p. 134, pattern "17. Bands on a pontifical skull cap, 11th/12th century".  I did the little diamond motif on the upper left part of the chart, 2 diamonds and then one more row to close up the upper diamond.

I maybe could have gotten one more small motif in, but I decided that was enough, and so endeth my first brocade sampler band.

Fresh off the tablets, unblocked, the band is about 5/8" wide and about 63" long.

There are 25 different motifs.  Wow.  I didn't even get to all of the charts I'd printed out, and also didn't end up making up more of my own patterns.

Many of the motifs look better in person.  The brocade weft is shiny enough that it affects how the pics look.  Not surprisingly, the later motifs tend to look better than the earlier ones I did.

I'm still working on consistency though I'm getting better.  Adding a brocade border stripe, as many of the historic patterns did, probably helps with that since then the slight angle difference at the turning points will be in the edge stripe rather than in the main motif.

I really like the interplay of positive and negative space -- both the brocade and the tiedowns (in the background warp) make interesting patterns.

I'm pretty sure I managed to not accidentally weave any swastikas.

Brocade is pretty easy as tablet-weaving techniques go, at least for the basics, and really about the same, time-wise, as other fiddly tablet-weaving techniques.

I'll definitely do brocade again!  It'll be interesting to do it with silk and/or metallic threads, similar to the materials used for many of the historic bands.

Now to decide what project I feel like doing next.  So many possibilities but nothing is screaming at me.  So I'll do some thinking and browsing of books and websites and what-not to see what appeals.

Brocade sampler, second post

What I've done since the last post:

After I did the zigzag, I did an improv diamond.

Then I started in on other people's patterns.

The first three patterns are from Crowfoot's Saxon/Kentish paper.  (Early Anglo-Saxon Gold Braids by Grace Crowfoot and Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, Journal of Medieval Archaeology, 1967).

For the first, I've done 3 pattern repeats.  The middle one has the brocade thread going from edge to edge (well, edge of the pattern, not edge of the band).  The other two are like the bands in the paper, where the brocade thread zigzagged from row to row rather than entering and leaving the band in the same spot for each row.

I can't tell if there's much difference in appearance of the motif or the band in general.  It does look like the brocade threads are less parallel with the close-to-motif method -- the edge brocades are more likely to be at an angle.  But the difference is slight and might well be due to other factors.

Here's a closer look:

The second one has one repeat, and the third has 4 repeats (of a 3-row sequence).  The first two are 7-tablet patterns and the third is a 9-tablet pattern.  All are Anglo-Saxon 6th-ish century and from Kent.

All of the Saxon patterns I did are also charted out in the pdf on the Saxon Rabbit website, saxonrabbit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/saxonweavingdiagramskent2.pdf

Then I did one of the patterns from Anna Neuper's Modelbuch.  It's pattern 87, on p.52 (right column).  The brocade thread went from edge to edge of this 7-tablet pattern.

I'm still slow, of course.  I am not great at keeping tension consistent from row to row, especially where the brocade goes over one tablet vs more than one.  I'm also not great at keeping all the threads parallel from row to row.

The shuttle holding my brocade thread is not working well for me.  So that's something to change for future patterns.  I might try a different shuttle to see if it does better.  Something narrow-ish and pointed-ish and smooth-ish and vaguely flexible would be good.

But the pattern is clearly visible, yay!

I'm not sure what I'll do next.  Continue to do random motifs, I guess, so that I can work on the muscle memory and figure out how to improve.  I'm not yet feeling the need to change out the brocade thread or add additional brocade threads.

This feels a bit like knitting, especially stranded-color knitting.