Brocade planning and other useless ruminations

Next up is brocade.  It's time!  And my tablet-weaving area is open, no other commitments, no need to pack things away for a while, etc., for the first time in months.  OK, the cute band I just finished was a bit of a spontaneous distraction, but that doesn't count.  I seem to have been writing about brocade for most of 2025; time to actually do something about it.

First up will be a sampler.

I think I'll use the usual big-box-store #10 crochet cotton for the warp, as usual.  Weft will be one of the leftover doily cotton threads, with no real attempt made to match the weft color.

Supplementary/brocade weft will be something thicker, of course.  I think I'll mostly use the dull-gold cotton perle #3 that I used for the Falun-pattern gift band a while back.  But I might also use some of the oddball/synthetic knitting stash threads, too.  Or whatever else I find.

I think I'll warp up 13 tablets in alternating S Z orientation.  That should give me enough tablets for some of the early Saxon bands, a few Birka bands, some of the Coptic bands (in Aisling's book), motifs from Wollny's Roslein und Wecklein transcription, plus a few others, depending on how much space I have and what I feel like trying.  I might try the motifs in both positive and negative versions to see what they look like.  I might try a few isolated motifs or a bit of soumak.  I might try a few different colors and/or different brocade-weft materials.  Or I might not.  I'll see if there's a difference for me between carrying the brocade weft to the same place on the band vs only where the motif is.  Etc.

There's a lot to learn.  The basics seem very straightforward.  But there will be lessons in tension and also in brocade vs background and base-weft thread thicknesses.  I expect the first sampler band to be very sampler-ish.

And as always, there's a chance I'll get distracted by something else and brocade will end up getting delayed yet again.

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Because I'm dithering and blithering, I decided to list most of the major tablet-weaving techniques I know about, whether I've tried them, what I think, what future plans are, or whatever else I felt like writing about them.

I'll start with the techniques in Claudia Wollny's Tablets at Work (though I might miss a few minor ones she discusses within other chapters).

Threaded in patterns -- check!  These are popular with modern tablet-weaving designers.  There are a lot of fun things that can be done with threaded-in patterns and all-pack forward/reverse turning.  I still do a lot of bands that fall under this category.

Double face -- check, though I want to explore more soon.  In particular, I haven't done much yet with the blocky/repp version where the tablets are all in the same orientation as opposed to alternating orientation.  Also, I'm pretty sure Wollny does 2F2B double-face for both SZ and all-Z double-face, and I'm curious about the "rotate 180 to change colors" version that's in Shelagh's pdf on double-face repp effect.

Double cloth -- this is on my to-do list.  It's high up there, but I keep doing other things instead.  Maybe this will be after brocade.  It looks pretty straightforward but I'm sure there are nuances that will be learning opportunities when I get there.

3/1 twill -- check, though I'm only at the beginning of exploring this method.  I haven't explored all of the variations that Wollny discusses in Tablets at Work and her Twill 1+1 book.  I really like this technique and want to do a lot more than I've done so far.  I want to learn better how to chart my own patterns (I can do some, but maintaining the twill line and avoiding long floats are still things I'm working on.)  I also like the Collingwood method for doing one-color twill as a two-pack method (as opposed to handling each tablet) and need to explore color changes and other motif developments with this style of card manipulation.

Diagonals -- check!  This is such a big category of modern patterns.  Also, there are a couple of variations I've tried though not everyone makes a distinction between them.  The Egyptian-diagonals modern method usually changes cards in groups of two tablets and two turns.  Finnish diagonals are more carefree.

Kivrim -- check!  These are fun and also popular with modern tablet-weaving designers.

Sulawesi -- check!  I really like doing Sulawesi.  I definitely want to make more bands, both with traditional and modern and self-designed motifs.  I need to learn the tubular strap method that often accompanies bands that are woven by the original/traditional weavers.

Floatwork -- check!  I've done very little so far, though.

3-hole -- check!  I want to do more of this.  I like how one can combine the textures of 3-hole with a bit of floatwork.  I also like how there are historic bands that apparently combine this with brocade -- that too is on my eventual to-do list.

2-hole -- check!  I love doing 2-hole designs.  This might be my current favorite technique.  I've also done 2-hole where the holes are next to each other and those are interesting, too.

Pebble weave -- this is on my to-do list, but I haven't done it yet.

Cablework -- check, though only a teeny bit to make sure I understood.  Heck, I do cable knitting; this is pretty much the same thing.  I did see some nice-looking cablework bands not too long ago, which has piqued my interest a bit.

Structure weave -- check!  I don't think Wollny talks about the Gotland bands, which might be made through flipping tablets around a horizontal instead of a vertical axis.  I've tried the Gotland method as well as regular monochromatic textural weaving.

Relief structure -- I haven't tried this yet.

Brocade -- as I wrote at the top of this post, this is almost certainly up next.

There are plenty of other techniques that aren't covered by Tablets at Work.

Pack-idling -- check!  I like this method.  Collingwood talks about a lot of variations, but even just the style used for Cambridge Diamonds and Felixstowe is perfectly nice.

Cordage/tubular bands -- check!  I've only really done 4-threaded cordage so far.  The 2-hole methods are on my to-do list.

Tubular edges -- check!  (these are in the Finnish bands discussed in Tablet Woven Treasures)

Double-turns -- check!  (also from the Finnish bands)

Tie-downs -- check!  (from several places, but probably best known from Tablet Woven Treasures)

Laceby -- I haven't done this yet.  Shelagh discusses the method on her website.

Soumak -- I haven't done this yet.  Since this sort of overlaps with brocade, maybe I'll do a little bit in my brocade sampler.

Tablet weaving around a core thread -- I haven't done this yet.

Tablets with a different number of holes (3, 6, etc.) -- I haven't done this yet.

Adding or removing tablets during weaving -- I haven't done this yet (though I understand the basics)

Turning or bending the band during weaving -- ditto.

Adding extra or ornamental warp or weft threads (such as making fringe or attaching to a loom-warp) -- I haven't done this yet.

I'm sure there are more things casually mentioned in Collingwood that are entirely new categories of techniques, but which at my current knowledge completely zip over my head.

I'm also pretty sure there are things I've either done or that I'm aware of that aren't on this list.

So far, I've liked all the techniques I've tried.

Gift Band #5 -- more checks!

 

Another gift band!

This is another checkerboard band, but with a few differences.  It's based on something I saw, but doing this was kind of on my list anyway.  (That's partly because I want to explore some of the different ways of tablet-weaving checkerboards, and this is one obvious way to do it.)

I'm using a darker yellow thread, which contrasts appropriately with the white.  That makes me a LOT happier than the last band did.

This is still 16 tablets for the band, 2 edge tablets per side and 12 pattern tablets in the middle.

It's an all-forward pattern, making it quick to weave.

The edge tablets are SZ and ZS, so that the outermost tablets will look the same after twisting forward the whole way (i.e. they'll both either get tighter or looser, so their appearances ought to match).  The middle ones alternate 4 S with 4 Z.

I like it so far.  The checks are pretty close to square.

One thing I'd like to do is actual double-face.  I'd probably use all S or all Z tablet orientation.  I'll need more tablets so that I can do 2-3 rounds of double-face before the colors switch.

Shelagh has tablets switch colors by doing rotating 2 forward (without throwing the weft) and then continuing.  She calls it a "double-face repp-effect" weave.  https://www.shelaghlewins.com/tablet_weaving/double_faced_repp/double_faced_repp.pdf.  In case that wasn't clear, she says, "Patterns can be produced by giving some tablets an extra half turn, which exchanges the colours."  Later in the pattern she makes it clear that the half-turns are forward.

I checked Collingwood, because why not, and he says that to change colors in double-face, one can do the thing where you turn the cards in the same direction (throwing the weft each time), which is the standard method I've seen so far and what was used in the previous band I did (though really, it was a 4F-4B pattern).  But he says that instead, you can rotate the cards 180° either forward or backwards (without throwing the weft) and then continuing.  So I guess that checks out!

Clearly I need to put on a warp and try for myself, and see what differences there are in how things look.  I can't really tell for sure, but it looks like a neater color change than the method I used in the pseudo-double-face band I recently did.  Of course, that might partly be due to the previous band being in alternating SZ tablet orientations, and this band being all Z.  (and yeah, it probably is mostly due to that)  I can try that as part of my experiments, too.

Here's what it looks like on Shelagh's band.  I clipped a section that includes a bit more of her band so I can also look at the normal one-color 2F-2B area.  The checkerboard areas still look nicer than the alternating SZ tablets, and possibly more square.

I'm much happier with this band than I was with the last checkerboard band.

I am strongly thinking of doing brocade once I'm done with these gift bands.  I'd throw on a narrow-ish warp and try some simple patterns and variations.

Plus there's all of the other non-tablet-weaving fun!  I'm introducing more people to sprang this week, even though I'm just a baby sprang-er.  I can still show what I've learned so far, and that's enough to get others started.  I'm thinking about what sprang project I want to do next for my self-directed sprang education.