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.

Finished: yellow and white checkerboard gift band #3

It's finished!  I started with 4 yards (144") and ended up with a band that is 116"-ish inches long and about 3/4" wide.

If I do this kind of thing again, I'll need a darker yellow.  Also, I think there might be better ways to make a checkerboard.

I noticed (when I was messing up), that all-forward with 4 tablets of each color makes something that looks reasonably square and looked pretty good.  So that might be a possibility.  Otherwise, maybe I'd go with 6-8 tablets of each color, and do a few cycles of 2F2B before changing to the other color, as with Durham Seal tag #2.

Four tablets of each color still left the blocks elongated.  And the 4F4B version of double-face didn't quite fit with the color changes.  A friend is doing this pattern (well, not the same pattern, but the exact same turning sequence) using 6 tablets of each color.  Even her blocks are elongated, so it really is about 4 tablets not being wide enough.

It's OK, but I'm not fully satisfied with how this band turned out.  I didn't choose the pattern to follow, and I did not see a darker yellow thread in the stores.  The weaving is OK, especially after I gave up trying to loosen the weft tension in hopes of squaring up the blocks.  I kept it slightly loose but not sloppy loose.

I hope the recipient likes the band, and that it meets their needs.

What next?  I want to finish a doily I'm knitting.  And then, maybe another gift band.  I'll see what the recipient wants.  If there isn't specific guidance, maybe I'll do a checkerboard again, but with blue and green on white, 4 tablets per color, and doing an all-forward turning sequence, probably still with the alternating S and Z tablet orientation.  Or not.  We'll see.

I haven't thought beyond these gift bands so I'm not sure what's next once I'm on my own again.  Is it time to figure out if I hate brocading?  More two-hole and Sulawesi?  Something diagonal-ish or 3/1 twill or pack-idling?  Etc.

Gift Band #3: yellow and white checkerboard (in progress)

 

Here are the first few repeats of the next gift band -- yellow and white checkerboard with a black edge.  The recipient has specified the colors and also the chart to be used.

It's basically a 4F4B pattern, but in a way that works with the threading pattern to make it a simple double-face pattern.

The yellow is the darkest yellow sold at the nearby big box crafts store since they don't carry the full color range.  It's not contrast-y enough with the white, which is bugging me greatly.  I also would have preferred a bit more double-face to even out the texture of the different-colored boxes, something more similar to the Durham Seal Tag #2 (which is still on my to-do list).

Oh, well.  Hopefully the recipient will like it anyway.  I warped up 4 yards and hope to get at least 3 yards from it.

I had to buy new Aunt Lydia's thread since I didn't have enough of the white, yellow, or black left for this band.  Oddly, it doesn't feel like the stuff I bought several years ago.  Dunno if it's softer or limper or what, but my fingers believe that it's not the same.  It also tangles very easily, possibly more easily than the old stuff.

This would have been a perfect band for continuous warping.  Alas, I still do not have a good set-up for it.  I tried, but I still don't have a successful way to keep the skeins of thread from bouncing around and twisting around each other and otherwise misbehaving.  After I untangled that mess, it turned out to be faster to do a basic cut-and-thread method of setting up my tablets.  Which is stupid.

I'm also still trying to keep my weft tension a bit loose, to try to reduce the lengthening of the motifs.  Dunno if it's working.   I'm not quite as consistent with my width as I would like when I do that.  I have no idea if it's making a meaningful difference.

It makes me unhappy to be doing this band that isn't looking how I'd like it to look.  Though unfortunately I wasn't able to find a good contrast-y yellow, which means that just about anything I'd do wouldn't look right.  The weaving itself is harmless though I think the 4F4B turning sequence doesn't harmonize well with the color pattern, either.

Every band is a learning experience, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it at the time.

Making Sulawesi progress

 

A few more motifs done (you can't see all of them in this pic, but they're there).  I'm really enjoying the Sulawesi tablet-weaving technique.  The motif on the right is one from Saga Wool Craft's website.  The one on the left is a slightly modified version of one of the Saga Wool Craft patterns.  Both motifs -- well, actually, all of the website's motif charts I'm using -- are from the 16-tablet gallery at https://sagawoolcraft.com/?page_id=2680.  I probably spend more time dithering and doodling than I do weaving.

It's very easy to modify or create patterns in this technique.  I have no idea if I'm following Sulawesi design sensibilities or not, but that's OK.  I'm getting the hang of doing this by only using line drawings of my motif and not needing to color in the boxes that are going forwards or backwards.  Since it's double-face, the rules are simple.

Sulawesi 3-color double-face (or whatever you want to call it) feels like a cross between double-face and the diagonals technique where pairs of cards turn together for two turns before potentially changing turn direction.

I'm gonna keep doing small motifs like this until the end of the warp.  Leaves, spirals, geometric patterns, animal-like patterns -- again, a mix of my own patterns, other people's patterns, and modified versions of other people's patterns.

I'm having a lot of fun.

Sulawesi adventures

I was in the mood for something new, and Sulawesi caught my interest.

What people refer to as Sulawesi tablet weaving is an interesting 3-color variant on double-face.  People in that part of the world also do double-face tablet weaving, though I don't know if the people who do this also do the more typical 2-color double-face.  Oh, probably, along with doing threaded-in plain weaving for borders and such.

With Sulawesi-style, tablets work in pairs.  Two tablets always have the same orientation and turn the same (2 tablets that have / or \ orientation turn forward or backwards together twice.  This means that one can chart it out using a single box to represent 2 tablets and 2 turns.  Or not -- one can also chart out every single tablet and turn.  Being able to use the box methods means that ideas can quickly be sketched out and charted out.  (The same sketches can often be used for other tablet-weaving techniques, too.)

Also with Sulawesi-style, the colors have a particular pattern.  There is a main motif color, a background color (or anti-motif), and an accompanying color.  The accompanying color has two threads, one on each side of the others.  (i.e.  MABA).  The tablets are oriented / / \ \ / / \ \ etc., i.e., alternating the orientation of each pair.  The colors go up and down in little zigzags -- for the motif color, for example, it goes in hole C D D C C D D C etc., all across the band, while the background color goes in hole A B B A A B B A all across.  Obviously this would easily lend itself to continuous warping techniques.

There's also some fun stuff the weavers there do with tubular edges and finishing the ends, but I'm mostly concerned with the basic tablet-weaving technique for now.

I have no idea how old this technique is.  There's not a lot of info on old artifacts and ethnography only goes so far back and is limited in what it covers.  I found a few 19th century artifacts online in the Yale University Art Gallery museum website but so far that's about it.  I'll keep looking.  The 19th century bands were often woven in cotton, by the way.  And in addition to Sulawesi, terms like "mamasa" and "toraja"  and "pallawa" turn up more links.

I also found a video, where the cards are flipped to change colors (rather than turning the other direction): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4GSQu7dD0U.  It's not clear exactly what pattern the weaver is making in the video, but the band shown at the end is the same technique (though it looks like the background color is the same as the accompanying color and/or it's 3-threaded).

Sagawoolcraft.com is a blog and website with a lot of interesting Sulawesi-technique tablet weaving and charted motifs.  So that's where I started.  She charts slightly differently from how I do, but if I ignore her tablet labels and tablet set-up, it works out the same as with the Karisto/Pasanen charting conventions I prefer.  She likes having A at the top of the warping chart going down to D at the bottom, with D closest to the weaver and A towards the unwoven warp.  Karisto/Pasanen conventions have D at the top of the warping chart going down to A at the bottom, with A closest to the weaver and D closer to the unwoven warp.  Both start the pattern weaving chart from the bottom and both number the tablets from left to right across the band.

I recharted it (using one of the online charting websites) to be sure.  And then I made up some of my own motifs because it was fun and easy.  So...  I guess I'll be doing a mix of motifs from wherever I find them along with my own motifs.

There are examples online in other places on the Internet, of course.

Anyway...  I decided on a small band for my first effort.  It has 8 pairs of tablets (16 pattern tablets) with one extra tablet per edge (18 tablets total).  The edge tablets are threaded in colors A A B B, in colors different from the main band, to help me keep straight the direction the double-face turning needs to go in.  At this point, I prefer to turn cards forwards and backwards instead of flipping them, so of course that's what I did.

And.....  it's fun!  A little fiddly, but not horrible with so few pattern tablets, and it's pretty easy to see right away if you're doing it right.  My very first motif has been woven (and it's one of my own designs -- nothing fancy but I did it myself), and it's lovely!  I'm chuffed.  I'll probably do mix-and-match motifs rather than the same one(s) all the way down the band.  I do like a lot of the Saga Wool Craft motifs so why not add some of hers as well as my own designs?

These bands can be done with three or two threads per tablet, too.  If 3-threaded, then omit the background (anti-motif) color.  If 2-threaded, then omit the two accompanying threads.

I wasn't able to do any tablet-weaving for the last several weeks due to other obligations.  I'm glad I can resume tablet-weaving and other fun stuff again.

I'm probably going to be teaching people how to do 4-loop fingerloop braiding (for the near-universal square/round cord) in a few weeks.  I hope the class ends up being reasonably fun, easy, and useful.  I could do other 4-loop fingerloop braids as well, or other methods for making the same braid structure, but I probably will keep it simple and focused on only this one topic.  I'll probably show two ways to do it, though.  Or at least present two ways even if one of them is mostly left as an exercise for the braider to do some other time.  (I'll probably start with the Makusua maize blossom braid from L-MBRIC because it's easier for me to keep track of where I am in the braid.)

Now back to my band....  what motif shall I do next?  How many more shall I make up?  Do I care about pattern flow throughout the band or is this mostly a sampler of whatever I feel like doing next?

A monochromatic sampler band (plus a few comments and speculations)

 

I was poking around the internet, re-visiting some of my favorite tablet-weaving sites.  One of them is this old (but still wonderful) page from Thora (Carolyn Priest-Dorman): https://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/3recipes.html.  These are 14th-15th century tablet-woven braids found in London that were described by Grace Crowfoot.  The middle one (Braid 450) I recognized as the one Mervi Pasanen (I think it was Mervi) was weaving in a Facebook post (with video!) in the Lautaunat/Tablet Weaving page on Facebook on December 30, 2018.  She even credits it as a "medieval silk belt, 14th century London," so I'm pretty sure she's using the same instructions.  It's here: https://www.facebook.com/Lautanauhat/videos/2241382072561960

Hmm.  The belt is described by Grace Crowfoot in this reference: Crowfoot, Elisabeth; Pritchard, Frances; and Staniland, Kay. Textiles and Clothing c. 1150-c. 1450. Medieval Finds from Excavations in London, 4. London: HMSO, 1992.   Which, thanks to the miracle that is the Internet, I was able to find.

Crowfoot describes the braid thus (I'm including the photo that is Fig 100B, too):

In the text near the braids photographed as Fig. 100, she describes the braid as a "lozenge pattern," that was "possibly monochrome."  The braid next to it, Fig 100A, is also described as a lozenge pattern "with at least two colors."  That braid, Braid 143, is later described as a "double-faced weave with lozenge pattern" in the paragraph above Braid 450's description.

Staniland 1975, 167 is in the bibliography as this:

Which, amazingly enough, I also found online.  Here is the entirety of references to tablet weaving on p. 167 in the "excavated textiles" section:

I have not yet figured out if there are further references, nor how the numbers (e.g. 594) compare to the number Grace Crowfoot uses.  I haven't yet found the braid online in some Museum of London database, though I might still go deep-diving for more info.

Anyway.

The double-face surface appearance of braid 450 can be achieved much more easily than Crowfoot specifies.  If one just sets the tablets with alternating S and Z orientations, it is regular double-face -- FFBB.

Also, it looks similar to some of the two-hole brick-patterned bands I've been making.

So, I have questions.  Is this genuinely a four-hole pattern?  I suppose one can count the fringe ends and be fairly certain of it --16 vs 32 ends.   And, how did Crowfoot decide that it was made by alternating FFBB tablets with BBFF tablets instead of being straight double-face?  Elsewhere in the same section of the reference, as I quoted above, she actually calls out some double-face tablets, so she knows what double-face is, for sure.

I charted up both possibilities.   For Crowfoot's band, the FFBB threads are twisting around the weft in an ABCD order, while the BBFF ones are twisting in a DCBA order.  In a monochrome band where all the threads are the same, it makes no difference.  For a colorful band (or one with threads that have different textures), you can get the exact same order of threads by how you thread the tablets.  It would be rather a pain, but it's not hard.  Maybe doing it this way leads to subtle differences in the band's appearance?  Or is a way of balancing out irregularities in the threads while keeping the warping simple?

Obviously some real-world experimentation was called for.

I haven't really played around with double-face yet, so this was a good opportunity to do so.  Also, while I was being all monochromatic, I might as well see what the other two bands on Carolyn Priest-Dorman's page are like.  One of them (braid 449) has the same structure of the El Cigarralejo band I recently did, and I thought it would be fun to see what it looked like in a flat-colored smooth yarn instead of the heathery and slightly fuzzy wool.  The other one (braid 423) uses two staggered packs that alternate being turned and being idled.  Well, that's a new trick to play with, so sure, why not?  After that, I'd see what I felt like doing.

As far as I can tell, there is little or no difference in the appearance of these two methods of making a band with a double-face surface.  Setting the tablets in alternating SZ and doing FFBB looks identical or nearly identical to setting them all as Z (or S) and turning the odd tablets as FFBB and the evens as BBFF.  Any slight difference could be due to the hassle of either dealing with multiple packs of tablets, or, as I did in another experiment, manipulating each tablet individually, as opposed to turning everything as a single pack.  I really do not see a "diagonal twill effect" that is any different in any version I tried.

So that's interesting.  Why did Crowfoot determine that the band was made with this very laborious method vs the much easier method of turning the entire pack of cards the exact same way?  I will see if I can find out any more info online, and then maybe ask some of the more experienced tablet-weavers out there.

One more question -- Was the band all warped up at the same time, with all the tablets in the same orientation, and then half the tablets were flipped (and then rotated as necessary) to give alternating orientation before weaving?  It's not quite the same if the four threads are different colors, I don't think, but it is for two colors.  Maybe it is for four colors as well, but I'm not wrapping my brain around it properly and I'm not going to warp it up right now to double-check.  I will keep this possibility in mind as I look online, too.

While I was playing around with these two forms of creating a double-face type of appearance, I also experimenting with the effect of weft tension and a bit with warp tension.  As I expected, a looser tension enabled me to keep the weft threads closer together.  That made things a little closer to square, though consequently the weft bleps were a little more obvious.  So...  for future projects when I want to do double-face, I can control some of the technique's characteristic motif elongation to some extent, though I'll also want to consider how contrast-y the weft color is.

So that's braid 450, plus some exploration of double-face with alternating SZ tablets.  I forgot to do some regular FFBB double-face when I had the cards all in the same orientation, oops, but that's a fairly minor thing.

Then it was playtime.  Braid 423, with two packs, half of which idle per turn, was kind of fun.  It's a bit slow and fiddly, but not at all difficult.  So now I can confidently tackle the Cambridge Diamonds pattern if I ever want to do so, which I might very well because it's kind of cute.  Again, the appearance of this band is not dissimilar to the appearance of some of the two-hole brick patterns described by Karisto and Pasanen.  I did not mess around with weft tension, which could prove interesting.

While I was perusing Collingwood Chapter 10, on the subject of some tablets idling or getting extra turns, I tried out some of the ideas he presented about idling tablets.  That was OK.  I would have needed to do larger areas to bring out the textural differences and/or use a thread that was shinier and more tightly twisted to make the contrast more obvious.  It can also be a bit fiddly to do.  It's a fairly intriguing idea, though.  I do want to explore it again someday -- chapter 10 is full of crazy-complex stuff.

I later did a few sections where I'd change the directions of different tablets to make shapes that were defined by S or Z tablets.  That works, for sure.  A lot of people (such as Claudia Wollny) seem to use the term "structure weave" for this latter technique, which is mostly a diagonals-type technique in one color.

I also wove a bit of Braid 449 (monochromatic rather than two colors) just to complete the trifecta of braids on Priest-Dorman's website.  Yup, I like making this braid, and perhaps I should make it in two colors someday.

I had some space left, so it was time to do a bit of 3/1 twill since I haven't done that before, either.  To my delight, it's very straightforward whether the twill lines climb to the left or the right.  It, umm, works better if all the tablets are oriented the same rather than alternating SZ, at least for the charts and explanations I was using.  But to learn that was also educational.

I can't remember if I did much else.  The band itself is not particularly attractive, but that wasn't its purpose.  I learned a lot from doing it.  I now feel confident about doing double-face or 3/1 twill patterns whenever I want to, knowing that the underlying structure is something I have already done.  I'm ready to do the Cambridge diamonds pattern whenever I want, and also to play around with other ideas involving idling tablets.  And I have some questions about Braid 450 and thus some research to do.  Even so, I know I can make something that looks like that band whenever I want, whether or not my method is the one Crowfoot claims it is.

A couple of other cool things for the future:  There are several other cords in the Crowfoot article, with tubular tablet weaving, finger-looping, and plaiting.  Fun times!  She also describes tabby-woven narrow wares, an interesting decorative trim for garters, and of course other tablet-weaving techniques for the narrow wares (such as brocade).

The article from the Staniland reference shows some knots a few pages earlier!  They're all in leather, from the section on Medieval Leather by Jennifer Jones.

I'm not sure what I will be doing next.  More two-hole?  More samplers?  Something besides tablet-weaving?  We'll see...  The tablet-weaving area has been disassembled for the next week or so, requiring some improvisation if I want to do tablet-weaving.