Simple tablet woven belt(s)

Belts.  Brick-patterned, double-face, pack-idled, simple turned....  I'm in the mood.

First up is this one in brown carpet warp.  It's one of my favorite two-hole simple-minded patterns -- all the tablets are set / and \.  There are two edge tablets per side (4 total) which are 4-threaded.  The 12 pattern tablets in the middle are 2-threaded.  I'm doing the one where one alternates two tablets threaded in AC vs two in BD.  The weft is some leftover doily knitting cotton in a lighter caramel brown color.  All turns are forward.

It was fun, quick, easy, etc., and looks great even unblocked.  It ended up about 5/8" wide (17mm), about 65.5" long (166cm).  The photo color is not accurate -- the warp thread is brown, not gray nor blue.

I like the version where all the pattern tablets are threaded in AC (i.e. all the same instead of alternating) and also the version where the / tablets are AC and the \ tablets are BD.

Double-face looks good in monochrome as does simple 4-threaded all-forward turning, both with alternating / and \ tablet orientation.  Pack-idling is also fun and effective and of course there's 3/1 twill and other amusements.  I'm sure I'll get bored with monochrome and start adding color patterns again soon enough.  Or switch back to doing cords or more of those historic seal tags or fingerloop braiding or something.

Tubular Tablet Weaving Cord Fail

Hmm, a not-so-successful tubular tablet-woven cord.

I'm doing a cord with 5 tablets, similar to the wool cord described by Grace Crowfoot in her chapter on Narrow Wares from her Textiles and Clothing 1150-1450 book.  Five tablets, 4-threaded, all \ orientation, turn 1/4 turn each time.

Fail #1 (very minor) -- I threaded them / instead of \.  No big deal -- either flip the cards, turn them backwards at first, or spiral the weft the other direction.

Fail #2 -- I kept using the white weft thread, wondering if it would be hidden by the cord after it relaxed into a spiral.  I have an answer now.  No.  Now, this could be interesting, a little glint of something contrast-y visible within the cord.  But for this cord, it's not quite what I want.

Fail #3 -- I had to clamp the warp tight so it wouldn't slither.  But it did slither.  And either the clamp or the slithering broke several warp threads.

I give up.

I've done too much to unravel, so I'll probably cut off the already-woven length of cord and put it in my pile of samplers and learning pieces.  I'll do something else with the surviving warp threads.

For the future -- match warp and weft more carefully, and maybe take a different approach to tensioning the cord.

Dunno if I'll add a photo later.  I need to sulk for a while before deciding.

Double X Double O Deux

 

Another variation on the Double X Double O idea.  I used the leftover warp from the Gotland sampler band, which might have been a mistake.  It had just enough retained twist to be annoying.  The other colors are burgundy red and dark green.  The light purple has sufficient contrast from the background, yup.

I like the reverse side of the band, too.

I'm not sure what's next.  Maybe more tablet-woven cords.  Or something in the pack-idling technique, such as Cambridge Diamonds or another Felixstowe.  Or another seal tag (one of the double-face ones, if so).  Or something else entirely.  Hmmm.  Plus fingerloop braiding, of course.

A quick fingerloop braid (and starting a new tablet weaving project)

 I want to become proficient at doing longer fingerloop braids.  This means I must occasionally practice them, right?

This is done using the same method as last time -- make a crochet-chain loop and braid out one end, then undo the loop and braid out the other end.  But this time I did V-fell one way and A-fell the other, so they weren't mirror images.

It worked.  There's still a blip since I didn't get the correct loops on the correct fingers to make it seamless.  But on the whole, it looks good.  Some of that is no doubt due to the fuzziness of the yarn hiding the imperfections.  Eh, it's no worse than when I drop all the loops and have to put them back on my fingers and don't do it correctly.

Also, I didn't try to keep any kind of consistent tension.  But I don't think the two halves of the braid are significantly different from each other.

As before, I'm noodling around with ideas from this page: https://loopbraider.com/31431-2-basic-seamless-center-starts/ 

I've started another Double X Double O band with a slightly different threading and turning sequence.  It's not that different from the first one.  Hopefully it'll be done by tomorrow.  I'm on the 12-18", I think.  After that, maybe I'll do some more cords.  Or maybe not.  I used the Gotland experiment warp for one of the colors in this band.  I don't know why I didn't simply do a brick-patterned band with that warp.

Gotland-style sampler tablet-woven band -- attempt #1

The tablet twisting techniques in a pdf contributed by Rasmus Twisttmann Jørgensen has been intriguing me for a while.  I can't remember where I found it, but probably one of the Facebook tablet-weaving groups.  It's called "Textured tabletwoven bands - A Viking Age technique from Gotland".  He goes through some of the possible variations and offers a few samplers and other designs.  He says that the guide is based on work by Lise Rædder Knudsen and Ulla Gerner Lund, so I specifically want to mention them, too.

I looked in Collingwood since he tends to be pretty comprehensive, and he mentions tablet twisting around the horizontal axis of the tablets to be a technique that changes colors (for non-monochrome bands), reverses the turning direction, and adds two quarter-turns of twist.  Later in the book he talks about mixing quarter-turns and half-turns and other fun stuff, including for textural purposes, so I can see how tablet-twisting would give some interesting textural patterns.

So I warped up 13 cards (9 two-thread pattern cards and 2 four-thread edge cards per side) and started to play.

Alas, it's a failure.  The guide does say that a tightly twisted thread is necessary to show the texture properly, and I guess that #10 Aunt Lydia's crochet cotton does not qualify.

Harumph.  The textures are there but they are way too subtle to be worthwhile with this thread.

Oh, well.  At least I got to try the technique and see how it works.

Jørgensen's charts use thread direction rather than tablet orientation.  Also, his default turn direction is towards the weaver.  He doesn't really give a threading chart but it's not like one is really needed.  His pdf is very clear and his exercises and sample patterns are fun to work through.

I might try this again someday if/when I get some tightly twisted and probably thicker yarn.  But this attempt is done.  I'll pick out the weft and the warp will be repurposed for something else.

I learned from this sampler so it's not really a failure even if I'm a bit disappointed at it not being a rousing success.  That's two tablet-weaving projects in a row.  I guess that's what happens as I work through the list of things I want to try because I haven't done them before.  It's all good new knowledge, both things to do and things to not do, and also learning a technique or thing I haven't done before.

Seal Tag 5 (another tablet woven tubular cord)

The original was described in Henshall, Audrey, 1964, Five tablet-woven seal tags, Archaeological Journal 121:154-162.   But I haven't tracked down a copy of that yet.  So I'm working from the description in Phiala's (aka Sarah Goslee's) email from this website/blog: https://research.fibergeek.com/2005/02/10/tubular-tablet-weaving/

It's described as a silk cord roughly 1.5mm in diameter, multi-colored and tablet-woven, with reversals throughout.  It's the seal tag on a charter sealed by John (de Balliol), King of Scotland, to Nicholas de Haia, of the lands of Erroll, etc. Granted at Lindores, 1 August 1294.  The colors in 1964 were described as white, dark blue, salmon-pink-faded-to-buff, and pale-yellow-green-faded-to-white.  Dunno if the colors in 1294 were brighter; there are definitely dyes that would fade out over the centuries.

Well.  I had been considering adding a pattern to spiral cords, and here was one already done and described, all historic and everything.

I didn't have the proper colors in my cotton stash, so I picked some likely-ish colors from the #10 big box store crochet cotton, namely substituting orange for the salmon pink.  I charted up the pattern from the description and off I went.

It's not my favorite.  I should have realized that the little box pattern is very similar to Candace Crockett's Sample Band A.  With all the card orientations in the same direction and with the spirals, the box ends up very jagged rather than smooth.  (We won't mention the early part of the band where apparently one of the cards rotated without me noticing so that it looks even messier.)  It might have been better in a much finer thread.   Also, the dark blue is too dark and the light green is too light.  The orange is OK, though.  But then the orange/blue/white combo ends up looking like something from the Denver Broncos Paraphernalia Store.

I used a lighter weight and a finer weft (doily-knitting cotton leftovers) to see if I could decrease the weft spacing in the final cord.  I can't say that it made much difference.

The original has card 4 with a different orientation than the rest of the cards.  I tried that for a while and again, there wasn't much difference.  The spiral might be a little less tight in that area, but I don't think that was something the original weaver really could have cared about.  So I'm gonna agree with those who said that this was unintentional rather than deliberate -- either the original weaver(s) didn't notice or he/she/they didn't care.

I sometimes flipped the cards (and continued turning forward though the weft was going from left to right) and sometimes rotated them backwards, as with the last band.  Both are fine; I don't really have a preference.  The little weft bloops are still there when the spiral is to the left, but they'll disappear when I wiggle the cord.  I assume it's something about how the band is in tension while weaving and relaxes after, along with maybe pulling it less snug when the weft goes from left to right, or maybe there's some slight interaction between ply twist and cord twist.  Eh.  At least I had the sense to have white weft next to a card threaded with white.

The cord is roughly 6mm in diameter, and roughly 175cm long, before blocking and freshly done.

I learned a lot from this cord.  Dunno if I'd do it again in different colors and/or different thread.  But it had some good lessons for me.  I'd definitely make more patterned cords, but will think more carefully about motifs and colors and how they interact with the spiraling, should I choose to spiral since I can also make cords that don't.

It's kind of frustrating looking at cords and braids and what-not in museum websites, for purses and for seal tags, etc.  The sites talk about the seal.  Or the purse and its embroideries.  I want to see the braids and cords and tassels and stuff!

Also, I don't have a copy of this technical paper.  I don't know if I need it or not.  Several people have made re-creations of the 5 seal tags described within.  Some of those are on my to-do list.

This blog post lists the techniques used in the seal tags:  https://thewarpfactor.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-dead-end-on-durham-warp-transposition.html

One is an interesting double-face (with all tablets oriented the same) band with small geometric motifs.

Another one is also double-face in a checkerboard pattern, not sure if the tablets are oriented the same or alternating Z and S.  (According to this, the7-tablet blocks alternate S and Z:  https://aisling.biz/index.php/galerie/historisch/hochmittelalter/312-band-zwei-der-siegelbaender-aus-durham-gb for discussion and https://aisling.biz/images/brettchenweben/Anleitung/Durham_Seal_Tags.pdf for pattern)

One is a 3/1 twill (I think this is the one that one of the above blog posts calls a double-faced diagonal weave?).  

One is brocaded.

One is this tubular cord.  Collingwood claims that there's a seal tag which uses warp transposition, but I have no idea if that's correct or not; chances are that he's referring to a different seal tag in the Durham cathedral since he has an actual photo in his book that doesn't look like any of the above seal tags.

Hmm, someday I'll do some of the other easy tablet-woven seal tags that I can find (or chart) patterns for.  Also, the cord I just finished is starting to grow on me.  I'm not sure what I expected from it, but once I release my expectations, it's a perfectly nice cord.

I have no idea what project I'll do next.

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.