Tablet Weaving Revival

I Have begun tablet weaving again. It's so terribly nice to be getting back into such a satisfying and incredibly simple form of weaving and one that requires next to nothing in the way of equipment. It's incredibly to think that it's been two years since I made a tablet warp.

So I am making material again. When these are completed they are rolled into discs for storage and display. I shall be selling these as both material and as friendship bracelets and belts when I am in Greece. These bands are quite strong and have many applications in the creation of accessories and garments.

Of course, I shall have to do more than this, but this is the basic level I will be working from. I also plan to weave strip-cloth, as I mentioned in a previous post. As I have yet to develop the techniques for doing this it's something of a possibility rather than a certainty, though I am fairly confident that it's entirely doable. In essence, I need to develop an entire weaving system that I can carry with me as I go, preferably with warp and fabric in place. If you search for "tripod loom mende" on Google, you'll see in the images results a good example of what I mean.

Of course, I would prefer to remain stationary and roll the fabric up at my belt and I'm sure it's perfectly doable. I suspect weaving from the side of the fabric is bad for your back, so I'll try to fuse the very simple tripod loom with the weaving techniques of the Ewe and Ashanti peoples of Ghana and Togo (which are, oh, so intricate and detailed) to create an intermediary drag-loom with probably 4 harnesses allowing me to weave 2 sheds of figuring on top of a plain weave base. Also, I shall be investigating Brocade techniques. All of this I shall be doing in the course of my 4th year work at college, assuming they'll let me do things this way. I think I'll probably get away with it.

Back to the tablet weaving, this picture shows a little of why I like this craft. The simplicity of the tools. the warp is passed through holes in these cards, which obviously I have made out of playing cards. traditionally they're made out of wood or leather or bone. Other cards I have seen which are more modern have been made from CD's or film acetate.

If people reading this are interested in this craft, I suggest looking up Linda Hendrickson, who is a master of good standing in tablet weaving and offers several very good instructional videos which I made use of when I was learning.

One last thing. I never weave with jokers. They're nothing but trouble. Trufax

Andrew

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Tablet Weaving Lesson #1: Backstrap weaving a simple diamond motif

This is the first in a series of video and photo tutorials showing basic to advanced tablet-weaving concepts. These lessons shall each build on the last and hopefully take the viewer from simple diamond patterns up to more complicated double face pattern weaving with finer yarns and eventually onto the heady heights of brocading and other fancy techniques (just as soon as I learn how to do them myself). In this first lesson we'll learn the basic weaving steps involved in weaving a diamond pattern in the backstrap style. This lesson is meant for someone who has purchased a ready-made warp from me. The next lesson shall detail how to design and make this warp oneself. And we begin This is the basic pattern we are making. The woven band is tied to my waist with another strap. I am holding a small stick shuttle in my right hand which contains the weft. In front of me are the cards, each card has 4 warp threads going through it. The gap that you can see is called the ...

Hochdorf Two Hole Tablet Weaving

So, I saw a picture of a Hochdorf band woven by a member of the Historic Tablet Weaving group on Facebook. It looks like you can get more detailed patterning with this technique and you also get a nice sort of pebbled effect in the background weave. Anyway, so I googled it and found this webpage The Warp Factor , with a nice explanation of how to weave this band and a good diagram to go with it that tells you exactly when and where to turn the cards. Nice stuff. This is my second attempt at Hochdorf patterning. First was in acrylic to work out the technique and the use of the board. Second in 2/60's silk, to make something extra special nice. This is my new weaving board. It's a bit scrappy but it does the job. there's a few wee annoying problems with it, but the next one will be better. This is how tension is maintained on the band, with a nice even consistency. The main part of the band is held as one with a bag full of weights. The selvedge table...

treble-cloth construction

I am currently in the process of designing a triple layered fabric. One layer shall carry conductive warp threads (one out of every three), another layer shall carry conductive weft threads (again, one out of every three) and a third layer shall lay between them and act as an insulator, keeping them apart and preventing unwanted contact between the two conductive layers. Constructing a treble cloth is a compicated process. The way that a treble cloth is woven is that first the face cloth is woven, then the centre cloth is woven, then the back cloth is woven. This is a draft for a treble cloth. The crosses indicate weaving marks for the cloth currently being woven, the dashes are lifts and are used to indicate shafts that are being lifted in the case of layers that are above the layer currently being woven. Blue is back, Red is front, Green is centre (All three layers are plain weave btw) The cloth is constructed like so 1: Back cloth is woven. All red and green marks are lif...

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