First tablet weaving trial piece. October 2002. This was the piece I learned on with Bera's help. It is made of cotton in blue, green and teal. The pattern was 8 cards wide, produced hollow lozenges if turned 4 towards-4 away, produced chevrons if turned all one direction. Pattern came from a sampler piece in Candace Crockett's book on Card Weaving.
This is the pattern I followed. The resulting band is only a quarter of an inch wide and 36 inches long...
Second tablet woven piece. Warped March 1, 2003- completed March 4, 2003. Black and blue size 3 crochet cotton. Altered from a pattern found in Candace Crockett's book on Card Weaving.
The pattern is 16 cards wide. I should have added in two more cards between 4 & 5 and 20 & 21 to better define the diamond points. Also there were times when the blue spot had to be pulled to the top of the weave. This might have been a tension issue. You can see one area where I didn't pick up the outside edge string with a pass. Also I used black weft thread and I should have used blue. This resulting band was 40 inches long and one inch wide.
Third tablet woven piece, a viking belt. Warped March 8, 2003- completed March 11, 2003. Woven of blue and celedon size 10 cotton thread. Pattern is the original pattern that the second piece was taken from. Pattern is 24 cards wide. When turned 4 towards-4 away produces lozenges alternating with dots in the centers and without dots. When turned all in one direction, as this was, creates jagged line. Lozenges are created at the pattern reversals. You can see that tension became looser at the changes in direction as well. In order to make the change in direction a part of the pattern, I changed direction every 8 inches. This resulted in having the lozenges with and without dots in the centers with every other change in direction. To your left you'll see the pattern from Crockett I used. She had originally drafted it to use a different color for the selvedge and dots, but I just used two colors. This resulting belt is about 3/4 inch wide and 80ish inches long.
Fourth tablet weaving project in progress intended to be a hatband. Warped March 28, 2003-completed June 8, 2003. You can see it here warped on my inkle loom. I've used more of the size 10 crochet cotton like what was used in the 3rd project, only this time entirely in a dark green for a monochrome effect. It is 28 cards wide, but the pattern is easily altered up or down depending on width desired. The pattern was taken from Þóra Sharptooth's page on Three Recipes for Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-Century Tablet Weaving :
Pack 1 consists of the 4 edge cards, 2 on either side. Pack 2 is the remaining odd cards, and Pack 3 is the remaining even cards. This makes it easily scalable by adding more cards in groups of 2. You turn the selvedges each time all in one direction, and you alternate turning Packs 2 and 3 each turn. 8 turns of the selvedge cards equals 4 complete turns of Packs 2 and 3. If you color code your cards this is fairly easy to follow.
Can you see the satin effect that it produces in the image above? Essentially every strand in the satin part of the band floats once, but by alternating the cards it spreads out to form a satin. This is the same pattern Bera followed for the belt she made for me. Only she used a very fine silk, and used 50 cards. Here is a close up of the one she made. As you can see the results are much better than my experiment in cotton.
Tablet Weaving set-up on an Inkle Loom:
