Not going to lie, I'm pretty excited! My publisher has the files for the new book and are working on the proof copies! I should be ready to release it into the wild in early March, all going well. It's a bit different to my other books as it's mostly tablet weaving theory rather than practice, but there's still a new design in there for you to play with.
Tablet Weaving in Theory and Practice
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Wednesday 21 February 2024
Wednesday 7 February 2024
Coming Soon to a Bookcase Near You!
If all goes well with proof copies and so on, I should have a new book to share with you for the end of this month! I'm more than a little excited, can you tell? This one has been in the works since early last year and I was hoping to publish in November as I have with previous volumes, but life got in the way several times. With this one almost done, I'm now doing the initial planning and layouts for the next book, so this may well turn out to be a two book year.
Tuesday 6 February 2024
Tablet Weaving Draft Designer Updates
The year's end has rolled around again (or rather it did a month ago) and there have been a few changes to Tablet Weaving Draft Designer. In the Display section we now have a "show only thread colour" option which will fill each square on the grid with the colour of the thread in that square and an "S-Z" toggle which will allow you to flip the letters below the threading diagram. This leaves everything else the same, with only the S and Z labels changing.
Wednesday 3 January 2024
Hedge Maze
After weaving my advent band over much of December, I wanted something with a simple, soothing rhythm to it for my project over the Christmas break. I opened up the folder I keep both my published and unpublished designs in and wandered through it until I found something to fit the bill. This one comes from November 2021. I have a bit of a backlog! I was at a loss as to what to name it, so I asked Instagram and this was the name I liked the most, especially as I often hang my bands up in hedges to photograph them!
This design isn't twist-neutral and will cause a build up of twist behind the tablets, so I've included a reversed version that will allow you to weave it out. As ever, you can find links to the text version and TDD file for both drafts at the bottom of the page.
Link to text version of Hedge Maze
Link to TDD file for Hedge Maze
Link to text version of Hedge Maze Reversed
Link to TDD file for Hedge Maze Reversed
As with all of the free drafts/patterns on this site, you are welcome to weave them, sell bands woven using them, and use them to teach other weavers, just as long as you state where you found them.
Tuesday 5 December 2023
Tablet Weaving Advent 2023
This year I indulged in a little festive silliness and picked random drafts from my book Warp-Twined Angles and wove them up in festive colours. I used the same threading diagram as the book, but swapped red for the black, white for the grey and green for the white. I also changed up the colours of the selvedge tablets a bit too so that all three colours are represented in them. Instead of the black weft of the original, I used red to match it to the main motif colour in the drafts.
I released a video each day of advent of me picking a draft, then showing what it looks like woven up in the new colours. There's also a playlist on my YouTube channel that has all my advent videos gathered together. I also released the videos over in my Instagram account, where you can find me as @tabletweaving. You can watch the video for day 1 in the window below.
Monday 18 September 2023
Countable Infinity
A few weeks ago, James (my husband and the programmer half of our Tablet Weaving Draft Designer team) was looking wistfully at some of the sample bands in my workroom and asked if I could make him a tunic-style shirt with fancy trim on it. I showed him some of the things from the folder of unwoven designs and we picked one, then I played with it and adjusted it until it matched what he was hoping for.
The 10/2ne Lunatic Fringe tubular spectrum yarns I have were at the tip of his wishlist, particularly the yellow and green shades (#10 yellow, #10 yellow-green and #10 green), paired with their 10/2ne black. It's a combination I've used before and the colours pop really nicely, plus the yarn is a pleasure to weave with. I used a black sewing thread (rather than the same yarn as the warp) as the weft for this band to help me beat the threads into place tighter and get crisper pattern lines. Apart from the selvedge tablets, this band is twist-neutral, but you will find that you get less take-up on the two pattern tablets on each side, so you may have to retension your warp.
Link to text version
Link to TDD file
Thursday 1 June 2023
Uisce
Link to the Uisce draft TDD file
Link to the Text version of the Uisce draft
Wednesday 22 March 2023
Ginkgo
Link to text version file for the Ginkgo draft
Link to the TDD file for the Ginkgo draft
Monday 20 March 2023
Book Pricing Changes
Blurb (the company that print my books) have announced that they will be increasing the price of hard copy books on 29/03/2023 to help cover rising manufacturing costs. I don't know how much the increase will be or exactly when it will come into effect on the 29th, so if you want to take advantage of the current price, I would advise doing so by the 28th. This increase will only apply to hard cover and soft cover books. All eBook and pdf prices will remain the same.
To view the books and formats that are currently available for sale, follow this link to my Blurb profile page.
Friday 3 February 2023
Phoenix
I recently shared a little of the design process for a new draft over on Instagram and asked if people thought the motif colours (green, blue and purple) would look better on a black or a white background. The answer was two thirds in favour of black and one third in favour of white, so I decided to weave a second version of the draft to show what it looks like in additional colours.
I've named the draft Phoenix as one sample is the colours we think of for the mythical phoenix and the other is the colour of the Phoenicians, the purple people. The small diamonds at the edges of the draft are from the narrow Oseberg band that I've referenced before. I really like how they weave up in a simple threaded-in band. The draft would be highly suitable for a beginner as, once the tablets are threaded, the turning sequence involves turning all the tablets forwards for each row. You will find that you get a build up of twist behind the tablets pretty quickly, so when I was weaving the samples, I switched my turning direction after 60 pattern repeats (240 rows) to weave out the twist.
Click on the links below to download the .tdd files and text versions for this draft:
TDD file for the purple Phoenix draft
Text version for the purple Phoenix draft
TDD file for the red Phoenix draft
Text version for the red Phoenix draft
As with all of the free drafts/patterns on this site, you are welcome to weave them, sell bands woven using them, and use them to teach other weavers, just as long as you state where you found them.