Vines

This pattern was inspired by work done by Shelagh Lewins on a band from the Oseberg ship burial (buried in 834 CE). It's a simple threaded-in pattern and is woven by turning the tablets continuously forwards (or by turning the tablets continuously backwards to work out built up twist). It's reversible, so the pattern appears on both sides of the band and would make a great selvedge pattern as part of a larger band.

This is an easy weave, as the tablet threadings produce the pattern so there's no need to make turning direction changes or keep count of numbers of turns. A perfect pattern to work on if you're new to tablet weaving.

Tablet Weaving Draft Designer Updates

New additions:

Visual Scale control as part of the Display section of the Control Panel. This can be used to increase the size of the draft, without changing the size of the Control Panel. It will also increase the resolution when exporting an image of the draft to .png or .jpeg.

Image Quality control added to the .png and .jpeg export preview. This starts at the same setting as your Visual Scale control and can also be used to increase the size and resolution of the image of the draft.

Added a link to this blog to the main page, below the link to the Instructions.

Adjustments to existing features:

Changes to the wording of the Instructions Page and the addition of a link to this blog.

Changes to the way the Control Panel behaves with input from keyboards to the Picks control.

Close preview button in the export preview moved to above the image of the draft rather than below.

Basketweave

In 2015 I wove some fabric on my 8-shaft table loom (the "big" loom), with the intention of making a sideless surcoat. I completely screwed up the cutting and ended up with pieces of precious fabric that were unusable for what I wanted. These days I always make a mock up garment out of scrap fabric before I put scissors to the actual garment fabric. 

When the sting of my foolishness had faded a year or so later, I used what pieces I had to make a satchel style bag. People who relied on hand looms for their textiles wouldn't have wasted such a resource, so I shouldn't either.

The almost finished bag, complete with tassels made from loom waste.

I designed a simple tablet weaving pattern for a strap to match the main fabric. This pattern is fairly straight forward, but does involve groups of tablets turning both forwards and backwards, so I would recommend it for an advanced beginner/ intermediate weaver.

The band woven in cottolin. The weft bumps along the edges disappear if the weft is pulled in tighter.

A Weaver's Little Helper

When I weave, my cat Twist frequently gets bored and tries to turn my attention back to where it should be: him. He strums my warp like a guitar, flosses with fine silks and hunts any trailing weft threads as I work. I find that a squirt bottle of water is an essential weaving tool.

That's Nancy Spies Ecclesiastical Pomp& Aristocratic Circumstance he's asleep on there.

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Rarity Trim

As part of an exchange, a friend once asked me to weave some trim based around Rarity from Hasbro's My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. I chose to go with Rarity's cutie mark, elongated pale blue diamonds on a white background and added borders of purple to represent her mane. To make the diamonds elongated, I offset the turning reversals by one pick. I started off using a purple weft, but it showed through the white yarn of the main pattern too much, so I swapped it to a white weft. To avoid white weft spots against a purple selvedge, I used a white floating selvedge (an extra piece of yarn not controlled by the tablets which the shuttle went over on the way into the shed and under on the way out of the shed). If I wove it again, I would add an extra tablet on each side of the selvedge, carrying all white yarns.

I would place this band's difficulty level at advanced beginner/ intermediate. The pattern repeat is in multiples of 8 picks.

Thread your tablets as above.

Ermine Spots

Is it possible to tablet weave ermine spots? Absolutely!

I've come up with two options, both in double-face and can be done using the same warp, so you can try both and see which you prefer. The first one has a pattern repeat length of 12 picks/ rows.

You will need to flip the threading direction of 10 of the pattern tablets (6, 8, 10 ,12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24) before you try the second version of the pattern. The second version of the pattern has a pattern repeat of 24 picks/ rows.