During a series of videos I made for Advent last year, I showed a band each day including a few that I've never published the drafts for. One of the most requested out of the unpublished drafts was this one. It uses a tablet woven structure commonly called "Anglo-Saxon" technique, despite the key historical example having been proved to be medieval. You can read more about the original fragment in work done on it by Shelagh Lewins by clicking here. Instructions for dealing with the notation that Tablet Weaving Draft Designer uses for idling tablets can be found here.
The sequence of turns needed to produce this band is extremely straight forward. Separate all of the even numbered tablets from the odd numbered tablets into two packs, then:
1. Turn all odd numbered tablets forward, then pass weft from left to right
2. Turn all even numbered tablets forward, then pass weft from right to left
Continue repeating these two rows, only turning half of the tablets each time and letting the remainder idle, passing the weft from the side where the outermost tablet has just been turned. Additionally, you will need to pull the weft in much tighter than usual for the yarn you're working with, to the point where the threads that make up the design become almost parallel with the selvedge. The tighter you pull the weft, the smoother the motif lines will become. The result will be a thick and extremely sturdy band with the pattern on both sides, excellent for use as a belt.
Wonderful! I've been using TDD to draft idling patterns by first using the 8-hole tablet setting and leaving half the holes empty. I then use the turning chart as if it were the repeats image by setting the number of picks to 32 or so. When everything's like I want it, I collapse the threading chart by recreating it as a 4-hole pattern, leaving out all the empty holes. Works great!
ReplyDeleteThat's a very clever way of dealing with it, thank you for sharing! Congratulations on an excellent TWIST article, by the way.
DeleteThank you so much! Even though it's a good workaround, I would love it if TDD had a setting for idling packs someday. That would be fantastic and would save me all the extra steps. ❤️
DeleteI’m using drops karisma wool yarn. How do you manage the twisting? I’ve tried turning the cards and changing weaving direction and both give an odd space on the band without a pattern. Do you have a video of how to weave the Lattice? Thank you.
ReplyDeleteDrops Karisma may well be what I used when I wove the sample for this one as it was my go-to yarn at the time. It was over seven years ago and I wasn't keeping great records at that point. I would recommend using something like fishing swivels, combing it out, or warp-weighting to deal with the twist, as (as you have found) changing the turning direction will give a break in the design and long floating threads on the surface of the band. Unfortunately I don't have any videos from when I was weaving the sample band as it was before I started filming things. It's on my list as something I want to do again in the future, but the list has many, many other things on it too.
DeleteThank you very much Catherine. I was loosing my mind for hours last night over the twisting/floating threads issue. I warped it on my inkleloom and I have never heard of the fishing swivels before. I will find a way to get it off the loom and invent some warp-weighting. I’ m also only getting the pattern on the backside of the band. (I love the drops karisma - thanks to your recommendation on the blog).
DeleteIs there somewhere you could link to with a picture of the front and back of your band? I might be able to work out what's going on for you. In the past I've done warp-weighting by taking the unwoven warp off my inkle loom and weighting it off the back. I use bolts as loom weights.
DeleteHi again please pardon the delay in response. I truly appreciate your offer to trouble shoot. I have moved the entire warp to my big floor loom, and simply creating tension by rolling onto the loom. The pattern is not coming out correctly. Feel like I’ve been particularly meticulous about the threading, and yet it does not look good.
DeleteI’ve been trying to think of ways to get some photos/short video for you to view here, but not sure how to do that. Would it a work if I uploaded some photos to a google drive and provided you the link here?
I uploaded 4 images plus one brief video here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uPqj9x_P-Jx8jsw5lUvGLNV4X0cbICO5?usp=sharing
DeleteI've had a play around with it and it looks like you have the correct threading for all the tablets, but the colours are out of sequence from each other. I think this may have been caused by accidental extra picks, e.g. turning the even tablets, passing the weft, then turning the even tablets again instead of switching to the odd tablets. If you reset everything to the starting point again and have another go it should work. This technique is a weird one and takes a certain amount of mental gymnastics to get the hang of. It may help to have a piece of paper with odd and even written on each side that you can flip over after each turn.
DeleteThank you Catherine ! I did what you suggested - started over and learned to keep and stay very focused so not to get the threads out of sequence and it is working perfectly. I’m so delighted. Definitely mental gymnastics, but seeing the beautiful results emerge is so satisfying. Thank you for your grace and time on this.
DeleteGeneral question on TDD. All my attempts to download the TDD’s the files are blank/empty. Any advice?
ReplyDeleteIf you try to open the files with any except TDD, they won't open and may get described as empty by your device. Do you mean downloading the files from this site or from TDD itself? What operating system/browser combination are you using?
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