Festive Floatwork

This year's series of Advent videos was based around my book Tablet Weaving in Theory and Practice: Egyptian Zigzags, picking a random draft each day. I wound a rather longer warp than the one I estimated that I might need with the intention of having leftovers to play with as nothing says Christmas more to me than delicious leftovers! I used some of the mini-skeins from a Mothy and the Squid 12 Days of Christmas set from last year, along with a skein of her black yarn, and as expected when I'm exposed to that much colour, my brain started singing to me about new designs as I was filming the videos. Of all the different techniques I could play with, floatwork seemed the right one. Floatwork involves turning the tablets backward and forward in single turns, resulting in long floating warp threads on the top and bottom of the band.

I've produced 2 drafts for this design, one with the distinctive long floats in the warp (the first phot above) and one without (the second photo above). Both are twist-neutral for the pattern tablets, so you won't get a build-up of twist behind them. I recommend flipping the threading direction of the selvedge tablets (and continuing to turn them forward) every few repetitions of the turning diagram to weave out the twist behind them. Both turning diagrams use the same threading diagram as the one I used for the rest of the Advent band. If you're finding the number of tablets overwhelming, feel free to remove tablets 27-38. The turning sequence for the remaining tablets will be the same and the design will still be twist-neutral.

Click here for the float-free version TDD file

Click here for the float-free version text file

Click here for the floatwork version TDD file

Click here for the floatwork version text file

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.

Festive Tablet Weaving 2025

Back in 2023, I made a video for each day of advent, picking a random draft from Warp-Twined Angles, then weaving in on a red, white and green warp. This year, I'll be doing something similar using the drafts from Egyptian Zigzags and some of the yarn from a 12 Days of Christmas set that my parents gifted me last year, combined with a skein of Mothy and the Squid black yarn. Like last time, I've modified the threading diagram from the book (the first of the two diagrams below) for this new band, removing one group of four pattern tablets and reducing down the selvedge tablets to just two on each side. Black remains the motif line, but I've switched the background threads for black and rainbow colours rather than white.

Egyptian Zigzags has 154 drafts in total (not including the reconstruction band), but many are have a vertical line of symmetry running down the centre which would look odd with nine groups of four pattern tablets rather than the original ten that the drafts were designed for. To prevent this, I've limited the pool of drafts to the remaining 64, which still gives plenty to pick from.