Tuesday, April 29, 2014

First try at Double Faced Tablet Weaving


As I stated before, there are two main purposes to this blog. 1) to document the woven bands I make and 2) so that hopefully readers will learn from my mistakes and have their lives made a bit easier. This post will try to hit on both points and specifically will focus on the double-faced tablet weaving technique.

In my previous post, which was my first attempt at tablet weaving, a couple of very important lessons
were learned:
  1. Twist is a big issue that must be dealt with, and there are ways to cope
  2. Many mistakes will be made and learning how to unweave those mistakes is paramount
  3. The tools you use will make your life much easier
  4. DON'T get too ambitious
Of course on my second attempt at tablet weaving I made some changes to accommodate for the first three lessons, but completely ignored the fourth. This will become a running theme with this blog, I think.

My second tablet weaving project was an attempt at double faced tablet weaving. This method is able to create very complex patterns with the added perk of giving you a color-switched version of the same pattern on the obverse of the band (thus the term 'double-faced').  Being still a complete beginner, I decided to take advantage of a great youtube tutorial by Marni Niles, which you can find here and here.  Marni is nice enough to provide the climbing vine pattern she uses in these tutorials, and all I did was slightly modify it to make it easier for me to read.

Now, onto the process.


Using the Right Tools

  1. Fishing swivels make taking care of warp twist a breeze (no this isn't period appropriate, but at this point I'm not going for historicity, rather I'm trying to get the process down). The idea is that each warp thread is tied off to each end of a swivel. When the twist accumulates, it can be combed out and the swivels will turn independently on each side such that you will end up with a straight warp again. The swivels I used I purchased from Amazon.  These were super cheap and very effective. I wish they had the larger loop on both ends, but they serve their purpose well. One thing I did notice is that it's best to trim off as much of the excess warp after you tie off the swivels, otherwise, the threads tend to get caught in the swivel while it is spinning fast which can lead to it becoming jammed.  One other thing I'd change is to also use swivels on the pattern threads since this pattern is not twist neutral.
       
    Swivels are a must-use for the selvedges. Note too much excess warp which did end up making the swivels jam eventually.
     
  2. Home-made tablets (made from playing cards as can be seen in the previous blog post) will do just fine in a pinch, but they wear out very fast.  Store bought tablets are laminated and will last longer.  They will also have nicely rounded edges, clearly marked hole,s and are all the exact same size and shape.  All these features makes them a little easier to turn.  This is more of a personal choice rather than a must-have, many many people do just fine by making their own tablets.  Eventually I'd like to have wooden tablets, but that is more of a pipe-dream right now.                                                                                                                                      
  3. It can be difficult to keep track of where you are on the pattern, which will lead to mistakes.  I've noticed that each person has their own method for keeping track of where they are on the pattern.  One thing that worked for me was to use a metallic board (I bought one at Target meant to be a message board) and use a magnet with a straight edge to keep track of my location. Any magnet will do, mine came right of the fridge (an of course is super geeky!).



Having all of the necessary implements to make my life much easier, I embarked on the creation of this new band. All in all, the process was not as difficult as I had imagined. I was very confused at first and had to unweave a few lines, but a few careful watches of the above-mentioned tutorials was enough to clear most of my questions and make the rest of the process much easier.

Learning Though Mistakes

The real difficult part was noticing I had made a mistake and having to figure out what the mistake was. One thing which made this process easier is that this technique gives you a little hint as to what the mistake was. In my case the background threads are white and the pattern was green (with blue selvedge cards that continuously turn forwards). If I suddenly found myself with the colors inverted, that is, if I ended up with green where there should be white and white where there should be green, then that means that I either skipped a line in the pattern (a pick) or I repeated a line I already wove.  This is due to the way the cards are threaded for double-faced tablet weave. If you make either one of these mistakes, the cards will be either a quarter turn ahead or behind, and the wrong color thread will come up. This is explained by the First Law of Tablet Weaving, which I will make a separate post on later.

Now Onto the Results!

All in all, I was very pleased with this project. There are a couple of mistakes here and there, but they are minor and barely noticeable (unless you know what you are looking for). Pictures below:

Close-up of the pattern. Climbing vine.
"Obverse" side of the band, green pattern on white background.
"Reverse" side of the band, white pattern on green background.



Saturday, April 26, 2014

First try at Tablet Weaving

When we last left off, I had finally gotten the hang of the inkle loom. Not being one to make things easy for myself, and often biting off way more than I can chew, I decided that my next endeavor should be tablet weaving.

Oh boy, was I in for a wild ride. Tablet weaving, you see, is orders of magnitude more complicated than inkle weaving, and provides the potential for making many many more mistakes, which I definitely did.

All in all, after some missteps, I was actually pretty happy with the results of my first tablet weaving project.

It all started when a friend of mine let me borrow the very beginner-friendly book Card Weaving by Candace Crockett.

Looking through the books, there were many simple patterns to chose from. So of course I chose one of the more complicated ones (the rams horn pattern that is so popular). A couple of hours of warping later I realized I basically had done everything wrong and had to completely give up on that misguided attempt.

Finally realizing that I am not superhuman and actually need to take realistic steps, I chose a simpler (though still challenging) pattern, the Greek Key!

It actually took me a few hours to get this warped since I was basically going from written descriptions on a book. I had read some horrors about the build-up of twist, but being as stubborn as I am, I decided that I did not want to just switch the card turning direction, so I warped it in such a way that I thought would make combing out the twist easy.

It did not make it easy, not even a little bit. Mostly because the way I chose to warp this was stupid and honestly I could not repeat it if I tried. Anyway .... much frustration and several very scary near misses later, I had somewhat of a rhythm going.

Side view of the warped loom. If it looks a bit off, it's because I did it in a very weird way.
Close-up of the pattern.

About one foot away from completing all of the 6 feet or so this loom can handle, however, I had a major mishap which led to the thread I was using for tension snapping and sending the tablets flying in every which direction. Rather than try to clean up the tangled mess that resulted, I decided to end my adventure there and called it complete. Since this was to be a major learning experience however, I also decided to braid the warp threads as a finishing touch. How hard can it be right? Well, it took a few hours, and I realized after a fact that I tied them off in a very stupid way, but I managed to finish it and it even looked really nice!


About halfway through the tedious process of braiding the warp threads.

Finished product:

Closeup of the pattern.

Closeup of the braiding.

Beginnings - How I learned to love the inkle loom

My introduction to weaving came about 5 months ago, during our shire's demonstration at Camelot Days.  This was also our second SCA event, so we were still a bit apprehensive about the whole thing.  Not that we did not like the people or the environment, we were just still shy and unsure as to whether we would have anything useful to contribute.

It was sort of awkward arriving there and seeing most of the shire members working on something or other while we had nothing really to show.  Luckily, our shire has some very welcoming and helpful members and we found a home for the day in the tent on Lady Morgan, our local fibers expert. She asked whether I would like to give a try using this funny looking implement called an inkle loom and the rest is history.

This first piece was already warped an about 6 inches were already woven. I figured I'd give it a try, and with Lady Morgan's guidance, I managed to finish the whole belt within a couple of house. Many mistakes were made. Luckily the belt was a simple plain red number, and the inkle loom is extremely forgiving of mistakes. The edges were horrendous but that's exactly what can be expected of a beginner.

My very first attempt on the inkle loom. I look very focused, which I was!
I had not expected to enjoy myself as much as I did and I basically sat there with just a couple of quick breaks util the thing was complete. It may be ugly as sin in hindsight, but I was extremely proud of myself.

I enjoyed myself so much, in fact, that I had Lady Morgan teach me how to warp the loom and got to working on my second belt  that very day. It was supposed to have a single chain pattern in yellow on a green background, but of course I screwed up the warping so I ended up with something somewhat different. I was still very happy with it, however, and the improvement in the edges could be seen as the weaving on that one belt progressed.

Oh, but that was not the end of our adventures at Camelot Days. I completed that second belt on day 2 and immediately warped a third. I was only able to get through a foot or so of that one, but completed it at home over the next few days.

Here is a comparison of those 3 belts, progressing from top to bottom:

First belt, nightmarish edges.

Second belt, edges are wonky at first, still wonky near the end, but improved.

Third belt, edges are somewhat sloppy at first, but have basically stabilized near the end. This is the first belt I'd call usable.

As the pictures make quote clear, the improvement over those 3 belts was marked. My obsession with the craft was also quite firmly cemented by that point.

I was so hooked that I had purchased the loom I worked on by the end of that 2-day event.

Introduction

Greetings!

This humble blog is the property of one John Aguirre. Scadian, aspiring artisan, craft lover, and many other adjectives.

This blog will have two main purposes:
  1. To chronicle my journey through the fascinating art that is the crafting of woven bands
  2. To provide readers with a way to learn from my mistakes and hopefully have their lives made a bit easier if they decide to embark on the same journey.
Mostly I will be focusing on inkle and tablet weaving and the many methods and variations thereof.

This fascination of mine is due to my involvement with the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). I belong to the Shire of Sangre del Sol in the Kingdon of Trimaris (that's Broward County, FL for those not in the know!).

Hopefully this will be a nice way to chronicle my progress and also missteps throughout the years.