#Tablet weaving

[aspiring-thembo]

Ok let's talk warp weights:

Materials:

Wood spools from here (5/16" hole)

From the hardware store:

Small eyelets, two per spool

5/16" diameter 2.5" bolt, one per spool

5/16" nut, one per spool

5/16" wing nuts, one per spool

Washers- experiment to determine how many you want per spool. Any size works if the internal diameter is ≥ 5/16".

In the above picture you can see the basic construction: a spool, with an eyelet underneath and a horizontal eyelet near the top. A bolt with the head at the base, secured with a hex nut. The washers I found could slip over the bolt, and the weight of the washers pulls the spool such that the washers fall off if bumped, so I added a wingnut to secure the washers.

Assembly is simple, but I did have to pre-drill the holes for the eyelets.

Once everything is all attached, I used some pliers to slightly open the eyelets, so my warp can slip in and out.

I placed the top eyelet slightly to the right of the bottom eyelet, then twisted them so those pried openings faced opposite directions. This helps prevent the warp slipping out.

Using the weights:

I use one spool per tablet. Once I have measured out my warp, I tie one end to the bolt under the spool and tighten the hex nut to secure the end. I wrap the warp around the spool until I can suspend the warp weight above the ground on my loom.

I pull the warp into the bottom eyelet, then through the top eyelet.

Repeat for all cards, then one by one, thread the cards and attach to the loom.

Add washers and wingnut as desired for tension.

As I progress the warp while I weave, I take any spool that's too close to the top and unhook the warp from just the bottom eyelet. I unwrap a bit of warp and then rehook to the bottom eyelet.

It's all very ridiculous and time consuming but that is the whole hobby!

Finally- the project I've been chasing.

Heddle plus tablet selvedge. This project is going to be a cat blanket for my friend's cat Paul- my kitty Pickle stole his blanket for a toy and I owe Paul a replacement.

The central section is all karakul rug wool (cats love it) and the borders are linen and cotton.

The tablet sections are all warped onto those diy spool warp weights, one spool per card. That means they untwist themselves! But also it took SO long to warp.

I really like the way this makes the selvedge look! Definitely planning to make more work like this.

[lil-leviathan]

I finished the tablet weave I've been slowly chipping away at since September! This pattern is "Bee Feet" from Applesies and Fox Noses. I added an extra two border cards to each side to widen it.

It will be a Christmas present to my aunt, who will make it into a dog collar and maybe leash!

[leo-fie]

We all know existential dread, but I propose (and please tell be if this is already a thing) existential awe.

Sometimes when I handsew or weave or something I get this immense feeling of connection to humanity. People for thousands of years all over the world have sat down and sewn a garment. Archeologists find needles and awls all the time. When I'm tablet weaving I have the same frustration at the arduous process of threading the tablets as the person 2600 years ago must have felt when they made the bands that were found in a celtic man's burial mount not far from my home. They probably also felt their back after a few hours of this.

[fergalicious214]

Updates on crafting. I haven't been taking progress pics really but I've been slowly plodding away on a couple of crochet projects.

Caught up on October for my temperature tracker and finished three woven bands since I last took pictures.

[spontaneousmusicalnumber]

ough you know the book you want is obscure when even the internet archive hasnt heard of it and you can't find a pdf anywhere

this looks like a job for the formal inter library loan process at the municipal library

i've given them a year and a budget to get it to me so i can scan and keep all of the Finnish iron age tablet weaving patterns contained therein

[exercise-of-trust]

oh hey one more really stupid sock construction before i go: tablet woven heel band! this pair is a christmas gift for a good friend so i'm not modeling them myself, but the water bottle works ok. (i am not immune to a non-knitter who appreciates and actually wears hand-knit items, and my friend, god love him, lacks the good sense to tell me to quit giving him weird stuff, so here we are.)

i can't find the post now, but i remember seeing someone on here tablet-weave a color transition for... a sweater? a shawl? i don't even remember anymore. anyway, the idea was still knocking around in my head when i found the squircle sock pattern, which starts with a cuff in the round, adds a very long and narrow heel flap (only 6 stitches wide!), and picks up stitches on either side of it to work in the round again. this monstrosity replaces the original garter stitch heel flap with a short tablet-woven band grafted onto the back of the cuff. to "pick up stitches" along the side, i wove each section with some slack in the weft, using a couple dpns to keep things even (looking back, i don't think i actually used the weft loops themselves as the "slipped stitches," because you can already see the warp twists kind of coming undone along the sides of the dpn-less section in the bottom photo? i think i ran another bit of scrap thread through those loops, tightened the slack out of the weft, used the scrap thread as the slipped stitches, and then tightened those loops out too once i'd gotten a couple rounds into the rest of the sock to get the knitted stitches flush with edges of the woven band.)

things i would do differently if i made these again: tablet weaving is a twined weaving style, so it's a bit thick, and it gets even thicker when you have to weave in the ends. this pattern uses 18 tablets with 4 threads each, for a total of 18 x 4 x 2 x 2 = 288 total ends that need weaving in, which as you can imagine is Deeply And Profoundly Unfun. i might do a missing-hole tablet woven pattern (which the "dublin dragons" motif is supposed to be anyway, but i wanted three colors to match the flag stripes), or i might do a baltic pickup band instead, which should reduce the bulk a bit.

[perikrone]

The depth of the global textile supply chain that you get into as you get into increasingly obscure fiber arts is so wild.

You can start with knitting, or crochet, and there are *so* many choices for yarn and materials. Indie dyers with unique colorways, weird fibers from heritage breeds, and patterns for hundreds of lifetimes worth of hobby. You can even dive into spinning! Buy weird fiber from hobbyists and conservationists around the world, and spin things that you can't easily get otherwise.. Just those skills are enough to take a lifetime to hone.

But if you go far enough down the rabbit-hole, you're suddenly googling for how to compare thread weights between crochet thread numbers and weaving numbers, and is flax graded differently than cotton? Oh, I can get 20/2 and 60/2 silk all day long, but suddenly if I need 30/2 silk there are just a handful of results and wow I'll never be able to buy this again, is this a random mill in Turkey just selling cone ends??? And before you know it you have a note file with 10,000 Etsy links and Google translated half functioning corporate websites and you're trying to figure out if it's worth it to just see if you can import from this tiny store in Germany that seems to have a reliable source of *close enough* fiber for what you're going for, and why are you even so into *tablet weaving* of all things, why can't we just be knitting endless socks or something like that???

Love it, wouldn't trade it for the world.

[truthandshadow]

Can I just say I love how every tumblr weaver looks at inkle/tablet weaving and goes “Hm… pride flag band.”

[himikochan]

Don’t know if anyone has seen this before but here’s a free resource that basically tells you everything you need to know for your first tablet weaving project

It’s a website from 2003 and is very easy to read and has no paywall

[fungiwolf]

Finally done! I'm obsessed with how it looks

[archaeology-findings]

Tablet weaving pattern from Byzantine Egypt

This is the original band, found in Necropolis D in Antinoöpolis, Egypt. It has been dated to c. 395-641 CE. It is currently held in the Louvre.

This is the threading diagram and turning sequence. The shaded squares indicate the cards should be turned backwards. The pattern is fortunately twist-neutral!

Here's how my reconstruction turned out:

The original weft used was a very fine natural linen thread but I chose to use the same white yarn as in the warp.

[grimmborg-in-the-bog]

Am i a 10th century baddie yet?

After four years of having my viking clothes mostly done, i've finally been made to finish them. My basics were all done back then, but this is more of a fancy summery fit that took a lot more work (especially the weaving)

Dress is based on the Vangsnes pleated dress, it's a super thin wool dyed with madder (the colour is a little uneven sadly)

Woven band is from a similar grave to vangsnes, but in Køstrup, because the vangsnes band is all swastikas

My brooches are NOT historical but just what i have rn :(

Half the beads are made by me, the other half were bought. it might be a bit much ngl but i felt very fancy

[trkkr47]

Absolutely awesome new tablet weaving pattern!

[leo-fie]

Tablet woven rainbow shoelaces. Because why not?

Here's the pattern, made it myself, because just lines are boring. Made it size 8 pearl yarn and deliberately tight, but it still came out slightly too wide. Also when I looked up how long laces for hightops are, and bing told me it's 54 inches, that might be a lie. Or the topmost pair of holes is not suppost to be laced? Anyway, don't repeat my mistake. Happy crafting!

[friendlymathematician]

third attempt: more complex pattern (24 cards, 52 row repeat), thinner yarn (8/2 mercerized cotton)

so satisfying