Card/Tablet Weaving: My Weave Along with Elewys

I’m slowly continuing my Weave Along with Elewys project. This newest band pattern is Hallstatt 152 and is the Weave Along with Elewys Episode 5. (I skipped a couple bands). Elewys tells us that the band that this pattern is based on was found in a salt mine in Austria and date from between 400-800 BCE. That’s totally amazing. To learn more about this band, check out Elewys’s blog.

My band is 1/2 inch wide. All the yarns in this band were purchased and commercially dyed. I chose brown, white, a deep orange and red. The spools were pretty all lined up, but in retrospect, my orange and red are just too close in color and so some of detail in the band’s pattern has essentially been lost. However, I still think this is a beautiful band.

I used the 4 hole pattern. That’s simpler than the skipped hole pattern but I still really struggled with this design. I had find time to weave without any distractions initially…not even music. I spent a lot of time in the first couple feet of weaving, unpicking my errors. There was error that was so egregious that I was never completely able to unpick it. That couple inches of weaving was pretty enough so that even though it was wrong, I left it.

But after several feet on weaving, I finally got it, and was able to weave without making mistakes listening to music or even with the evening news on in the background. I needed to develop the motor memory and mental memory to reliably weave this pattern.

My version of Hallstatt 152

I’m really pleased with this band and i definitely learned a lot weaving it!

Tablet Weaving a Viking Era Wool Band: An Attempt at a Re-Creation of a Dublin Band

I have fallen down a whole series of rabbit holes, looking at posts and YouTube videos on tablet weaving and natural plant dyes.

One of the rabbit holes lead me all the way to Australia!! That is, via the YouTube Channel of Ylva the Red, a Australian reenactor of the Hibernian Viking Era in Ireland. Tablet weaving queries lead me to her lovely video, Tablet Weaving: Dublin Wool Band.

Unlike my first tablet woven band (see my September 9, 2021 post) which had a beautiful pattern, this plain wool band just has a subtle chevron design. It looks a lot like knitting but it is tablet woven and not at all stretchy like knitting would be.

Ylva the Red has excellent instructions about how to weave this belt on her video, so I’m not going to repeat them here. Rather I’ll tell you about my adventures, and how I jury-rigged a set up to weave this band. Spoiler alert: I stepped seriously out of the Viking period.

Inkle looms are a fairly modern invention (and I had a plain weave band loaded on mine) so I needed to find another way to do this card weaving. A back strap loom would be historically appropriate but so is a loom consisting of to upright round rods anchored in either end of a narrow flat board that sits on the floor. I didn’t have a back strap set up nor a medieval loom, so I created a combination of the two looms.

I used my Schacht warping pegs bolted onto my kitchen island (please excuse the clutter on the counter) . That put it a bit about waist height and the two upright pegs sort of simulated the two upright poles of a medieval loom. The back strap set ups I’ve seen have two wooden boards, bolted together to hold the weaving at one end. I decided that might be helpful and so I used an IKEA bag clip to hold the warp flat at both ends near the pegs. This set up actually worked very well.

Ylva the Red states that the Dublin wool band was woven with the cards only turning forward. That I just couldn’t do. My wool was on the coarse side (the Viking wool must have been coarse too) and the yarns in warp kept trying to grab the adjacent warp. I started off just turning the cards forward, but after about 2 inches, I was starting to have serious problems with twist beyond the tablets.

I suppose I could have untied the far end of the weaving and manually released the twist in the warp thread of each card. That may be how the Vikings solved that problem. I took the easy route instead, and opted to reverse direction, turning the tablets back until the twist was released, and then switched back again to forward turns. I had to do this every 2 to 3 inches along the woven band.

It does create visible intersection in the band. But that really doesn’t bother me.

Note the twists in the warp threads in the center of this band where I reversed the turning direction of the tablets.

As I got to the far end of my band, the twist beyond the cards eventually became insurmountable. It was time to stop weaving..

This picture shows how much twist there is behind the tablets when I reached to end of my warp. It almost looks like it has been woven too!

In order to lock the tail of my weft thread, I slipped a loop of thread into the shed. Then I passed the shuttle through, turned the cards and repeated with a second loop. Then I turned the cards and and passed the shuttle through the shed two more times. Then I cut the weft thread, leaving a tail about about 6 to 8 inches long.

I put the weft’s tail though the loop on the side where I had finished weaving and used the loop to pull the weft thread through the band. Then I repeated that on the far side. This firmly locks the weft thread into the band. The band just isn’t going to ravel apart. Then I trimmed off the excess weft tail and the edge of the band and cut the band off the warping pegs.

Ylva the Red has links to primary source information about this Viking Dublin Wool Band in her YouTube video notes, including a black and white photo of the original Dublin band. Go check them out!

I’m not a reenactor and I don’t belong to any historical groups. I wasn’t trying to create an historically accurate band. I was just plain curious and thought it would be fun to see if I could weave a band that was just a bit like the original Viking band. It’s a bit wider than the original by about 1/8 inch, but otherwise, it’s not too bad!

I had a lot of fun making due with the implements I had on hand, and I’m actually really pleased with my historically inaccurate tablet woven band!

Card/Tablet Weaving: My Weave Along with Elewys Episode 2

I was so excited to weave this Lagoda band with the yarns I had dyed with items from my own yard! The beautiful pink is from the leaves of a crab apple tree and the soft cream was dyed using peppermint leaves and marigold flowers. The mordant for all my dyeing is a soymilk/water mixture.

This tablet weaving pattern is the second tablet woven band in the Weave Along with Elewys series. The first link is to her blog post about this band and this one is to the YouTube Video showing how to warp and weave the Lagoda band.

This is a Norse influenced pattern from between the 10th to 12th century and was found in a burial mound near Lake Lagoda, which Elewys says is 170 miles east of St. Petersburg, Russia.

The central pattern reverses, which undoes the twist which builds up as you weave. However, the borders are all woven forward. I eventually got a twist in those border threads which were a problem, so I started weaving them in reverse. This works, but causes a bump in the border. It doesn’t bother me a lot, but after I finished it, discovered another video by Elewys that explains that you can simply flip the border cards from S to Z or Z to S, depending on which they way they were intially threaded, that that solves the problem without any bumps! Here’s the link to her Tablet Weaving Tutorial: Untwisting Warp Threads.

I used a dark weft thread. I rather like the pattern on the borders of the band. It reminds me of Springer Spaniels. There is a way to hide a dark weft thread in a border, minimalizing the dots on the edges but I haven’t tried it yet.

And I learned one more very important thing weaving this band. When they tell you to warp your loom with the tension bar at the furthest, loosest place, do it! Tablet weaving bands cause the warp to get shorter as you weave. I never noticed that when I was doing straight weaves on the inkle loom. I warped this band with the tension bar approximately in the center of the slot. I realized about have way through the band, that this was going to be a problem. As I advanced the band, the tension bar got closer and closer to the end end of the slot. Finally it did reach the end of the slot, which meant I was done weaving. I couldn’t advance the band any further. It wasn’t horrible…I probably sacrificed about 8 inches of warp thread. But since this was hand dyed yarn, it was a rather painful to lose it!

I will say that there are a lot of different types of inkle looms in videos I’ve watched, and the location of the loose end of the tension bar is looks different on different looms. So I was a bit puzzled about where it was on my Schacht Inkle Loom. The answer is that it is at the end of the slot that is closest to you when you are weaving, and furthest away from the pegs.

I learned a lot weaving this band and am starting to feel more comfortable doing tablet weaving. It’s really fun and I love the finished product!

Oops. Here you can see the tension bar as arrived the end of the slot that is closest to the pegs on my Schacht Inkle Loom. I can’t advance the band any further. so I can’t weave anymore of my warp. This is a rookie error.

Card/Tablet Weaving on an Inkle Loom: My Weave Along with Elewys - Episode 1 Project

I have to say, the Schacht inkle loom that a couple of my friends gave me, was one of the best birthday presents ever! During the recent August heat and humidity, I pulled out my inkle loom and warped it for a plain weave band.

You hear folks talking about falling into “rabbit holes” on Instagram and PInterest but I fell down a rabbit hole in looking in my own box of weaving supplies!! Looking for a new colorway of cotton yarn for another band, I happened to pull out a set of Schacht Weaving Cards. (Weaving cards are often called Tablets too. The terms are interchangeable). Hmm. I've had them for a number of years but never figured out how to use them. They seemed complicated. But like many complicated things, they turn out to be easy with a good teacher.

I headed right over to YouTube and typed card weaving into the search. Little did I know I was about to fall into another “rabbit hole”—in the best sort of way! I found Tablet Weaving for the Absolute Beginner by
Elewys of Finchingefeld. Elewys is a member of the Society of Creative Anachronism. (In case you are wondering, “The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is an inclusive community pursuing research and re-creation of pre-seventeenth century skills, arts, combat and culture. The lives of participants are enriched as we gain knowledge of history through activities, demonstrations, and events.” ) Elewys decided to use her Covid-19 Pandemic lock down time to created a “Weave Along” series, making 20 bands, one for each of the kingdoms of the SCA, and creating YouTube videos and blog posts for each of the bands she was going to tablet weave.

In addition to the 20 bands videos, Elewys also created the how-to video (and blog posts ) I found and a number of other videos related to tablet weaving.

Not only is Elewys a fine tablet weaver, she is also an excellent teacher. I highly recommend all her videos of you want to start card/tablet weaving or even if you are just curious about it. Her videos are really fun to watch.

Anyway, Elewys’s videos got me started. Her Weave-along project is brilliant. She assumes you know nothing about card/tablet weaving. The first band in the series is an easy, straightforward weave. As the series progresses, the weaves get more complex as she is counting on the participants to be learning skills with each band woven.

I watched her how-to video and then the first video in the Weave-along, Weave Along with Elewys - Episode 1: The Oseberg Weave. You can see my inkle loom warped for the Oseberg band in the photo above. Here are a couple more photos—one of the band on the loom and one of the completed band.

I think I threaded the card backwards because this box pattern is supposed to be on the back side of the weaving, and a zig-zag on the front. (See the photo below, right, to see both side of the band). There is also supposed to be an orange dot in the center of each of the boxes and that’s missing on mine. I don’t know if that was part of my backwards card threading or if I mis-threaded one of the cards….I’d guess it was a mis-threaded card. So not quite historically accurate, but I still love it!

This was my first card/tablet woven band, but not my first time weaving bands on the inkle loom. Elewys tells you that the first bit of weaving is going to look a mess. But it took me a full 6 inches to get the weaving tight and a longer more before I finally started feeling happy about my selvedges! Band 2 will look better!

Speaking of which, right now there is a skein of cotton thread in a dye vat of crab apple leaves dye. I had just dyed some fabric (see my next post) and I realized that if I was going to weave an historical pattern, I might just as well use thread dyed with a natural dye! (Falling deeper into that rabbit hole! But I also totally fell into a variety of rabbit holes looking at the posts and activities of the SCA! Fun to read about, though I doubt I’ll be sewing up a medieval costume and joining the group. But then, I’ve learned to never say never)!!

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