Hello again!
With my cards threaded, as I detailed in my last post, I was ready to begin weaving! Or so I thought…
As any sane person could probably tell by looking at my weaving – I don’t believe I provided a picture of the beginning of my band last time, so I will do so below – my tension was awful. Horrible. My band did not look AT ALL like it was supposed to, but I was hopeful! I kept going! I was somehow convinced it was going to get better.
(It didn’t.)
However, it is interesting that if one looks at the entirety of my woven band, you can pretty clearly see my progress from hopeless to mildly-skilled, might be able to use my skills to catch a husband in the Middle Ages weaver.
So without further ado, I present to you: A Guided Tour Through Learning How to Tablet Weave, through the medium of hopefully not to awful pictures of said tablet woven band.
Chapter One: Tension, or Yes How You Tie Your Threads Is Important
This is the beginning of my band. It looks a little weird because one, it is, and two, I just took this photo, and part of the band is wound around the belt. At the top, you can see where I attempted to begin weaving. In my pattern, when you simply turn all four cards forwards, it creates that sort of alternating white and then green ‘v’ pattern, which is what you see in this photo. As you can see here, my tension was not good, but somehow I convinced myself to keep going.
Chapter Two: Rushing Headfirst Into Things Is Not Always the Best Option
So here you can see I attempted to begin the pattern at the very top. I was running into an issue where I had tied the threads to the belt, and to the table leg I was using at the other end, without making sure all of the threads were equally taut between them. With fifty-two separate threads, it’s easy to accidentally leave one a little looser. So when I would go to ‘beat down’ the weft, a thread would pull and leave bumps, which meant I didn’t want to pull it as tight. Essentially, it was a mess.
Luckily for me, a repreive came in the form of reading break, where I completely untied everything and brought it home with me. And proceeded to not work on it the whole reading break, of course. But, when I came home and retied it, things started to look up… a little bit.
Chapter Three: A Light At The End Of The Tunnel?
When I came back from reading break, I re-tied my project and attempted to do it in a way that kept the correct tension. As you can see here, some of my pattern is visible in the band, however it is very stretched out and there are some… problems. Part of the problem I believe is that I wasn’t ‘beating down’ hard enough – at the time I thought I was, but I think that’s why the pattern is so stretched out.
At the top end of this section, you can see that things get a little… wacky. I’d reached a spot in the pattern that I like to call the ‘reset’ section, where I’ve completed the full round of the pattern and for four rows all I do is flip every card forward. I chose to take this moment as a proper reset, retying the threads again, keeping everything very tight, and vowing not to restart the pattern until everything looked right.
Chapter Four: I Put Things Back In Order
If you’ve been paying attention, you may already have spotted what I did – that something was wrong with the right side of my cards. The lopsided ‘v’ shape you can see here should not be lopsided at all. I went through my pattern and some of the cards had switched around – it took me three rounds of four turns to get it fixed properly, which you can see pretty clearly if you compare the top ‘v’ of the photo to the ones below.
It was handy to know what the ‘blank’ state of my pattern was supposed to look like, as I don’t think I would have noticed my cards got switched otherwise!
Chapter Five: Success Comes To Those Who Fail A Lot First
Okay, I think you’ve suffered through enough photos of badly-woven bits of thread to finally see something a little better looking.
Seriously though, I’m super happy with how the weaving is going now and I think it looks so good! I’m not sure why it took me so long to get here, but I guess practice makes perfect, right! So here you go.
Chapter Six: Things Eventually Get Better
I can now pretty reliably get through a cycle of my pattern without messing up, though I do sometimes occasionally forget to put the weft thread through before turning the cards, which is the most frustrating thing on the face of the planet.
Finally getting the pattern to work has made me very exited to try more tablet-woven patterns. I definitely think this is a craft I want to keep doing. (Now I only have to learn how to sew so I can have garments to attach the bands to…)
I think it takes me about 20 minutes to half an hour to get through a cycle of my band, maybe less now. If only I could find a comfortable way to sit… seriously, there’s no way when you’re using the backstrap method. At least not for me, because I don’t have anywhere to tie it to high enough that I could then sit on a chair. So your options are basically numb butt, your feet falling asleep, or your back hurting.
I’m excited to see the band getting longer, and to see it when it’s finished. I’m sure casting it off will be a quick and easy process, right? (ha.ha.)
Until next time,
Quynn