S and Z

I designed and wove this band all the way back in the summer of 2019, so I think it's definitely about time I shared it with you. It was inspired by the prevalence of S and Z motifs in medieval Europe and is woven in 3x1 diagonals.

It's an easy weave, with tablets in groups of four turning backward or forward for groups of four turns and is a great one to try if you want to practice working with multiple turning directions at the same time. It's twist neutral for the pattern tablets, so you'll only get a build up of twist behind the two selvedge tablets carrying the white yarn on either side of the pattern.

You can download the TDD file for this draft by clicking here.

The text version of this draft is as follows:

• Threading:

1. S threaded tablet
   1. White (#ffffff)
   2. White (#ffffff)
   3. White (#ffffff)
   4. White (#ffffff)
2. Z threaded tablet
   1. White (#ffffff)
   2. White (#ffffff)
   3. White (#ffffff)
   4. White (#ffffff)
3. Z threaded tablet
   1. White (#ffffff)
   2. Red (#ff0000)
   3. Red (#ff0000)
   4. Red (#ff0000)
4. Z threaded tablet
   1. Red (#ff0000)
   2. White (#ffffff)
   3. Red (#ff0000)
   4. Red (#ff0000)
5. Z threaded tablet
   1. Red (#ff0000)
   2. Red (#ff0000)
   3. White (#ffffff)
   4. Red (#ff0000)
6. Z threaded tablet
   1. Red (#ff0000)
   2. Red (#ff0000)
   3. Red (#ff0000)
   4. White (#ffffff)
7. S threaded tablet
   1. Red (#ff0000)
   2. Red (#ff0000)
   3. Red (#ff0000)
   4. White (#ffffff)
8. S threaded tablet
   1. Red (#ff0000)
   2. Red (#ff0000)
   3. White (#ffffff)
   4. Red (#ff0000)
9. S threaded tablet
   1. Red (#ff0000)
   2. White (#ffffff)
   3. Red (#ff0000)
   4. Red (#ff0000)
10. S threaded tablet
    1. White (#ffffff)
    2. Red (#ff0000)
    3. Red (#ff0000)
    4. Red (#ff0000)
11. S threaded tablet
    1. White (#ffffff)
    2. White (#ffffff)
    3. White (#ffffff)
    4. White (#ffffff)
12. Z threaded tablet
    1. White (#ffffff)
    2. White (#ffffff)
    3. White (#ffffff)
    4. White (#ffffff)

• Turning:

1. 2F 8B 2F
2. 2F 8B 2F
3. 2F 8B 2F
4. 2F 8B 2F
5. 12F
6. 12F
7. 12F
8. 12F
9. 12F
10. 12F
11. 12F
12. 12F
13. 2F 4B 6F
14. 2F 4B 6F
15. 2F 4B 6F
16. 2F 4B 6F
17. 2F 8B 2F
18. 2F 8B 2F
19. 2F 8B 2F
20. 2F 8B 2F
21. 2F 8B 2F
22. 2F 8B 2F
23. 2F 8B 2F
24. 2F 8B 2F
25. 12F
26. 12F
27. 12F
28. 12F
29. 2F 8B 2F
30. 2F 8B 2F
31. 2F 8B 2F
32. 2F 8B 2F
33. 12F
34. 12F
35. 12F
36. 12F
37. 12F
38. 12F
39. 12F
40. 12F
41. 6F 4B 2F
42. 6F 4B 2F
43. 6F 4B 2F
44. 6F 4B 2F
45. 2F 8B 2F
46. 2F 8B 2F
47. 2F 8B 2F
48. 2F 8B 2F
49. 2F 8B 2F
50. 2F 8B 2F
51. 2F 8B 2F
52. 2F 8B 2F
53. 12F
54. 12F
55. 12F
56. 12F

As with all of the free 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.

TDD, Text Descriptions and Accessibility

There have been seismic shifts in the yarn community over the last six months which have opened my eyes to some of the obstacles faced by many of you out there in internet land. Discussions of these obstacles have inspired us to do better and we want to play our part in making the yarn community more inclusive. If you want to tablet weave, we want to help you to do it! As such, James and I are committed to making Tablet Weaving Draft Designer more accessible to our visually impaired users. 

Our first step has been to add a Text Description tool in the Display section of the control panel, so that the draft can be rendered in a non-pictorial way. The interface for making the draft still requires the user to click on squares in a grid, which isn't compatible with software like screen-readers, so we're working on a way to create drafts using a keyboard instead. If you use a screen reader or other assistive technology, or know someone who does, and are interested in helping with some beta testing when the time comes, we would love to hear from you.

I know that some users prefer a text based sequence of turning instructions, so the new Text Description tool will hopefully be of use to them too. The original version of TDD, all the way back in 2015, was tailored to my specific needs and the way that I think about tablet weaving and draft my patterns. I'm dyslexic and find walls of text difficult to work with, so we started with a basic pictorial draft and worked from there. Over the years we've been adding extra features to make TDD work better for a wider range of people (the ability to change the saturation of the backwards turn squares or to mark turning direction changes in red, for example) and making it more accessible is a continuation of that.

Over the next few weeks, I will be going through every post on this blog to add text versions to go with each pictorial draft and adding alt text to any images that don't already have them. I will also be adding a TDD draft download link to go with every draft page.

Using the New Pattern Repeat Tool on TDD

The new Pattern Repeat tool may not work in quite the way you are expecting, so if you have any questions about it, please read this post. The band generated by the tool can't currently be exported as an image. This is on the to-do list, but may take a while.

When we did the recent redesign, we added a lot of improvements to our Tablet Weaving Draft Designer and dropped one of the old features: the Pattern Repeat tool. It wasn't functioning well and it was possible to use it to generate a band that wouldn't actually work when woven. If you had a draft for four-holed tablets, for example, and told the old tool that the repeat was the first two picks (rows), it would merely copy the contents of those two picks. If those two picks represented forward turns of the tablets, the old tool made it appear that continuous forward turns would repeat those two picks and only those two picks.

A simple example draft

For the above example draft, if you told the old tool that the pattern repeat was from pick 1 to pick 2 and to repeat it twice, it would produce the band pictured below: 

An incorrectly generated band

This is how the new pattern repeat tool shows it:

This is how the new tool generates the band, given the same instructions as before

The new tool takes the turning sequence of the tablets for the picks that you specified, and applies it to the threads as they are arranged in your turning diagram, from the tablet starting positions in your first specified repeat pick.

Here the tool repeats the turning sequence from picks 1-6, so it shows you what the band looks like if you do 4 turns forward, then 2 turns backward, starting from pick 1 onwards

If the band generated by the Pattern Repeat tool is not what you were expecting, try adjusting the starting and ending picks that you have specified in the control panel.