Bonus (Egyptian Zigzags)

If you're reading this, it means that my next book is out! It's called Tablet Weaving in Theory and Practice: Egyptian Zigzags (click the link to go to the sale page over on my publisher's site) and is based around an Egyptian band (catalogue numbers ÆIN 958 and ÆIN 959) held by the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has instructions for a direct reconstruction band plus drafts for another 154 designs in the same style.

ÆIN 958 and ÆIN 959 were skillfully woven in fine white linen and vibrantly coloured wool threads, with a combination of warp-twining and brocade work. Each of their selvedges is around 5.5mm wide, with their intricately patterned centre sections being around 17mm wide, to a total of around 28mm wide*. ÆIN 958 is around 48cm long and ÆIN 959 is around 48.5cm*. Both bands have significant damage to both their selvedges and brocade threads, with some sections missing entirely, suggesting that they saw significant wear before deposition, although the selvedge damage may have occurred after excavation, when they were removed from their original context in preparation for for sale*. Due to the absence of any context for the objects, we cannot be sure of their age, but they were proposed as being from the 7th-8th centuries in a museum catalogue from 1930 or from the 14th-15th centuries by Nancy Spies, herself an expert in tablet woven brocaded bands. (Statements marked with * are based on my personal observations of the bands)

The objects were woven with groups of 4 tablets turning togther for four turns for the majority of their motifs and I had a lot of fun with extending the technique to make new designs. All the extra drafts in Egyptian Zigzags are woven with 54 tablets (40 pattern tablets, with 7 selvedge tablets on each side), but I've reduced the number of tablets and changed up the colours they carry for the Bonus draft here. I picked red, white, blue and yellow as they were the selvedge colours of the original band. The Bonus draft is twist-neutral overall, as well as the two halves being twist-neutral, so you won't get a build up of twist if you weave the entire draft or if you only weave the first 24 or second 24 rows.

Link to TDD file
Link to text version

As with all of the free drafts/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.

Bulgarica

This draft is a reproduction of a piece of Bulgarian national dress. It is a variation on a school of designs generally called Kivrim that has been assigned to the Anatolian region of Turkey. Tablet weaving is an important part of folk costume in Bulgaria, providing many an intricately patterned belt or piece of trim. Bulgarica also happens to be the name of a genus of land snails, which I thought fitted the spiral nature of the motif rather nicely. I've included a picture/link to the original Bulgarian band on Facebook that inspired this one below. If you know anything more about its context, please do get in touch! Bulgarian tablet weaving is a rich tradition that I would love to know more about.

I wove the sample band, at the request of a friend, in King Cole Merino-Blend 4ply in the colours black, white, grass and red (instead of the original pink) with black as the weft. Unlike many of the drafts you'll find on my blog, this design (picks 1-8) is not twist-neutral, so I've included a reversed version from picks 9-16 to if you want to weave out a build-up of twist.

Link to text version

Link to TDD file

As with all of the free drafts/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.

Counterchanged Diamonds

This design is a based on a band I wove back in 2011 (the black and white one in the picture above) to use up the last of the long-discontinued acrylic crochet thread I learned to tablet weave with. I set up a warp to weave two thread wide diagonal lines and improvised the design, changing the turning direction of pairs of tablets in a technique often known as Egyptian Diagonals (despite it being extremely doubtful that it has any historical link to Egypt). I had been planning to share it with you unedited, but when I came to draft it out in TDD, I found a number of odd decisions that could be improved on. The new version I'm sharing here has two more pattern tablets and 2 more picks, retaining the twist-neutral design of the original, while making it make rather more sense.

Counterchanged is a term used in heraldry to mean that two colours have switched position on either side of a dividing line, the motif colour becoming the background colour and vice versa. In combination with the weaving technique, it comes together to make a pretty fun design. The yarns I used in the sample band were King Cole Merino-Blend 4-ply in the colours black, blackcurrant, sapphire, grass, mustard, cinnamon and red, with black as the weft, the same as my Rainbow Triangles band.

If you would prefer a shorter turning sequence, repeating only the first 24 picks will give you just the simple rainbow diamonds and repeating only picks 25-48 will give you just diamonds on the background of diagonal lines.

Link to the text version

Link to the TDD file

As with all of the free drafts/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.

Ulrich

The motif in this new free draft is based on a section from an object refered to as the maniple of St. Ulrich (hence the name). You can find a picture of it here: https://www.meganmcnamee.com/projects/tabletweaving It has been dated to the 10th century and is held by the Church of Sts. Afra and Ulrich in Ausburg, Germany. The maniple (a type of priestly vestment) was tablet woven in green, red, and white silk with a combination of 2x2 diagonals, 3/1 broken twill double-face, and gold brocade. Celtic knots and hand motifs with inscriptions ("DEXTERA DEI" - Hand of God) are surrounded by lozenge-shaped frames formed from the interlacing designs you see here, albeit translated into a different technique and somewhat simplified.

Ulrich is twist-neutral for the pattern tablets, as I've included a reversed version of the pattern repeat as the second half (above the black line) of the draft. For the sample I wove 3 repeats of each half of the draft before moving onto the next half. If you'd prefer to weave just the first 48 picks, you'll get some twist build-up, but not a lot, as each pattern tablet only has 8 more turns in one direction than the other.

I wove the sample band in King Cole Merino-Blend 4ply, with the colours French Navy, Ivy and Mustard as the warp and Mustard as the weft. Be aware that other than green, these are not the colours used in the original object, they're just ones that I have a lot of and thought would look good together!

Link to the text version of Ulrich:

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k4vb8H2hKNiWk3nGXoZ_D-vHBtyJbe6A/view?usp=drive_link

Link to the TDD file for Ulrich:

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1laUdZnl9PgCsqDxHFFkrinuwUhhrTGNL/view?usp=sharing

Further Reading:

Spies, N. (2000). Ecclesiastical Pomp and Aristocratic Circumstance: A Thousand Years Of Brocaded Tabletwoven Bands, Arelate Studio.

Collingwood, P. (2002). The Techniques of Tablet Weaving, Robin & Russ Handweavers Inc.

As with all of the free drafts/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.

Valentine

Sometimes drafts pop into my head fully formed, with a name and colour scheme, and sometimes it takes a few attempts to refine them and work out what they want to be. This is one of the first kind. It came about during part of the sample weaving for my next book, when my mind wandered, and was my treat for finishing the final sample.

It's twist-neutral for the pattern tablets, but you will get a build-up behind the three selvedge tablets on each side. I flipped mine every 64 picks during weaving to weave out the excess twist. The sample band for this draft was woven in King Cole Merino-Blend 4ply in the colours Bordeaux, white and rose petal. It is named for the hearts that appear above and below each knot motif.

If you're finding a 64 pick draft overwhelming, it will work just as well if you only weave the first 32 picks, repeating as many times as desired. If you go that route, there will be some twist build-up behind some of the pattern tablets.

Link to tdd file for this draft

Link to text version of this draft

As with all of the free drafts/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.

Quick Book News Update

The sample bands for my next book are now finished and I'm on to the writing up stage! It's taken about 2 months of work to get to this point, so I'm very glad it's done and I can go back to hobby weaving of an evening.

Rainbow Triangles

I came up with this variation on an Egyptian band for an SCA event recently and, since it's Pride Month, I thought I'd share it with you too. Two pieces of the inspiration band are held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and it's one of the objects I've been lucky enough to see in person during one of my behind-the-scenes museum trips. You can read more about it and find a draft for weaving the original in Silvia Aisling's book Tablet-Woven Bands from Egypt (buy it via a source in Germany to get it in colour!).

The yarn I used for this band is King Cole Merino-Blend 4-ply in the colours black, blackcurrant, sapphire, grass, mustard, cinnamon and red, with black as the weft.

Link to the text version of this draft

Link to the TDD file for this draft

As with all of the free drafts/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.

Book News

I'm happy to announce that, all going well, there will be a second book this year! I've been working away on one of the sample bands and am now one third of the way through the stack of designs. There's 153 in total (at the moment), so it's going to take a while yet, but I wanted to share a little about the project with you. 

It's something of a return to the style of my early books, Warp-Twined Angles and Vacant-Hole Pinwheels, in that there will be a whole host of drafts woven using the same threading that you will be able to weave in any order you like, only this time the drafts vary in length. The shortest has a pattern repeat of just 4 rows, while the longest will take 80 rows to complete. I'm weaving them in size order, so I expect the number of drafts I complete each day to slow down as I reach the end.

In addition to all the new drafts, there will be an analysis of the historical band I used as a starting point for the book, as well as instructions for producing your own reconstruction.

I'm excited to see what you weave from it and where the designing tips I'm including will take you!

Flash

It's ages since I posted a new free draft on the blog, so I thought I'd share this one with you. It's a simple threaded-in pattern (the design is determined by the placement of the colours in the tablets rather than a special turning sequence) and all the tablets are turned continuously forwards, so there will be a build-up of twist that you can undo by switching to turning all the tablets backwards. I've been struggling with names for drafts lately, so I threw it open to Instagram (I'm @tabletweaving over there, by the way) and the wonderful Mari came up with "Flash", which I think fits really well.

Link to TDD file for Flash

The text version of this draft is as follows:

Threading:

 * S threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Yellow (#ffff00)

    C: Yellow (#ffff00)

    D: Yellow (#ffff00)

 * Z threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Red (#ff0000)

    B: Red (#ff0000)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Red (#ff0000)

 * S threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Red (#ff0000)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Red (#ff0000)

 * S threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Yellow (#ffff00)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Yellow (#ffff00)

 * S threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Red (#ff0000)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Red (#ff0000)

 * Z threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Red (#ff0000)

    B: Red (#ff0000)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Red (#ff0000)

 * S threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Yellow (#ffff00)

    C: Yellow (#ffff00)

    D: Yellow (#ffff00)

 * Z threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Yellow (#ffff00)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Yellow (#ffff00)

 * Z threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Red (#ff0000)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Red (#ff0000)

 * Z threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Yellow (#ffff00)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Yellow (#ffff00)

 * S threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Yellow (#ffff00)

    C: Yellow (#ffff00)

    D: Yellow (#ffff00)

 * Z threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Red (#ff0000)

    B: Red (#ff0000)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Red (#ff0000)

 * S threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Red (#ff0000)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Red (#ff0000)

 * S threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Yellow (#ffff00)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Yellow (#ffff00)

 * S threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Red (#ff0000)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Red (#ff0000)

 * Z threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Red (#ff0000)

    B: Red (#ff0000)

    C: Red (#ff0000)

    D: Red (#ff0000)

 * S threaded tablet (↻)

    A: Yellow (#ffff00)

    B: Yellow (#ffff00)

    C: Yellow (#ffff00)

    D: Yellow (#ffff00)

Turning:

 1. 17F

 2. 17F

 3. 17F

 4. 17F

 5. 17F

 6. 17F

 7. 17F

 8. 17F

As with all of the free drafts/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.

It's Almost Time!

Not going to lie, I'm pretty excited! My publisher has the files for the new book and are working on the proof copies! I should be ready to release it into the wild in early March, all going well. It's a bit different to my other books as it's mostly tablet weaving theory rather than practice, but there's still a new design in there for you to play with.

ETA: My new book, Tablet Weaving in Theory and Practice: A Tablet Weaver's Record Book, is now live in the Blurb book shop and can be purchased as hardcover, softcover and pdf editions!

Coming Soon to a Bookcase Near You!

If all goes well with proof copies and so on, I should have a new book to share with you for the end of this month! I'm more than a little excited, can you tell? This one has been in the works since early last year and I was hoping to publish in November as I have with previous volumes, but life got in the way several times. With this one almost done, I'm now doing the initial planning and layouts for the next book, so this may well turn out to be a two book year. 

Tablet Weaving Draft Designer Updates

The year's end has rolled around again (or rather it did a month ago) and there have been a few changes to Tablet Weaving Draft Designer. In the Display section we now have a "show only thread colour" option which will fill each square on the grid with the colour of the thread in that square and an "S-Z" toggle which will allow you to flip the letters below the threading diagram. This leaves everything else the same, with only the S and Z labels changing.

Hedge Maze

After weaving my advent band over much of December, I wanted something with a simple, soothing rhythm to it for my project over the Christmas break. I opened up the folder I keep both my published and unpublished designs in and wandered through it until I found something to fit the bill. This one comes from November 2021. I have a bit of a backlog! I was at a loss as to what to name it, so I asked Instagram and this was the name I liked the most, especially as I often hang my bands up in hedges to photograph them!

This design isn't twist-neutral and will cause a build up of twist behind the tablets, so I've included a reversed version that will allow you to weave it out. As ever, you can find links to the text version and TDD file for both drafts at the bottom of the page.

Link to text version of Hedge Maze
Link to TDD file for Hedge Maze
Link to text version of Hedge Maze Reversed
Link to TDD file for Hedge Maze Reversed

As with all of the free drafts/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.