Search the Blog
Latest Comments
Tablet weaving Shenanigans, Part 1
When at the last Textile Forum, one of the lovely people there gifted me with a bit of yarn in colours that I loved, and that was enough for a nice warp for a playband with 20 tablets. I've been wanting to do a simple playband anyways, with 20 tablets, as a demo band for my weaving lessons, or for explanations, so I happily did the warping, and my cunning plan for the weaving was to do variations on diagonals, as inspiration for course participants looking for pattern possibilities.
I started out doing this, and it went well for a while, resulting in things like this:
which was fine, and exactly what I wanted.
And then... then I got bored. Diagonals all the time... sigh. So I sort of by accident transitioned into twill, and then suddenly, well, this happened:
followed by this:
because obviously, what you really need to weave as motifs when working with a reconstructed historical weaving technique, are steaming cups of coffee and the UFO from Space Invaders.
Right?
Comments 7
It should be law that every modern tablet weaver must add items like this to their weaving, as an aid to future archaeologists. Like Heather said they added an astronaut when renovating that cathedral, don't remember whether it was York or another.
So, very well done! Can we get a pattern? I love the coffee cup.
That still relies on the modern bit of the band being preserved, though...
As for the pattern - I'll think about it, if enough people are interested. I'd have to sit down at the band and take it from what is woven, sort of (as obviously the point of the thing was not to have a written pattern...)
Hello Harma - yes, it was York.
An alternative to including modern icons could be use of a modern dye or thread. One of my first essays when studying archaeology was about how to date artefacts and how many 'historic' items had been flagged as frauds because the manufacturer hadn't known their materials or processes. It was fascinating.
Monmouth has a museum dedicated to Admiral Nelson which contains a case full of hopeful fakes, including one that was flagged by having the wrong date inscribed.
There is a small museum of fake art in a town nearby:
https://museums-vledder.nl/en/museums-vledder/index.php/
We once had a tour there when the guide told us that at an opening of an exibition a quite famous artist and a falsifier stood next to ech other and the artist asked the falsifier about the painting they were looking at: Ïs this one of yours, or one of mine". The falsifier just smiled.