Ta da! I’ve spent many, many hours on this garment, so I’m glad my husband likes it.
Victory pictures:
(He offered to model it properly, but first I snapped a few shots of him in his natural habitat.)
The tablet-woven trim is narrow (only 16 cards), but it does a lot to bring the tunic together.
^_^
Happy Yarning!
My husband’s new linen tunic is mostly sewn! I’ve been sewing by hand and using “free” linen thread again, so I have to keep pausing to spin more whenever I run out.
The band for the collar, cuffs, and hem is coming along nicely after a big hiccup during warping. I’m more than halfway through, although I’ll probably need to warp up another shorter piece after this one.
On the writing side of things, I’ve got an idea for a new novel that’s very different from my usual fare, but I’m going to be good and stick with Featherfolk for now. Maybe I’ll go for it during NaNoWriMo or condense the idea into an entry for next year’s Mormon Lit Blitz. Or both!
We’ll see.
Happy Yarning.
It must be that time of year. I caught the weaving bug.
I’m planning out an Anglo-Saxon undertunic for my husband, and I decided it’s time to do this right. I’m going to tablet weave some simple trim for the hems.
I haven’t done any serious tablet weaving since college, so I needed to refresh my skills and reacquaint myself with the glorious freeware program called Guntram’s Tabletweaving Thingy.
I’ve given a plug for GTT before, but seriously, this Guntram guy is an angel. With GTT, I save so much time and yarn and frustration by trying out different threading patterns and colors and weaving sequences before I warp anything.
For example, the bands below are a few of the possible designs I could weave with the exact same threaded tablets.
I prototyped each one virtually so my husband could pick out his favorite. (In case you’re wondering, he chose the center one.)
Now I’m ready to warp up.
Happy Weaving!
Good Christian women cover their heads. Or at least they did in Europe for a lot of the Medieval period. Headgear is the first part of medieval garb to be neglected by “noobs,” simply because it isn’t very important in modern western culture.
I am guilty of this–also guilty of wearing renaissance-esque snoods with early period dresses. But I’m learning.
For my new garb, I made a white linen wimple.
After spending some hours on research and coming repeatedly across the answer that “We really don’t know how wimples worked, but they looked like this,” I settled on the “circle with a hole” design for my first wimple. I was inspired by this handy page tucked away on rosieandglenn.co.uk, which made it look simple enough for everyday wear. However, in my research I read that the headband or fillet was worn under (not over) the wimple, so I made that adjustment for myself.
Of course, in my haste, I broke one of my cardinal rules of garb-making. When cutting any hole for your head, always start too small and increase the size. Oops. But it still works despite its mammoth hole.
I spun my own thread (see my earlier post about that) to sew the hems. Perhaps with future wimples I’ll do something fancier than these little rolled hems.
And with a fillet made from a piece of my serpent tablet-weave belt (from yet another earlier post), I have a wimple!
We’ll see how it does on its maiden voyage next weekend. I shan’t be surprised if it does go sailing off my head once or twice. All in the name of science–I mean, reenactment–of course.
Happy Yarning!
I actually finished this up before we left for Germany.
The completed length is 98 in (2.5 m) + tassels. It is about 1.4 in (3.5 cm) wide. The thing barely fit on the loom, actually. It looks like I can’t do many more than 16 cards with medium weight yarn on my little inkle loom.
I’m thinking a long, ceinture type of belt.
The pattern in these earthy colors is reminiscent of a serpent, and it makes me think of Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Also, I forgot how comfortable this dress is. I think I might just stay in garb for the rest of the day.
Happy Yarning!
I did not understand continuous warping until I bought an inkle loom last summer. My first tablet weaving projects were tensioned using my foot or a doorknob or this cheap little loom I made.
Without a warping board, it was a pain to try cutting all the warp threads to the same length. Continuous warping takes care of length, and the inkle loom is easy to tension.
When I first got my inkle loom, I wasn’t sure how to warp any tablet weave projects continuously besides double-face ones. (And I was done with double-face for a while after my painstakingly crafted trees came out looking like vases or aliens in the weave above.)
But after six inkle projects, I was ready to tackle tablet weaving again.
Oh man. Continuous warping is AMAZING!
I’ll have to do a tutorial sometime on the method I figured out for warping threaded-in tablet weave patterns on an inkle loom. For now, this is just a Public Service Announcement because (have I mentioned?) continuous warping is wonderful.
The pattern I’m weaving now is one of Guntram’s simple patterns. Guntram’s Tabletweaving Thingy is also on my list of awesome things.
