Tablet Weaving with Silk

Since I wasn't entirely happy with my last tablet weaving project, in linen, I got a wild hair and decided to try weaving with silk. Unfortunately, all I had on hand was silk thread, so what started off as a lark suddenly became the smallest, finest weave I've ever done.

Seriously, it's tiny!

I followed the same pattern as last time, so that it would be a more direct comparison based on fabric content. The final result is 3/16" (3mm) wide and 38-1/2" long. Just enough for a fabulous addition to a neckline!

Another reason it's so short is that I didn't want to go whole hog, because I wasn't sure how well it would work... and I wasn't sure how far my silk supply would go!

Here's the band with the three silks I used to create it. The wooden spool of green silk was almost exhausted, while the white spool just kept going and going - I'm surprised at how much it holds. Jake picked two of them up for me while we were in Milan.

For comparison's sake, here's the silk band with a penny.

And, finally, the progression of my tablet-weaving. From the left, my first project in 3/2 pearle cotton, my second project in linen, and my third in silk.






While it did take an obscenely long time to weave it this finely, I did really love working with the silk. It also held up better than cotton and linen to the wear and tear of the moving cards, and the slickness of the fibers made it much easier to work out the subsequent knots.

Moving forward, I may play my hand at dyeing some of the remaining white silk thread I have on hand... and some larger weaving silks are totally going on my wish list!

Bibliography:

Ewing, Thor. Viking Clothing. Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing, Inc. 2006.

Glæsel, Nille. Viking Dress Garment Clothing. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 2010.

Schweitzer, Robert. “Beginning Tablet Weaving.” Forward into the Past. 2 April 2011. <http://www.fitp.ca/articles/FITPXXI/beginning_tablet_weaving.pdf>

Tablet Weaving... Also Known as Tablet Heaving

I like order. There! I admit it!

I took to rigid heddle weaving like a duck to water because it's so damn orderly. Everything perfectly in its place. There's a beauty to that.

But eventually, if you're going to leave your comfortable nest and stretch your wings into greater authenticity, things will get messy.

That's what my first attempt at tablet weaving has been. Messy. Now, I kept it as gloriously ordered as I could, but in the end I did spend some time screaming verbal... let's call it encouragement... at a rather stubborn section that did not want to cooperate.

Okay, I may have had to seriously restrain myself from heaving it out a window.

But I didn't start there. I actually started moving towards greater authenticity in my trim weaving by going to the local weaving store: White Rock Weaving. I wasn't sure what sizes/types I'd need, so I relied heavily on the staff recommendations. In addition to some 5/2 pearle cotton I wanted to play with, I bought three ounces of Hammersmith 100% virgin wool and two kinds of 100% flax linen by a brand called Fibra Natura.

Rigid Heddle Weaving with Wool

The first new fibre to test out was wool. To sum it up in three words: It breaks. Often.

It's possible that this was just a problem because of the specific wool type, but every foot or so the weft would break on me. That's not horrible, but when one of the warp threads actually broke I was more than a little verbally abusive to it. In the future, I'll try to get a more finely spun wool... if that's possible.

Dyeing and Rigid Heddle Weaving with Linen

After the frustration of the wool came the relief of the linen. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I wasn't able to get my hands on a natural blue dye. RIT to the rescue!

For another length of my white linen, I decided to try one of the natural dyes from the dyeing workshop I attended last January at Runs with Scissors, Plays with Fire.

I took a couple tablespoons of Jake's turmeric and put them into two disposable tea filters. I didn't want the actual spice to get out and gunk up my yarn, and I was very pleasantly surprised that they worked so well.

The weaving store only had a small selection of colors - I didn't realize that the blue I dyed (the remnant is shown in the middle of the wooden spool) was nearly the exact same color as the company's Regata (#103)!

The turmeric yellow is shown here on the end of the wooden spool, and is so bright it's nearly neon!

And, finally, here are the three lengths I've woven with a rigid heddle. The left two are what remains after I finished my last apron dress project. The turmeric-dyed yellow and white looks like an albino python!

I thought there would be a little more contrast between the two, but if I remember correctly, turmeric is one of those dyes that fades with light exposure.

Card/Tablet Weaving with Cotton and Linen

And, finally, we come to the pieces I wove today as I experimented with tablet weaving. The pattern I used came from "Forward Into the Past: Beginning Tablet Weaving."

The green and white piece came first, while I figured out how to set up the loom and move the cards. I chose a 3/2 pearle cotton because I'm trying to phase it out of my collection. I've been really gravitating towards the finer yarns lately, so I figured it would do well for a potentially throw-away piece.

The design I chose was a repeating chevron pattern that used six cards at a time, for a total number of 24 threads. I cut them to only two yards, because that length allows me to get a feel for a project but isn't long enough to feel terribly wasteful if things don't go terribly well.

I learned a lot of things from this project: 1) How the threads at the end will wrap around each other as you weave, 2) That as cool as the diamonds are, the "X" designs are just as necessary, and 3) Counting things is very, very important.

I tried to put those lessons to their best use with the blue and white piece. Instead of letting my design go straight to the edge, I added a single color card to both sides. I was also very careful to count the numbers of chevrons between each element, in order to keep things balanced, even, and not to wound up at the back.

Since I figured this piece would eventually be attached to a neckline, I decided to go ahead and make it like I meant it: Enough length to be used in a garment and with an authentic fibre content. I decided to go with the linen.

I had no idea at all what I was in for. In case you don't know, the movement of the turning cards is a whole heck of a lot more intense on your threads than a nice, simple rigid heddle. I generated a small flurry with all the linen fibers coming off this project! Let's just say it's not good for those of us with allergies and leave it there.

When I switched from 3/2 pearle cotton to linen, I was expecting a much thinner profile. With all the threads turning and moving through the project, the band itself is about twice as thick as what I'd make on a rigid heddle. I figured the thinner fibers of the linen would keep it a little less bulky, but it' still pretty thick. I think I'll have to find an even finer linen if I'm going to make something that can go around the neckline of an undertunic or underdress.

But that being said, I'm still pretty proud of myself. I taught myself how to do a simple tablet-weaving pattern - and completed two small projects - less than 24 hours after receiving my cards in the mail!

The last project I did used a period method, with period fibres, and period colors. It's the most authentic trim I've ever made, and while it was incredibly frustrating at times, I do look forward to making garb that is even more authentic.

I still love my rigid heddle, and while I am not going to be putting it aside, I do see myself adding projects like this one to my future queue... especially with Steppes Artisan coming up!

Bibliography:

Ewing, Thor. Viking Clothing. Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing, Inc. 2006.

Glæsel, Nille. Viking Dress Garment Clothing. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 2010.

Schweitzer, Robert. “Beginning Tablet Weaving.” Forward into the Past. 2 April 2011. <http://www.fitp.ca/articles/FITPXXI/beginning_tablet_weaving.pdf>

Apron Dress Hand Stitching Techniques: Part 2

As I mentioned in the blog post for Part 1 of this project, this summer vacation is dedicated to bumping up the authenticity (and documentation) of our garb, using materials I have on hand. This apron dress was originally an Edwardian style linen skirt, and has been paired with a bit of silk I'd been hoarding for a while.

To finish up the project, I need to complete the hem, decide on the pattern and colors of the trim I'd like to use, weave it on my rigid heddle loom, and attach it to the garment.

To the left is an image from my sketchbook, where I took notes on the documentation, construction, and stitching types that I was planning on using. There have been some slight changes, but for the most part I have been able to follow this plan.

The first item on the agenda was to learn how to do the decorative hemstitch style. I've chosen to use a contrasting thread for this, simply because it's supposed to look cool and if I'm going to do something like this, then I want it to stand out!

It took a little messing around, but I eventually got the hang of it. I ended up working on the wrong side, so that I was better able to use the fold of the fabric as a guide. That allowed me much better control in terms of spacing. Looking back at it now, I wish I had chosen another color, but there's no way I'm going back over it now!

In the last image you can see the recently woven trim I chose for the top of the apron dress. I made the pattern using that absolutely wonderful tool, the Inkle Loom Pattern Generator. It's just awesome.

The actual weaving was done with linen yarn. I went to see the lovely ladies at White Rock Weaving and they suggested the Flax 100% Linen yarn from Fibra Natura. They only had a couple colors, so I picked up Tarragon (#12) and White (#14) and then promptly hit the craft store on the way home to pick up some RIT.

While RIT may not be the most authentic dye, it was a lot closer to my budget than the smallest quantity of woad I could find. I measured out the approximate yardage I would need, looped it into a nicely loose knot, and then tossed it into the dye pot with a couple random things that I thought deserved to be blue.

 I love how this trim turned out - and it looks simply gorgeous next to the purple silk and teal linen!

But I wasn't done there! I wanted to make sure I'd have an underdress to coordinate with it, so I pulled out a white linen dress I made a couple years ago and covered up some of my old hand-stitching with a more delicate version of the trim I used on the apron dress. This element is not quite as authentic - only the top-stitching has been done by hand - but the cut and construction are correct to the period. While not perfectly accurate, it fits into my goal of using materials on hand where possible.

And, finally, it all comes together...

The underdress is still a little on the tight side, but I think the trim looks wonderful on it - and you wouldn't believe how close my stitching had to be to get that sucker to lie pretty in the curve you see here!

My brooches are TB-26 from Raymond's Quiet Press, and are very, very close to the examples shown on pg. 61 and the first color page (after pg. 64) of Ewing's Viking Clothing. While modern, the beads were chosen specifically for their resemblance to examples from pg. 19, 40, and 120 of Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Also attached is a replica needle case based on a find in Birka and two more replica pieces from Raymond's Quiet Press: A Viking ear spoon (X-12) and a Viking key (N-53).

While I would normally wrap it up there, I do feel the need to address something that came up since the first posting...

Notes on Fabric Widths:

In Part I, I mentioned that Countess Gwen covered fabric widths in her Viking Clothing class at Gulf Wars XXII. While the class was riveting, we were crowded under a small shelter at the Early Period Life section of camp during a downpour and had to make frequent seating/standing adjustments for new roof leaks. Suffice it to say that my notes on her documentation did not survive, but she said that typical looms of the Viking period would make up to 24" wide fabrics but that an 18" fabric width was more common. That sparked some interesting debate on the Viking Clothing Facebook group and a couple members were kind enough to point me in the direction of any documented linen fabric widths they could find.

Bránn Mac Finnchad pointed me in the direction of the 11th century Viborg shirt. According to author Mytte Fentz, who included a rather fabulous cutting layout in Fig. 10, the linen that the shirt was cut from was 95cm by 235cm, which is approximately 37.4" wide by 92.5" long.

Unfortunately, that was the only piece mentioned, so I'm going to continue to keep an eye out.

Bibliography:

Baker, Jennifer. "Stitches and Seam Techniques Seen on Dark Age/Medieval Garments in Various Museum Collections." 2009. <http://nvg.org.au/documents/other/stitches.pdf> 11 June 2014.

Ewing, Thor. Viking Clothing. Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing, Inc. 2006.

Fentz, Mytte. "An 11th Century Shirt from Viborg Søndersø, Denmark." Archaeological Textiles in Northern Europe - Report from the 4th NESAT Symposium. Ed: Lise Bender Jørgensen and Elisabeth Munksgaard. Tindens Tand 1992, nr. 5 pp 83-92 <http://forest.gen.nz/Medieval/articles/Viborg/VIBORG.HTM>

Fitzhugh, William W. and Elizabeth I. Ward, eds. Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga. Smithsonian Institution Press. Japan, 2000.

Geijer, Agnes. "The Textile Finds from Birka." Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson. Ed. N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting. Pasold Studies in Textile History. 1983.

Hägg, Inga. "Viking Women's Dress at Birka: A Reconstruction by Archeological Methods." Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson. Ed. N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting. Pasold Studies in Textile History. 1983.

Stewart-Howard, Stephanie (aka Countess Gwendolyn Isabella Stewart of Meridies). "Viking Clothing." Gulf Wars XXII. Lumberton, MS. 11 March 2014. Workshop.

Thunem, Hilde. "The Apron Dress from Køstrup (Grave ACQ)." 21 October 2013. <http://urd.priv.no/viking/kostrup.html>

Thunem, Hilde. "Viking Women: Apron Dress." 25 February 2015. <http://urd.priv.no/viking/smokkr.html>

Apron Dress Hand Stitching Techniques: Part 1

The skirt, post seam-ripping

This summer vacation, I'm trying to step up the authenticity (and documentation) of our garb, using materials I have on hand. As such, I'm recycling projects that either turned out a little wonky or just don't fit into our current costuming needs.

For today's endeavor, it was a teal linen Edwardian skirt that hit the block. I adored this skirt, but it's been a year and I didn't have a single excuse to wear it. I decided to go the Viking apron dress route, because a) I wanted another linen one for summer wear and b) It was constructed of six narrow wedges, so an apron dress would be the most efficient use of the fabric without extensive piecing. 

Planning notes and documentation

After several days (and evenings) with the seam ripper, the only machine stitches that remained were a couple edges that I had done a zig-zag stitch on to keep it from fraying. Taking that out would have encouraged more raveling, so I went ahead and stopped there. 

I decided to base the construction on Countess Gwen's Viking Clothing class at Gulf Wars XXII. She had made some interesting arguments for using period weaving widths when considering garb construction. Today's linens tend to be around 50" wide, while she said period widths would be up to 24" wide, but generally closer to 18" due to the human arm span. Because of this, she suggested that the apron dress would most likely be constructed with loom widths and gores. The construction diagram she showed us had three rectangles and three gores.

I like my apron dresses to be 41" long, so with a top and bottom 1/2" seam allowance I'd need rectangles that were 42" long. For the width, you take your bust measurement, divide it by three, and add seam allowance.

I did a little math and discovered that none of my pieces of fabric would be wide enough, so I decided to increase the number of rectangles to four. Luckily, that finally did the trick. I chopped up what was left into my gores - now four as well, to match the number of rectangles.

But that's just cutting out the pattern! 

Strap Construction 

The straps and front loops were a little more problematic. There are a lot of opinions out there, and even less in terms of actual facts.

When you look at Viking SCAdians and re-enactors, about half the time you're going to see the loop strap construction, while the rest have a wider strap that only has a small loop at the end. This style looks a lot more like the Russian sarafan, so it's origins may have been drawn from an intuitive leap based on a more modern garment.

For this garment, I decided to go ahead and use the double-loop strap construction. I do not like them aesthetically - they're ugly and roll around - but after re-reading a lot of my documentation, In the grave finds, it seems like only the loops underneath the tortoise brooches have been preserved, and nothing any higher than that. 

Probably the most damning thing for the wider strap construction is that when I wear my apron dress, that part is covered by my tortoise brooch. Since that's the area that tends to be preserved, the fact that the construction's not in evidence leads me to believe the double strap is the way to go.

After all that, making the straps themselves was the easy part. I had a bias-tape maker on hand from one of my quilting projects, so it was easy to iron them quickly into submission. While I may have used a little technology to help, I did adhere closely to Thunem's example.

From there it was just some whip-stitching to close the gap. I decided to skip the running stitch I'd originally planned, as the first couple inches of it looked like more stitching than fabric!

Seams and Body Construction

Next I needed to figure out what kind of sewing techniques would be period... and sturdy enough to keep my linen from raveling! I decided on four stitching types for the body of the garment: A backstitch (stronger than a running stitch on its own) with a flat fell, hem-stitch, and herringbone stitch. 

I used the same gore construction technique as the gray apron dress. Instead of matching up the edges, I made sure the gore seam allowance was longer than the rectangle I was sewing it to.

I used a backstitch initially, then went back over it by rolling the longer seam allowance over the shorter one and finished it neatly with a hem stitch.

Here you see the point of the gore between two of the rectangles. I made sure to stop the backstitching when the seam allowances from both sides came together.

Next, I pinched the tip of the point under, and then...

I pinned it down so I could start rolling the seam allowance over and cover the raw edge.

To save my fingers, it was easier to sew down one side at a time. Rolling and pinning both sides at once would turn my fingers into pin cushions!

From there I was able to just continue sewing up the side with hem-stitch. I wanted two continuous lines of stitching on either side of the gore - not some random stitches to break up the lines - so I just came back to the top of the gore when I came back down the other side.

See? I took a quick detour over the flattened tip of the gore, but I was careful to only stitch the seam allowances together. I didn't allow my needle and thread to come out the front at all.

Here's the same seam from the front side. Just a perfectly flat gore with two lovely continuous lines of stitching.

And the final step in the construction was to add the silk at the top. I've been hoarding about half a yard of this silk for the better part of a decade, and I decided it was about time to make use of it! I ended up using it structurally, and sandwiching the ends of the loops between the silk and the linen. I'm not sure how good of an idea that was, but we'll have to wait and see how it wears.

I'm just glad it's finally sewn down. It frays like a mother &#@%$#! I considered using pulled threads to sew it, but my teal silk thread was a better match because the warp and the weft are different colors. I sewed it together with backstitch, turned it right side out, then used a backstitch at the very top and a hem-stitch at the bottom.

And here I am in it. For now the basic construction is complete. It still needs to be hemmed and have the trim woven and attached, but that will be shown in Part 2.

Bibliography:

Baker, Jennifer. "Stitches and Seam Techniques Seen on Dark Age/Medieval Garments in Various Museum Collections." 2009. <http://nvg.org.au/documents/other/stitches.pdf> 11 June 2014.

Ewing, Thor. Viking Clothing. Gloucestershire: Tempus Publishing, Inc. 2006.

Geijer, Agnes. "The Textile Finds from Birka." Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson. Ed. N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting. Pasold Studies in Textile History. 1983.

Hägg, Inga. "Viking Women's Dress at Birka: A Reconstruction by Archeological Methods." Cloth and Clothing in Medieval Europe: Essays in Memory of Professor E.M. Carus-Wilson. Ed. N. B. Harte and K. G. Ponting. Pasold Studies in Textile History. 1983.

Stewart-Howard, Stephanie (aka Countess Gwendolyn Isabella Stewart of Meridies). "Viking Clothing." Gulf Wars XXII. Lumberton, MS. 11 March 2014. Workshop.

Thunem, Hilde. "The Apron Dress from Køstrup (Grave ACQ)." 21 October 2013. <http://urd.priv.no/viking/kostrup.html>

Thunem, Hilde. "Viking Women: Apron Dress." 25 February 2015. <http://urd.priv.no/viking/smokkr.html>