Rigid Heddles and Tablets on Same Band Warp?

This is a very interesting question.  But do remember, the artist may not have understood how the weaving was done.  In the German painting where it appears that hair is being cut, the band which is wound on the pole is the woven band.  So, she is sitting on the wrong side of the ridid heddle and the tablets.  And the warp she is holding would need to be tied to something.  Maybe the weaving is finished.  It looks like the smaller woman has the scissors.  I don't know what is the message in this painting, but you are right, you can clearly see the tablets and the rigid heddle being used together and a band has been woven.  I hope that you experiment with this and give us a report later. 

Joanne

Don't underestimate the hand going up the habit in that hair cutting illustration - looks like the haircut is to keep the guy out of the skirt.

Note that the heddle like device is stationary, making it something to order the warp threads - in my meager attempts at card weaving, any slack in the process led to tangles and this "spreader" would keep things in reasonable order, especially if the weaver needed to lay down the cards for any reason - like an irritating "Minnesaenger" groping her.

This arrangement of devices would also allow the weaver to switch a long warp back and forth from tablet woven to warp faced rather easily.

PS - SCA is a nice organization, but in the real world it is preferable to use real names and locations.

Hi Sara,

You may have hit on the weaving question and the warp problem.  I hope that someone will experiement with this, using a frame to keep the threads separated and maybe easier to handle while weaving.

Joanne

PS  I too saw that hand.  And the woman has bare feet.  I don't think that the subject of this painting is the weaving.

What I meant by being able to switch between tablet weaving and warp faced bands was that you could remove the cards from a long warp, weave plain warp faced using the heddle, and possibly rethread the cards - that way a long warp could be used for more than one type of band.

Also, just to clarify - that pictrure is neither an old religious manuscript nor anything textile related - it comes from a famous German manuscript listing the troubadors (Minnesaenger) of the time. Troubadors were singers of love ballads who amused frustrated ladies whose husbands were off to the Crusades and served as a substitute for one's partner - the stuff of classic opera plots.

I'd really not read too much into this in terms of textile processing.

Along those lines of misleading weaving illustrations... I captured this image at a well known heritage site in the US this fall. This was a wall-sized image. I puzzled over this depiction of weaving for a while, as I have never seen a loom quite like this before!

You CAN combine tablet weaving and loom weaving simultaneously. Canadian weaver Inge Dam is known for her work in this area. She studied very old textiles to determine how they completed borders that appeared to be tablet woven on loom woven fabric cloaks. She has really taken the technique to new levels, and her tablet work is not limited to the borders anymore, she can place elaborate bands where she wants.

There is some skill involved in selecting suitable fibers for doing this simultaneously, determining correct sett, and also weft placement, i.e. not every weft pic travels edge to edge. You also need a loom with a fairly decent distance beam-to-beam, as the cards fall behind the reed, infront of the castle. (You need space to get your hands in there and turn the cards in sequence with your treadling.)

When I tried this, I also found it helpful to raise the warp of the tablets higher than the rest of the warp for easier manipulation, and they were weighted separately, with much more tension on the card. If I had tried this on a deeper loom (like a floor loom), that may not have been as much of an issue.

I am not sure how this can be done on a rigid heddle, because as someone else pointed out, I think you would encounter binding of the cards by the slot and hole of the RH. (FYI, for the on-loom technique, all four warps on the tablet need to go through the same dent of the reed.) 

Hope that helps. If you make this work with a RH — please post — as we are all curious to see if it would work!

Aeriun,

This is the SCA Weavers group, so I think most SCA members use their SCA Names here! Otherwise we'll never know when we bump into each other at events!

Thank you so much for posting here, it's great to see posting happening in this group.

Namaste,

Erica (HL Jahanara Vivana, Drachenwald :)

Hello all

On doing woven borders on knit or woven pieces, there are some really interesting "vintage" films here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Folkemuseum?feature=watch

See particularly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxA1bpj6lB0

And this book includes instructions about how to do woven edges on knit pieces using a sort of string heddle set up:

http://www.knittersreview.com/article_book.asp?article=/review/reading/080717_a.asp

The technique makes a really nice edge, just be a bit generous on the number of woven rows to knit rows to avoid curling.

There are so many ways to make bands, and so many things to do with them (in addition to the usual sorts of bands and garters we are used to, Frances Densmore recorded Anishinawbe people in Minnesota and  Ontario even using a rigid heddle to weave strips of cloth that they then made into rugs and mats!) I am sure it would be hard to record everything every creative person could have come up with.

Good luck with your research, and hope you have a great time with your projects!

This may be very "old hat" to most of you, but anyway...

A description of how to weave a border that also sews together a (for instance) pouch can be found at http://www.textilverkstad.se/verkstad/bors.html. The text is in Swedish, but there are pictures (and auto-translate *may* help, too).

Hi Kerstin,

Those kids look like they had fun.  But how was the band attached to the fabric for the bag?  The fabric looks like it is a purchased fabric.

Joanne

The fabric is purchased, yes (but could of course be handwoven). The trick is that you first weave a couple of picks in the band (using a small rigid heddle), then you put one pick through the band (you will need to use a threaded needle as a "shuttle"), then put the needle through both layers of fabric, change shed and do another pick. Through the fabric (both layers) again, change sheds,  another pick through the band - and so on (kind of like doing a tubular weave/band). When ths purse is "sewn up" one side, go on to weave the band the lenght you want it. The begin the "weave-and-sew" again, until you are at the bottom of the purse. End with a few "band picks", and tie a knot. (If you want, this kind of border can be done over just one layer of fabric - for the opening of the purse, perhaps?)

- I have not tried this myself, but I have seen a couple of pouches made by Åsa (the author of the page), so I can say that with some practice it will make a very nice "seam"/embellishment.

Very similar to the technique used to edge knitting in the Icelandic knitting book. That used string heddles, and worked up very easily. A very little practice and you can have a really nice edge. I had been thinking the technique could make a nice finish for baby plankets, and since it has a sort of piping-look, maybe even a tailored look on a jacket?