I wanted to make a helpful walk-through for beginners that was a little less overwhelming than some of the ones I've read online. Hopefully this is something people can follow - would certainly appreciate any feedback!
Introduction
Tablet weaving is a method of producing narrow bands of textiles that
can be used as trim, belts, straps, and edging.
These bands can be made up of a variety of colors, patterns, and
materials, and use anywhere from 2 to 100+ tablets. Instead of learning to read patterns, this
lesson is focused solely on technique and produces a thin belt of the weaver’s
desired length. This is an exercise designed
for individuals who have no prior experience tablet weaving.
Materials
This first lesson is meant to be able to be completed by anyone, and
doesn’t require any fancy weaving supplies, just what’s around the house. Here’s a list of items you’ll need:
A big ball or skein of yarn: You’ll need at least 500 feet of
any solid color yarn you’d like. I
highly recommend a wool blend or an acrylic yarn to start out, even if it isn’t
quite period. Certain yarns are very
expensive (silk) and/or felt (wool) and make it difficult to work with for new
weavers.
10 Tablets: Tablet weaving “tablets” or “cards” can be created
out of a variety of materials such as cardboard, thin wood, or even bone. However, for this lesson, I recommend cutting
up a deck of cards from the dollar store.
Most cards tend to be 2.25 to 2.5 inches wide – when creating a tablet
make sure that it is roughly square and that it has 4 holes (use a single hole
punch, if possible) that are spaced similar to the pictures below. Perfect dimensions and spacing is not
necessary – just get them as close as you can.
1 Cheap Ruler*: 12 inch ruler is best.
Toilet Paper Roll/Pencil*: You’ll need something to pass the
yarn through your weaving that is smallish and that you are able to wrap a
bunch of yarn around.
*If you have a weaving shuttle like this example or similar, you don’t
need the ruler and a way to hold yarn, but the ruler is nice to have to measure
the width of what you are creating to make sure it stays similar throughout.
Large, Heavy Object: You’ll need something that doesn’t move
easily to tie your weaving to. Examples:
door knob of a closed door, dining room chair, desk leg (I use the handle of a
heavy music amplifier).
A belt of some sort
Carabiner (optional): I find a carabiner or similar tool to be
useful if you want to tie the end of your weaving to it and hook it onto something. This makes your weaving mort portable and
easier to manage.
Safety Pin (optional): Great for locking your tablets in place.
Preparation
Determine what size of belt that you might want (I find 6 -7 ft works
for most people, but measure your waist and how long you’d like the tails of
the belt to be). The length of yarn we’ll
be cutting will be the length in inches x 1.2 + 20 inches. So for a 6 foot (72 inches) belt you’ll want
to cut lengths of 106.4 inches, but I’ve found that rounding it a little is
A-okay, so even 100 inches even would probably work just fine if you don’t want
to be exact! It is okay to make shorter
lengths if you want to practice initially before doing your final belt (I
recommend at least 3 feet per strand, however).
Next, assuming you’ve already made 10 tablets as described in the
materials section (if not, do that now), you’ll cut 40 pieces of yarn to the
number of inches you’ve determined in the above formula. So I’d have 40 pieces of yarn at the end –
each measuring 100 inches in length.
This will take a good while (set up tends to be the longest part even if
you eventually learn a quicker method).
If you have a cat or another type of pet that LOVES yarn, do this in a
room without them!
Once you have your 40 lengths of yarn, try to keep them neat and
untangled and tie one end (all 40 strands together) in a double knot onto your carabiner
or large object, and then you’ll begin threading your tablets.
Thread 4 strands of yarn into each tablet.
NOTE – it is VERY important
that you thread all your tablets on the same side like the below example:
Once all the tablets are on (you should have 10 tablets with 4 threads
through each) make sure you have all your materials handy because you’ll start
weaving soon! This is a good time to
take a break if you need one, just make certain your tablets don’t fall off the
strands (tie a temporary knot at the other end if you need to).
When you return, wind about 20-40 ft of yarn onto your toilet paper
roll or pencil or weaving shuttle, whichever you have at your disposal.
This yarn is what you will use to weave through the tablet-attached
yarn. It is called the weft.
The yarn with the tablets attached to it is called the warp.
These terms will come in handy when you are reading patterns later in
your journey!
Once you make sure you have your belt on, your ruler handy, and your
toilet paper roll (or other) of wrapped yarn, you are ready to start. Go ahead and tie a knot at the other end of
the 40 strands of yarn (if you haven’t done so already) and wrap it a few times
around your belt. This is just to get it
momentarily out of the way. After that
make sure your tablets are close to you and put tension on the threads (by
making sure there’s some distance between yourself and where the yarn is tied
to the object). The threads should be
tight and look like this:
Make sure all your tablets are organized in a nice straight row and pull
that towards you and push them away from you to make sure they move
smoothly. Here’s mine in a nice row
below:
Tablets that have been threaded correctly (all one direction as
described above) can be flipped horizontally to change the direction the tablet
is threaded. These “directions” are
called S facing or Z facing depending on the shape the thread makes through the
tablets (see the below diagrams):
These are side views of the cards (so a bit hard to see), but what is
important to note is the direction that the thread is exiting the card and
going towards you. If that is on the
right side, it is an S-facing card, if it is on the left side, it is a Z facing
card. S can also be symbolized by “\”
and Z can be symbolized by “/” – if you see those notations instead of letters.
That brings us to how to arrange the tablets. For this pattern, I’d like you to alternate
them S on the outside left, followed by Z and so on. Below are two types of patterns you might see
for this particular project. A through D
are the 4 holes in each tablet (all a single color in our case) and 1 through
10 are the number of cards we have. You
can see how you’d thread different colors in different cards if a pattern told
you where, but we won’t worry about that for this exercise.
The “thread” location tells you what card should face what direction –
S or Z from left to right.
Once you’ve flipped all the cards to where they are facing the right direction, unloop the knot-tied end of your yarn from your belt (don’t untie the knot, itself), get your ruler and yarn wound around the toilet paper roll and you are ready to begin!
Weaving
Believe it or not – this is the easy part! Be certain to always maintain firm tension
(the warp yarns should always look completely stretched out)!
Move the tablets (all together) forwards (away from you) and backwards
(towards you) without turning them. This
will open a shed for you to weave through (a separation between upper and lower
warp yarns). It’ll look like this:
Holding the end of the warp (threads attached to tablets), you will run
your yarn (attached to the toilet paper roll) through that space, leaving a
little tail out one side. Then you’ll
turn the tablets (all together) a quarter turn away from you (forward) with one
hand. The space between the bottom and
top threads should appear again, like the pictures (if it doesn’t, move your
tablets forwards and backwards without turning them and the shed should appear).
Pick up your ruler and place it in the shed, pushing the yarn you just
wove with the toilet paper roll back towards you. This is called beating the shed and it will
make your weave tighter.
Next, insert the toilet paper roll yarn the other way, turn all the
cards forward (away from you) a second quarter turn and the pull on the thread
to make certain it is tight against the sides of the warp thread and use the
ruler to “beat the shed.”
Continue forward doing a total of 20 lines of forward quarter turns
(weaving through the shed each time). I
find it useful to write a hash mark after every line to keep track.
After 20 forward turns, do the same thing, but turn the tablets back
(towards you) a quarter turn instead and do so for another 20 turns. This will prevent twisting of the yarn and
make it more manageable to work with.
The ruler will help you keep the width consistent, too!
Eventually, when you get to end of the belt, you can tie knots on both
ends to secure the belt from becoming unwoven, or you can be more creative by knotting
or braiding individual warp strands – whatever your personal preference is.
If you run out of yarn for your weft, you can double knot a new strand
of yarn to the old one before it runs out!
