The January, 2013, meeting of the Weaver’s Guild of Minnesota featured a materials swap — we exchanged stuff from our stash of unused yarn and fabric, and promised to show what we created from it.
A cone of purple, nubby, metallic-looking novelty yarn caught my eye (shown at the top of this picture). At that time I wanted to learn how to tablet-weave tubular necklaces, a technique that Linda Hendrickson describes in her book Tubular Cardwoven Neckpieces. The yarn looked perfect as a sparkly addition to the jewelry.
Or so I thought, until I wove a practice neckpiece. Even though only one hole of each card held the novelty yarn, the piece was too scratchy to wear next to bare skin. What now? I was committed to showing off my work at May’s meeting, and had to come with something splashy.
Serendipitously, I had just bought Linda Hendrickson’s book Please Weave a Message, containing diagrams for tablet-weaving inscriptions in several alphabets. This seemed like an opportunity to combine two projects and tablet-weave an inscription using the yarn. Since the yarn begs for creating something whimsical, I settled on the inscription “Life is short, wear purple”.
I selected 3/2 Perle cotton, because it’s lustrousness and size would complement the novelty yarn. Looking at the yarn closely revealed a subtle lilac color, so I chose UKI “deep lilac” for the foreground color. Other shades of purple and lavender, together with white, would form the border of 14 tablets on each side. I chose the alphabet “Uncial”, requiring 34 pattern tablets.
Here’s the result:
- Wear-purple band
Close-ups of the band:
Lessons learned
- When you’re thinking of weaving with bumpy, metallic novelty yarn, don’t. The yarn would frequently snag on the tablet’s holes, and on each other when twist built up beyond the tablets. And it’s stretchy, causing unevenness in the woven structure. Finally, as you can see in the pictures, the edges between letters and background were not sharp, making it difficult to read the inscription at a quick glance. Although it was a fun exercise, one might conclude that life is too short to spend it wrestling with difficult material.
- Weaving lettered bands is straightforward, as long as you have good weaving diagrams. If you’re interested in creating such bands, I’d recommend buying Linda Hendrickson’s book of carefully crafted alphabets. You can find it by clicking on this link, then click on “Shop” in the left menu.
- Use stronger contrasting colors for the letters. Although deep lilac complemented the deep purple nicely, the contrast was too subtle to pop out the lettering.