• Tools: Playing cards cut square and punch-holed to become weaving tablets, lots of sealing clips in strategic places to stabilise and hold the yarn, shuttle
  • Yarn: Dark grey wool yarn and two stranded (losely woven) white wool yarn
  • Pattern: Quarter turns (1/4 card side) of a threaded pattern (done incorrectly!)

I wanted a Viking-style belt (to wear to Viking-themed events) and settled on attempting a tablet woven one. Reading about a topic and attempting it IRL are two very different things, and though I thought I had closely followed a pattern for threading the tablets to get a specific outcome, I completely messed up the process and managed to make all the tablet threading face the same way.

A closeup of the back and front pattern of a tablet woven belt
The top shows the right side, the pattern itself, and the bottom what was created beneath. The lightning-bolt shapes alternate angle depending on the twist of the

The surprise pattern looks nice enough, but the slight issue with all threading being from the same direction was the lack of counterbalance to keep the band from warping. Moving in one way didn’t pose any issues at first, but when I was turning the tablets the other way to undo the twists in the cord, the whole band twisted instead resulting in the final spiral shape.

Anyway, it was a frustrating but rewarding project as I got to experience:

  • Threads breaking mid-weave - salvaging the band by tying new yarn onto the broken strands and
  • Misunderstanding the threading chart and the resulting look of it
  • Getting into the groove of quarter twist, shuttle through… and so on
  • Weave a ridiculously long band for a first attempt. I can wind it twice around my midriff, tie it off and still have two lovely long spirally noddles and tassles hanging down for decoration
  • Variations when the side tablets hold the weave too loose vs just right
  • Irregular warp stretching and figuring out how to salvage the situation as much as once can (It came out looking decent!)

I adore finding projects that you can complete and feel you are ok to fail at while doing it. It isn’t the best looking result, it is not what I intended, but it fits it’s purpose and I feel a whole lot better failing at basics with my first band compared to encountering some of these situations had I been further along in my tablet weaving journey.

In the middle of moving the shuttle through the shed created by a quarter turn on the tablets in a tablet woven belt
Using playing cards to create the tablets was super helpful. Having a right/wrong side and the card face easily showing orientation meant I could quickly check that the tablets were turned the right way.
A long tablet woven belt with tassels at each end
Since I managed to thread all cards the same way, there is no counter balance in the twist until you go the opposite way. Had I not twisted the opposite at all I doubt it would've looked quite as curly, but the yarn was uncooperative (and too long!) in my novice hands to allow for this.