Ooops ... I inkled

I completed my first-ever inkle band this week.

This was an absolute blast. I have high praise for inkle weaving now. As I mentioned in my last post, a few years ago through my involvement with the SCA I decided to learn a weaving skill of some type. I debated between inkle and tablet (card) weaving, but thought that inkle looked a little too simplistic (I'd been given to understand the patterns you could make were very limited), and the special inkle looms cost more than I wanted to spend for a hobby I just wanted to try out.

I could put together a serviceable tablet weaving loom on my own for a few dollars in wood and screws, and make the cards myself; and I knew you could make intricate, multi-colored designs in tablet weaving, so I decided to try that. After making quite a few practice bands, I got frustrated with it, stashed the whole lot of supplies away, and haven't touched it for several years. The set-up alone is so fussy and time-consuming that I found the frustration level far outweighed the enjoyment of the actual weaving ... and after hours of set up, I usually managed to screw up the weaving somewhere in the first twelve inches or so, wasting all my set-up work.

In praise of the inkle: This loom is far easier to warp. For straight or plain weaving, once you draft your pattern and warp the loom correctly, all you have to do is weave. There is no further manipuluation needed, the pattern just appears as you weave away. Pattern drafting in inkle weaving isn't nearly as complicated as tablet weaving, so setting up the pattern and warping the loom is just challenging enough to be interesting, but not so damned hard that it leaves me too frustrated to enjoy myself.

The weaving itself works just like tablet weaving, except for the absence of cards to turn and fiddle with. It goes very quickly ... this band is quite long, and I made it in less than a week, but that wasn't working on it in any long stretches ... I'd just weave a little here, a little there. If I had the time and need, I'm sure I could sit down and weave a band this length in a couple days, by devoting a decent chunk of time to it at each sitting.

I was most impressed with something you can't see in the picture - the softness and pliability of the band. I compared this one to a shoelace, and were it just a few threads narrower, it could be just that. It's like ribbon. Why that is such a big deal is that will make it ideal trim, because it will be flexible enough to easily sew on to garb, and thin and drapey enough to not be too bulky or stiffen up the edges of the fabric trimmed with it. This is just going to make phenomenal trim, and that is what I'm most excited about. I've always wished I could gussy up my garb with a little nice trim, but I usually have a hard time finding anything I like; it's not cheap; and I've always had a hard time sewing trim on. This will solve all those problems, with the added bonus of designing my own trim in just the colors I want, and having made it myself.

Yep - inkle weaving gets a definite two thumbs up. I can't wait to start my next band. I have a yellow-gold colored tunic that is screaming for some trim. I want to take a trip out to the local hobby / craft stores to see what I can pick up in the way of perle cotton. I suspect their color selection will be a bit limited, so I may have to order it online instead, but I wanted to at least check first.

I'm learning that there are quite a few very nice patterns you can create in inkle weaving, even with the limitations of only having two pattern rows to work with. And there is the advanced technique of pick-up weaving, which opens even more options. I want to try that eventually too, but for now I'm content not to commit the tablet-weaving mistake of trying to rush through all of this too quickly, and ending up frustrating myself because I didn't learn the basics first.

For the record, I wove this band with size 8 perle cotton, 24 strands wide which made a finished band 1/4" wide. It's 96 1/2 " long (about 2 3/4 yards).

In other weaving news, I got my tapestry weaving book and have read through the first few chapters. I also need a trip to the craft store to pick up a few things to build a simple frame loom to start with. I've ordered the yarn for the warp and the weft, so once I get my looom built and my yarn order shows up, I will begin the first training piece offered in the book. This is another thing that I intend to take slowly and carefully, to make sure I'm learning the basics well from the ground up - because I have grand ideas of some things I want to do with this, but I want to make sure I don't frustrate myself into failure by not laying the groundwork of good basic knowledge and skill first.

Knitting continues on the never-ending log cabin blanket. I swear it's reached a point where no matter how much I knit, it just doesn't get any bigger. I've been working on this a lot this week too, in between weaving. It's big enough now to be a quite nice lap blanket, but I really had in mind wanting it to be about the size of at least a twin blanket, if not full-size. I planned to use it on the bed in the winter (it will be warm, I know that). So I think I'll work on it for a few more weeks, and see how it goes.