Tablet Weaving My Son a Guitar Strap

Nutmeg is involved in all projects. She’s thinking of coming up on the sofa for a nap, which in the end she did, to my delight.

Late last spring, on encouragement from my friend Sarah, who is a whiz tablet weaver, I thought to try the method to make a guitar strap for one of the twins, as an alternative game for the brain and something to do in short bursts. Finding an excellent, blow-by-blow tutorial on YouTube by Melissa of Impending Looms, titled “Beginner Tablet Weaving: Getting Started with an Oseberg Variation”, off I went.

All went fairly well with the warp setup, or so I thought, until I began weaving, when I discovered that first, the resulting woven band would be too narrow, and second, that I had missthreaded at least one of the cards, so that the pattern was broken. Unlike regular weaving, the warp threads are interlaced with each turn of the cards, and unless you are experienced, it’s easy to make a mistake.

So, I added warp threads to each side of the originals to make the resulting band wider and with added stripes, and “fixed” the threading. Then laid the project aside in the bad corner for months. Picking up the project today, weaving went merrily along, and I am finding that the pattern is easy to follow, but discovered that not all the missthreadings were corrected. Despite Melissa’s careful explanations, I had still put threads in the wrong order. Plus, the band is still too narrow: there’s a lot of pull-in from the sides as tablet-woven work is dense and very strong, due to the combination of twisted and woven threads.

Oh my. Looking at the short woven bit, I rather liked the pattern, which reminds me of waves or air currents, and so kept on going. There is only one other feature of the tablet pattern that I don’t care for…at the end of each full pattern repeat, a little bump is inserted in the threads, that breaks up the flow a little. Eh.

If this band is ever going to be used as a guitar strap, I will have to mount it to a thick, wide cotton tape. Ah, no big deal. Main thing is, it must be done by Christmas :}

The inkle loom is from TwoPlyFiberArts on Etsy. It is super. While I keep most crafts hidden in closets, this is worth having out as it’s a handsome blend of art and utility.

The jury is still out on whether I like tablet-weaving or not. It certainly creates beautiful results and moves along at a decent clip. The patterning is brain-bending, though. I still can’t figure out exactly where the goof is :}