Loupe Neck Band

Dimensions: 5/8" wide by 17" long (including snap hook at end)

Completed: October 2015

I made this neckband as a present for an avid mineral collector, who loves to wander through the wilderness looking at specimens through a portable field loupe. The band ends in a snap hook to which he can attach the loupe.

I picture mineral collectors far and wide being jealous of the dashing figure he presents in the field with his custom-made strap, bedecked with the tools of his trade.
 

In general, it worked out pretty well. I ran into serious tension and tangling problems, which I solved by creating home-made weights for my warp threads (described in this earlier post). And the final assemblage was a little dicey, since I'm apparently not nearly as good at working my sewing machine as I am the loom. But I feel pretty proud of it, overall.



The Pattern

Cards set up on the loom

 

I used 10/2 pearl cotton yarn from Halcyon Yarns. The main color is Ruby (#1220) and the foreground designs are in Pistachio (#1880).


The pattern uses 22 four-hole cards. The 20 middle cards are for the design itself, while the outside-most two cards (cards 1 and 22) are for the selvedges.

The selvedges are done by constantly turning the cards forward one turn with each pick, no matter what is happening with the cards in the design section of the strap.

 

It's a pleasure to see your design
come into existence

I warped the loom with 88 warp ends 70" long. I figured that would result in a 52" strap plus 18" of loom waste, and that would give me plenty for me to experiment with and still end up with a band that was a total of 34" in diameter.

 

The warp ends for the outside selvedge cards 1 and 22 were all Ruby; all the other cards were warped so that holes A and B had Ruby threads in them and holes C and D had Pistachio threads.



I created the designs for the rock hammer, the shovel, and the wearer's initials myself using Guntram's Tablet Weaving Thingy. (I will forever thank you, Guntram, for creating your Thingy.) I designed each element separately and then combined them together into one template, making sure that there were the proper number of spaces between each design element so that the edges of the shovels and hammers weren't offset by one space got kinky.


My final design; click to enlarge

In some cases I couldn't get the elements to be spaced out evenly and not have them be offset by one or three spaces so the twining was wrong and the edges got kinky. So I borrowed one of Guntram's fancy knot patterns (interlace1.gtt) and interspersed it among my hammers and shovels to make the spacing work better. 



Blocking the strap

After that, it was just a matter of finishing up the weaving itself, blocking the strap, and then attaching the snap hook.

I used a 5/8" snap hook (or, to be specific, a "Metal Silvery 0.65" Inside Diameter D-ring Lobster Clasp Claw Swivel Eye Lobster Snap Clasp Hook for Strap."

Due to some mistakes in the execution of my original plan for attaching the snap hook, I ended up cutting the strap into two pieces, one about 4" long and the other about 30" long. I fed the hook through the shorter piece, and then sewed the two pieces together, end to end, with a lot of purple thread and using the buttonhole setting, so that the cut edges of my weaving wouldn't fray. 
 

The finished product

Close-up on the adequately-finished
snap-hook end





Keychain Bus Pass Holder

Completed: October 2014
Finished Size: 4-1/8" x 2-1/2"

The finished bus pass holder

I don't have a car, so I travel almost everywhere by public transportation. I had been keeping my bus pass on my keychain in a leather holder that I bought in 1996, and it was raggedy and sorely in need of replacement. I've been playing with tablet weaving recently, so I decided to try making a tablet-woven bus pass holder.

I used 3/2 Pearl Cotton from Halcyon Yarn in ruby (#122), bali (#164), and wintergreen (#181). I only needed one 180-yd mini-cone of each color, and that was way more than enough. Pearl Cotton has a nice shiny texture which seemed like it would be great for sliding in and out of pockets and bags easily, and for not picking up a lot of debris from the street.

Guntram's Egyptian Diagonals #4

For the pattern, I used Egyptian Diagonals #4 from Guntram's Tabletweaving Thingy. Because this pattern was only 28 cards wide, and I needed 40 cards for it to be wide enough to hold my bus pass, I repeated the last two cards on each side six more times each, alternating the two colors every two cards. I replaced Guntram's light gray with the bali, his red with the ruby, and his black with the wintergreen.

Cards set up on the rigid heddle loom

Instead of stringing the entire tablet weaving setup across the room, like it seems most tablet weavers do, and leaving it vulnerable to interference by my cat, I set it up on my rigid heddle loom instead. My small loom doesn't leave much room for the yarn to twist downstream of the tablets, but it is secure and comfortable and easy to stow when necessary.

After setting up the cards on my loom, I wove for five and a half pattern repeats, or about 10", using the bali green for the weft. Since I'm new to tablet weaving, I wanted to make it long enough to give myself plenty of options for where to cut the band in case I messed up.

Finished strap (wrong side)

Finished strap (right side)

After removing it from the loom, I turned it over to check out how the pattern had come out on the reverse side of the weaving, and I have to say that I almost decided to use the reverse side of the weaving as the front, because it was so cool and geometric.

I machine-stitched across the band on either side of the best part of the weaving at 8-1/4" apart. Then I cut across the band just outside of the machine stitching, so I had a little mini section of the band a little bit longer than 8-1/4" long.

I put black binding tape over the two ends of the band, and machine-sewed them down across the band. Then I cut a thin piece of Velcro, about 1/4" wide and 2" long. I sewed the two sides of the Velcro across the ends of the band, on the inside of each end.

Then I folded the piece in half, inside out,  sewed up both side as far towards the edges as possible, and turned it right-side out. And voilà.

Fits two cards with ease, safely secured with a Velcro closure!

I didn't have a great solution for getting it on my key chain, so I just bought a tiny key loop from the hardware store and stuck it through the weaving at the edge of the holder, just underneath the binding tape, and put my keyring through it. It is working so far, although it might not wear very well over the long term. Maybe next time I'll leave space in the weaving to put in an eyelet.