card weaving: skipped thread technique

I'm slowly working on the sock machine. Baby steps. In the meanwhile, I've got a band of card woven trim warped up. I put this band on my inkle loom. It is working much much better than the last band I wove, which I tried on a rigid heddle loom. The tension was alllll messed up on that one! In this case, I clamped the inkle loom down on top of my cone holder, and employed binder clips to keep the stacks of cards in order when I was warping. This gave me an even tension with no warp tangles, which is paying off in a consistent weave.



For this band, I'm using #10 crochet cotton, in maroon and light yellow. There are four cards threaded with 4 strands of maroon for the borders. For the interior pattern, I threaded 24 cards with only two threads of yellow. The other two holes were left blank. This is a skipped card technique, that dates back to Viking age. When you are weaving, the weft thread shows through where the warp threads are missing, giving you a 3d effect in the finished band. I'm using maroon for the weft thread.



It makes for a subtly elegant band. I'm thinking it might look spectacular if I used gold and black silk thread, instead of the cotton. Next time I'm over at Fiber Factory, I'll have to see what they have in the way of silk. Road trip!