I have known for years that I wanted to weave my own fabric, and given that I also recently took up spinning, a more serious attempt at natural dyeing seems to be the logical next step. So, I tried a couple of dye baths with madder and weld (and still have another madder bath going) and below are my initial results.
![Picture](/uploads/1/3/5/9/13599209/4266952.jpg)
So, the skeins of dyed yarn are being woven into a tablet band that will start a warp for a miniature warp-weighted loom that I am constructing. For the band design, I was inspired by the double diamond pattern of the image to the left. This is a fragment of an extant band from Kaupang (more info can be found in Hilde Thunem's document here http://urd.priv.no/viking/smokkr.html ). It appears from the diagram that the original might have been brocaded, but given that this is for warping purposes it is not a technique I wanted to test out on this particular piece.
I also will admit that do not truly understand the "how" of tablet weaving just yet. I can print a pattern off of the internet, set up the weaving according to the directions and follow the turn turn/flip pattern that they suggest, but this piece is my first attempt at really understanding the process of how weaving with cards creates a pattern. So, I drafted the pattern myself, set it up and fuddled with it until I got the weaving to show the pattern I was expecting.
Plan to weave a bit of the band on either side of the warp, so you can see below that I have started the left hand bit of the weaving.