====== Ramblings about projects I'm working on, completed or contemplating ======

==== Learning to weave on the horizontal loom ====

==  Documentation for Kingdom A&S  ==
  Lord Haraldr Bassi of the Barony of Bjornsborg\\
  haraldr@dave.drakkar.org

Very little is known about the head wear of the average eastern Viking man of the 10th Century. There are a few fragments and some descriptions available but I have not yet found an extant complete example. There are three basic 'headwear' described in the Birka burial documents ranging from basic low cut round caps to elaborate long tasseled hats and metal brocaded tablet woven circlets. Having an origin in the Eastern Viking lands and a general desire to clothe myself in more sedate styles, I felt the basic round cap would be the most appropriate for my purposes.

What little is known about these Viking age hats and headwear has been summarized in a series of articles that Mistress Thora Sharptooth of the East Kingdom (Carolyn Priest-Dorman) has published and made [[http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikresource.html|available here]] on her website. I've had opportunities to do my own research in many of the [[http://www.cs.vassar.edu/~capriest/vikgarment.html|sources]] that she references and find as expected that she has not missed anything to my knowledge. My library is starting to be unpacked from their boxes from my recent move from the East to Ansteorra and as such I find myself referencing sources I would not normally choose to use to support a project like this for lack of being able to access my own copies of some of these volumes. 

This project never started with an intention of being anything. After almost a decade of sitting in pieces in my attic I finally dedicated space in my living room and assembled my floor loom and decided to see how well this loom would work to make some cloth. Not having woven any length of broadcloth ((though I had some experience weaving narrow wares with tablets in the past)) I decided to start modest and see where things would lead. I had been accumulating a supply of various types of weaving yarns and being interested in 10th Century Viking age items, decided that I would warp and weave a length of one of the more common twill weave patterns ((a 2/1 twill in a wool single I had on hand)). Tabby or plain weave, is by far the most common weave found in the Viking age contexts, especially for the textiles made from bast ((aka plant based like linen and hemp)) fibers which was used for many of the textiles of the age. The twill weaves were more common for the wools than they were in the bast fibers ((The various archaeological reports all show clear evidence of the distributions, see also...)). 

Of the Viking age wool twills that have been found in garments and fragments, the 2/1 is reasonably common and rarely re-created in our Society, perhaps because it is not as flashy as the diamond lozenge twill that seems to catch many people's eye. Going where few have chosen to go before has always appealed to me so I settled on the 2/1 twill for my learning to weave sampler project and chose the blue single wool I had on hand as it was in the range of sizes of the Viking age textiles. The color was an available shade of blue similar to what you would get re-creating 10th C Viking age woad dyed blue wool. My thread was perhaps a bit on the larger end of the scale of found threads described in the various reports on average textile sizes for the time, though still acceptably in the size range. Unfortunately I wasn't able to asses it's accuracy match as to breed of sheep available to the Vikings, having absolutely no knowledge of the wool source of this particular mill end yarn acquired in a clearance sale years earlier. 

As is well known, the horizontal floor loom wasn't available until close to the end of our Society's period of study. Having helped in the building of an Icelandic style warp weighted loom many years ago, I could have created my own or even borrowed Thora's loom((the one we made at Pennsic one year as an in-camp project)), but that wouldn't have answered the question of whether my freshly re-assembled floor loom was functional. In various conversations I've had with Thora, I know that I needed to understand more about the creation of cloth before I should attempt to translate that experience into using a warp weighted loom on my own. I've spent only a short amount of time weaving a small amount of cloth on the warp weighted loom and have a reasonable understanding of the mechanics, just not the years of practice to be able to make a significant yardage. 

Much of the information we have on the use of the warp weighted loom is from the few found garments and fragments. Many of which show a remarkable ability to weave a length and width where little to no wasted cloth would be found. We know this from a few relatively complete garments where the various selvages as well as the starting and ending band of tablet weaving, used to stabilize the warp when attaching it to the beam before weighting it for tension and to finish the end of the cloth, were cut and positioned at the natural edges of the garments in such a way as to reinforce the ends of the textile, providing strength and wear resistance. A small accessory, like the hat I ended up creating, would probably not have warranted a dedicated piece of weaving. Instead the cloth would likely be salvaged from scraps and offcuts. The overhead of preparing a warp and weaving a short narrow clot would most likely have precluded the creation of such a small amount of cloth for such a large effort. I've found no specific analysis of whether a selvage was always used as the rim edge of the cap or whether the edge was folded and seamed or even simply felted in place. Use of selvage 

Our prototypical Viking weaver would have started his project by using his tablet weaving loom to warp the 4-8 cards that would be used to make the starting band and stabilize the warp for weaving. Rather than passing a weft through this narrow tablet woven section, the warp of the desired cloth would be used as the weft of the tablet weaving, using some other stationary point at the desired distance as a warping board, passing the warp back through to be used as the weft for the next pass on the tablet weaving. New warps for the weaving can be started by locking them into the previous turning of the tablet weaving as needed. 

Once the width of the desired warp is ready, the tablet woven end would be attached to the warp beam of the loom, and the loose end of the warp (former tablet weaving weft) would be weighted for tension using rocks or ceramic or soapstone donut shaped pieces. For a tabby weave, you would separate the warp threads into alternating patterns, passing one set in front of the broad shed rod of the loom, with the remaining warp hanging behind the broad shed rod. You would use a long rod with some string heddles tied around the rear threads to be able to change the shed on the loom by pulling the threads that pass behind the broad shed rod to a position in front of the other warps, making a shed in front of the other threads. Relax the rod holding the string heddles allowing the warp to return to the backside of the broad shed rod and passing the next weft, creating the tabby weave. A twill weave would add a second (2/1 or 1/2 twills) or a third (2/2, 3/1 or 1/3 twills) rod with string heddles tied to the warps behind the broad shed rod. Each of these rods would be brought forward in a sequence pattern to select batches of warp threads in a patter, creating the desired twill weave. 

The mechanics of a later period horizontal loom and the warp weighted loom share more similarities than differences. The multiple harnesses with their heddles are used in the same way as the broad shed rod and the heddle rod(s) were used. The heddles in the harnesses are threaded in the same sequence that the heddle rods of the warp weighted loom would have been tied around the warps. The harnesses are moved in a similar sequence on both looms to allow the weaving pattern to progress depending on the desired pattern. Either method creates a shed with a set of threads advanced above/away from the rest of the threads, allowing a weft thread to be thrown and beaten tight, making the cloth. The differences between the two looms are primarily in the tension mechanics. The later period looms have a rigid framework to stabilize the warp threads, eliminating the need for warp weights. With a way to tie the bundles of warps to the warp and cloth beams we eliminated the need to stabilize the warp with a tablet woven starting band at the expense of significantly more wasted thread than our Viking ancestors would have tolerated. 

I chose not to emulate the use of the stabilizing warp band of tablet weaving, mostly because I was learning to use the modern style weaving tools and already had a good understanding of the mechanics of preparing a warp for the warp weighted loom, having participated in the creation of warps over several years at Pennsic and various other events. It also would have required a different method of attaching the warp to the loom, specifically a front to back warping method which would require every length of warp thread to pass through the eyes of the heddles twice, once to wind on, and again as the weaving progressed, abrading the warp yarns more than necessary and possibly leading to excess breakage. As it turns out, this was a fortuitous decision as warp breakage was a significant issue as the weaving progressed. 

Once threaded through the various heddles, the weaving would progress by passing a weft across the warps in the shed created. The threads would then be beaten into the fell, creating the cloth. The warp weighted loom has the beating being less controlled in that there would have been a weaving sword, often of whale bone or even what appears to be former swords or farm implements. This would have packed the weft upwards into the fell at the top of the loom. That they packed their weft tightly and evenly is a testament to their skill with their tools. Various other tools were used to strum the warp threads to separate them when the shed is changing or used to comb smaller sections of the warp into the fell. Many of these are described and depicted in books like Marta Hoffmans, The Warp Weighted Loom and various books and articles based on the research from the York Archeological Trust. 

The modern and later period horizontal loom uses a slotted reed to allow the warp threads to pass through and still be able to beat the weft into the fell by drawing the reed, held stabilized by the beater (overhead or lower pivot beaters would generally work the same). They also feature a warp and cloth beam with a warp and cloth reel to allow for various length warps. 

For my initial test fabric, I built a warping frame to measure off enough ends to make about 12” of woven cloth and calculating a takeup and loom waste I measured my warp at 1.5 yds to hopefully allow me to complete a 1 yd piece of cloth (before finishing). The weaving progressed reasonably well initially, though fell prey to a flaw in the design of my counter balanced loom's harnesses. My harnesses contained metal heddles stabilized by a set of hooks attaching the heddle rods (at each end of the metal heddles) to the harness. These hooks had the unfortunate property of causing the threads on the edges of my warps to often abrade against a neighboring heddle resulting in a significant amount of warp breakage as the weaving progressed. I became very adept at splicing in new warps. This was exacerbated by my selection of a wool single rather than a plied warp thread. Though most of the Viking age textiles I've found were made with single threads, there were a few pieces found with two ply yarns. I selected the single ply wool more because it would be difficult to work with but also because it was much more accurate to the period I was looking to recreate, and I didn't have any two ply wool at the time, though I could have easily acquired some. I've never been one to go easy on myself when learning a new skill. 

As the weaving progresses it is a challenge to keep the selvages even and prevent draw in from the edges. I experienced the exact same challenges on my loom as would have needed to be overcome on the warp weighted loom. Once the weaving was completed, our intrepid Viking weaver would have washed and fulled (agitated the fibers to get them to partially felt) the woven product to make it a stabilized fabric, pre-shrunk so that it later won't change size as it is used. This would result in some shrinkage from the original finished weaving length and width but yields a soft, supple and stabilized woolen cloth ready to be sold, traded or used to make something useful. Even with the challenges of repeated broken threads on the edges of my cloth, I still managed to complete the entire length I set out for myself, long after my experienced weaver friends said they would have cut it off and moved onto the next project. I eventually reached the end of the available warp and cut the weaving off the loom, washed it and fulled it, treating it exactly as I would eventually treat it as a garment in my wardrobe, by washing and drying it in my washer and dryer using a mild soap and my normal wool washing/drying cycle. 

It was then that I discovered I had made a threading error way back when I was threading the harnesses. This ended up making a visible line down one edge of the fabric. I now had a piece of 2/1 twill cloth a bit under a foot wide and about a yard long after shrinkage and started looking for a project to make something useful with this, my first piece of wide weaving. I settled on making a hat for myself as I wanted a more accurate headwear than what I had been using prior. I found that I had enough width and yardage to cut pieces to make two hats. I allowed the edge with the threading flaw to make the bottom edge of one hat, which I used to experiment with the seam style I would eventually choose for the good hat, made with the other four pieces. 

After making a pattern piece made by measuring my head circumference with a string that was then folded in half and half again to allow me to transfer ¼ of my head circumference and add a seam allowance to the pattern. I then used a string to measure from the crown of my head to where I wanted the rim of the hat and used that, plus a seam allowance at the crown to determine the height of the center of my shield shaped pattern piece and then put a curve into the triangle to make the four hat segments have enough space to cover the head properly.. I laid out and cut the cloth into 8 similar sized sections to eventually make two hats. Using the four pieces where the threading error was as my experimental piece and the other four pieces from the alternate edge of the fabric. 

The first seam style I tried was a basic French seam but that left a seam inside the hat that was much too thick for my tastes so I switched to a more palatable, and just as often found in the fragments of the age, butt joining seam with folded back and under stitched down raw edges. I used leftover warp threads, which were washed and fulled with the cloth in my fabric finishing steps as the threads to sew the hats together as they were already processed to the same extent as the cloth I made eliminating a risk of puckering from using threads that would later shrink for sewing. I experimented using various bone needles I had acquired to see if there was any significant differences in the various thicknesses of the needles I used. The wool has a remarkable ability to recover from the holes left by the various sizes of large shaft of the bone needles I used, leaving little to no evidence of it's passing through the fabric as I was stitching and none that I can detect after wearing the hats. The four pieces were tacked together with a loose running stitch and then once the size was tested and the tacked seams adjusted as needed the seams were stitched with a tight locking stitch, the raw edges were folded back and under and stitched down to the inner surface of the finished hat. 

The resultant seams, less that first, are not much thicker than the fabric itself and have so far been very stable and comfortable. This same seam style is seen in several Viking age textiles and fragments. In addition to this being the first cloth I'd ever woven, these hats were also my first attempts at a completely hand stitched garment. The first of the two hats I assembled, ended up a little larger than I desired, so I ended up making a lining for it to better fit it to my head. 

For the lining I wove a cloth using some single ply hemp weaving thread that is right in the middle range of average size threads found in bast (both linen and hemp) textiles and fragments. Ignoring the advice of all my weaving friends who told me I was insane to work with an unforgiving fiber like hemp as my second project I proceeded to fix the flaws I had discovered in my loom from the first project and made some significant modifications to the loom. I replaced the metal heddles with texsolve heddles, which would behave with the fibers I was weaving with much the same as the string heddles used by our intrepid Viking weaver. I also removed the heddle rod hooks that were interfering with the ability of the heddles to travel at the edges of the fabric, replacing them with a simple cable tie that provides tension on the heddle rod but is able to slide as needed. 

I used the same warping board, though wound out many more threads as my planned tabby weave hemp cloth was a much finer weave than the wool (using a much higher thread count per inch) as well as a longer warp to try to push my skills further. I chose a tabby for the hemp project as tabby is by far the most common weave for the bast fibers found in the Viking age contexts and because I wanted to concentrate on the mechanics of even selvages and tension on the weaving itself. I eventually completed my targeted length and width, weaving until there was no more warp available to weave. This time the loom behaved admirably with minimal breakage of warps, just the usual breaking one expects from any weaving project and as noted by experienced weaving friends, less than would have been expected from an unforgiving hard to tension fiber like hemp. 

I then had a length of hemp tabby fabric that I washed and processed as usual. And found that it was incredibly stiff and nasty feeling. I washed it again. Not much better. I eventually asked around and found that there was an additional step used to process the bast fiber weaving to make a soft and supple cloth, called beetling. The intent is to abuse the fibers to the point of softening them and aligning them. There are several ways to beetle a linen or hemp fiber, but the method I ended up using was well suited to the equipment I had on hand. I got the fabric wet, rolled it into a tight roll down the length of the cloth and placed it in my freezer until it was frozen. I then removed it from the freezer and beat the snot out of it with a heavy club. Repeatedly. Rotating it so that I was collapsing the frozen roll in one direction, then another. I then unrolled the thawing fabric and reversed the roll and re-froze it. I repeated this process a dozen or two times (hundreds of beatings with my club) and ended up with a very soft and supple fabric that feels very pleasant on the skin. 

From this I made a set of hat pieces and created a lining for the first hat I had made, which was a bit big on my head. I used the same seam methods, but made the seams to what would be the inside of the lined hat. Once the liner fit my head and was completed I attached it to to the inside of the hat, leaving me with a very durable liner for wearing when I am doing sweaty woodworking stuff at Pennsic et al. As the hemp had not shrunk nearly as much as the wool, I used unprocessed hemp weaving thread for my stitching. This time I experimented with metal needles similar in size and shape to what I've found in the Viking age contexts as the hemp was not forgiving to the passage of a thick bone needle. 

When this multi-year project, which was never intended to be anything but some exploration of my loom and some learning skills in basic weaving, was complete, I had a nice pair of hats. One suitable for more vigorous work and one suited to more courtly pursuits. The threading flaw that I felt ruined the edge of the weaving ended up matching around the rim of the work hat so well that I am very pleased with the result, though still annoyed that I missed seeing the flaw early enough to fix it. I eagerly await the day we get settled and unpacked enough that I can re-assemble the loom and get to weaving the even finer gauge linen I had just completed warping when I accepted  the job that brought me to Ansteorra.