Three-Color Doubleface

Although I’m good at what I do, weaving-wise, there have always been some areas in tablet weaving that have been difficult for me to grasp.  Three-color doubleface has always been one of those.  Thanks to Guntram‘s exquisite work, I’ve been obsessed with it lately.

Tonight, I decided I just had to sit down and plug through it.  After many amusing (in hindsight) false starts, I finally figured out the basics.  I can’t say that I threw it to the floor and made it my bitch… but at least it doesn’t throw ME to the floor any more.  It’ll be a while before I can successfully design in it, I think – plotting where the threads are going to twist which way makes me a little dizzy.

The way in which it resembles couched gold cord makes me very, very happy.

Closer to, you can see the structure a little better – it’s created by just one yellow thread in each tablet.  I can tell this is going to call for some careful consideration of colors – the combination of three colors makes quite a difference in the look of the finished band.

47 replies
  1. eowyna
    eowyna says:

    wow that’s gorgeous. I’m still solidifying my knowledge of two color doubleface. So I take it this is done with cards with 4 holes (not sneaking in a 5th one), with one hole carrying yellow, one with blue, and one with red. What does the fourth hole have? Just looking at this is a mind expander!

  2. admin
    admin says:

    Four holed tablets – two red, one yellow, one blue. The blue makes a design on the back where the yellow is on the front, but the diagonals aren’t lined up nicely so it doesn’t come out as pretty.

    I’m used to doing doubleface where the stitch angles are just kind of glossed over.. here, they’re everything.

  3. not_justagirl
    not_justagirl says:

    that’s stunning! you’re such an inspiration to me!

    and I’m so glad to you post here!! What a treat on my friends page! You’ve been missed!

    *pops over to your site*

  4. admin
    admin says:

    Hee. I realized that in trying to keep all my posts on my wormspit.com blog, I was missing out on the community on LJ… I need to figure out how Phiala does her thing to have it double-post.

  5. admin
    admin says:

    Nah…. I was following somebody else’s pattern line by careful line, with a sense that any slip over the very fine edge would cause me to make an irreparable mistake. Once I can design in it and work the patterns with less terror, then I’ll claim to own it… but definitely not yet!

  6. admin
    admin says:

    Once I figured out the phenomenally stupid mistakes I was making, it was really fairly easy to weave… although I never would have thought it possible, it can be woven in a two-pack setup just like regular DF.

  7. joeguppy
    joeguppy says:

    Tablet weaving still boggles my mind. I just cannot get it to work in my brain. Even while doing it, it still just doesn’t seem like it should happen. But it is AMAZING when it does.

  8. hugh_mannity
    hugh_mannity says:

    It’s called an RSS feed. I’m not sure how it works though.

    That is amazing. And beautiful.

    I need to get back and wrestle with some more tablets. I don’t like being beaten. I think I need a nice short warp and a simple project so I stand a chance at winning.

  9. admin
    admin says:

    I emailed her for input, and it’s actually a WordPress plugin. I’ve installed it at wormspit.com/blog, and we’ll see how it behaves with the next entry.

    I wish I could help with the beaten factor… I can only suggest picking something therapeutic, that you can start and finish in a short amount of time, so that you can see the progress… that always helps me when I’m feeling overwhelmed.

  10. hugh_mannity
    hugh_mannity says:

    I picked a project that was waaaay above my pay grade.

    Now that EK 12th Night is cancelled, I think I shall put a short warp on my sample loom and play. If I end up with a hat band, that will be profit.

  11. admin
    admin says:

    If you use GTT, on the PATTERN page, there’s a setting under “view” then “display” then “show underlying block pattern” – it looks like this:

    And from there, it’s just 2F, 2B, turning the black pattern squares toward the pattern color, the white pattern squares toward the background color. It went surprisingly fast, once I got that.

  12. admin
    admin says:

    OH – and my most amusing mistake, was setting the warp up SZSZ, because I glanced at it, saw “alternating S and Z” – it’s SSZZSSZZ – alternating PAIRS. This took it from a collection of jumbled mis-matched lines to a smooth angle.

  13. admin
    admin says:

    I keep thinking I have seen designs like this in some old book. I am trying to place the source. I don’t remember if it was a drawing of embroidery, or if it was just a design. It has all the little loopies at the end of the knots, definitely NOT Celtic Knotwork. Any suggestions?

  14. admin
    admin says:

    I keep thinking I have seen designs like this in some old book. I am trying to place the source. I don’t remember if it was a drawing of embroidery, or if it was just a design. It has all the little loopies at the end of the knots, definitely NOT Celtic Knotwork. Any suggestions?

  15. admin
    admin says:

    I keep thinking I have seen designs like this in some old book. I am trying to place the source. I don’t remember if it was a drawing of embroidery, or if it was just a design. It has all the little loopies at the end of the knots, definitely NOT Celtic Knotwork. Any suggestions?

  16. eowyna
    eowyna says:

    I agree, not Insular Knotwork at all. It looks to me like something out of one of the 16th c. embroidery pattern books and modelbooks. I think they were intended to have cord laid down in those patterns.

  17. eowyna
    eowyna says:

    So – inquiring minds want to know – since there are two holes with red threads, would a fourth color in one of those holes instead of the second red, give an outline of the fourth color, or just confuse the pattern entirely?

  18. admin
    admin says:

    you know, honestly I don’t have any idea. I haven’t been able to successfully trace the track of one particular red thread; I’m too busy watching where the yellow goes. My *guess* would be that the outline would appear in a mix of both colors, depending on which direction the tablets are turning at the time.

    Guntram did a variation of it using only 2 colors, and turned out some very lovely work – I don’t remember if it’s threaded 2 and 2, or 3 and 1.

  19. engisdottir
    engisdottir says:

    It was 3 and 1 (the 1 being where your blue thread is, so the background looked like a mesh and the pattern like holes in it).

    With a 4-color threading the pattern would look like Snartemo patterns, with an outline of one color on one side of the diagonal and of other color on the other side. Playing with the colors in GTT might help 🙂

  20. Hanna
    Hanna says:

    it is so beautifull! I’d love to try it, but I’m not an expert yet. Could you provide us the turning pattern to try?

  21. Hanna
    Hanna says:

    it is so beautifull! I\’d love to try it, but I\’m not an expert yet. Could you provide us the turning pattern to try?

  22. Michael
    Michael says:

    Honestly, this isn’t a technique that I know well at all. I was working from a tutorial – the pieces pictured are all that I’ve ever done with this technique. I think it was in one of the TWIST journals, but I’m not sure.

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