DOES ANYONE HAVE AN ACTUALLY INFORMATIVE DROP SPINDLE TUTORIAL VIDEO FOR ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS I swears to god youtube tutorials are just recipe blogs in motion
I really like this one, and once you get comfortable with the process, you can add a whorl onto your stick and see how much momentum it can add!
I also like this video to understand the concept of spinning, without muddling the waters with talk about leader yarns etc. (I don't think I watched the full video, just enough to conceptually understand what spinning *was*:
This video was also helpful and more step-by-step; action starts at about 50 seconds in:
so once upon a time i bought some fiber that didn’t quite work out how I hoped. You see, I lovvvvvve all those funfetti-looking ass yarns, so when I saw this merino / sari silk blend naturally I thought it was the greatest thing ever. It looked like this:
Unfortunately it was just a little too heavy in the sari silk for the funfetti look I wanted. Now I’ve since used it all up, so let’s do a little historical recreation by blending some rambo and some sari silk I have laying around:
Pretty close! And here’s how it looks spun up:
Perfectly nice but more of an overall color mishmash than the white-with-rainbow-sprinkles I was hoping for. Well no problem, I’ll just blend it with more white until i like how it looks! Here’s some swatches of various blending ratios:
I ended up going with 4 parts white rambo to 1 part OG merino/sari silk blend. Now that’s a whole different sweater but the upshot is that I ended up with two ounces or so left over of this merino/sari silk blend. So then I thought, well, what if I mix it with something that’s not white? Maybe lots of something’s?? And then maybe I’ll arrange all those tiny skeins in rainbow order and knit half a sweater out of them, before I run out of the OG merino/silk blend and start blending my own sari silk with some dark teal and navy to finish the sweater??? And that’s how I ended up with the Do You Love The Color Of The Sky sweater.
Nobody held me back so I reverse-engineered the process of deflected double-weave for my first loom weaving.
For non-weavers: this is two scarves! It's a rainbow scarf and a grey scarf that were woven simultaneously. They pass through holes in each other in such a way that they can never be separated, but no yarn from one scarf intersects with yarn from the other!
I was so inspired by @batbetbitbotbut's very cool scarf that I pounced on the first 4-shaft loom that I could get my hands on! As I said in the tags of that post, I was going to need a heck of a prayer circle to restrain my crafter's hubris, and no such circle happened so here we are!
I couldn't find any non-paywalled explanations of the foundational concepts of deflected double-weave, nor did I see any patterns that i liked at a quick glance. Thankfully, I had a 30 second long vaguely gestured explanation from @absolute-messs of how it was done*, and the self-confidence of a guy who's fiddled around with string and trash enough to independently re-invent warp-weighted looms and rigid heddles with no prior knowledge of either.
The first pattern I drafted turned out to have major flaws with tension, so I un-wove it and figured out something else I could make without re-threading the whole thing. ~15 hours of pulling apart fuzzy halos with every row of the rainbow yarn and letting-the-yarn-tell-me-where-it-needed-tension later and it was done!!! It's the coziest thing I own. Feels weird to admit this but I had no idea scarves could actually count as a layer beyond keeping the wind off your face??? It's so fucking warm I love wool. (plsss ignore how messy the fringe is in the first pic, i'd been wearing it daily for several weeks and i wanted to see if it would felt enough to stay together without knots)(it didn't)
*or so I thought! turns out it was a rough gist of how regular-ass non-deflected doublecloth is made and my brain auto-completed the rest 😅
"Sewing is a gateway drug to thinking through complex problems. It seems really simple; culturally, we make it women's work. Let me tell you: real sewing at any kind of level of proficiency is a bloody magic trick. Sewing, like mold making, involves mental frames that require one to think inside out and backwards. It requires one to work on an order of operations that is often taking into account the reverse. It's a really, really important skill, and if you learn how to sew, you're mostly on your way to carpentry and welding and sheet metal work. I'm not kidding: these are planar forms meeting under rules and conditions. And if you can make a sleeve work, I swear to God, you could build a house."
Tumblr hivemind: Any recommendations for books or articles about lace? I’m looking for books more on on the history/analytic side, I am good for now on how-to-make-lace books :)
Yes! I have a few! I stopped posting about this because people didn’t seem interested, which, understandable.
While writing this, I realized I need to break this down into two posts. This first one is about people who are interested in understanding history. The second one will be people interested in popular history, who don’t have qualms with inaccuracies or just straight up commercial propaganda. I have more of the second thing. And no judgment—just… if you’re going to read something that isn’t true you should know it isn’t.
Okay so first I have to say… ANY decent book on the history of lace—especially handmade lace, especially commercially handmade lace—is going to contain descriptions or references to atrocities. Usually human trafficking, almost always some sort of sweatshop conditions (but inside the home), sometimes colonialism or racism, sometimes actual baby murder. I really think this is what puts people off. Again, understandable.
The second thing is that “the history of lace” is actually really broad—it’s like “the history of painting”, because it crosses regions, time periods, and interrelated but separate mediums. It ALSO is variably researched. Some of the recent stuff is really good. A lot of the older stuff is like literally, actually propaganda. Especially in English.
Which brings me to the third thing: a lot of the most respected books on lace are not available in English. This is true to such an extent that if someone told me they were an expert in lace but they only spoke English, I personally wouldn’t believe them. (This disqualifies me too but I certainly wouldn’t claim to be anything more than an amateur regardless.) I wouldn’t but you can, if you like. I’ve found not using other language sources makes some claims about lace impossible to fact-check.
Warning: your journey will be easier if you’re not restricted to English.
Last disclaimer: as said, most kinds of lace are very poorly researched. I am hesitant to put exactly what I know and how I know it in writing because I’m a little worried that the propaganda I’m researching might disappear as a result. But I’ll include all the sources that got me there regardless, because I am brave.
So, to start with things that are publicly corrected: if something says macrame is from the 18th century, that’s a massive red flag the source is outdated. We’ve got confirmation it’s from the Middle East and I think at least the 10th century. I still see it attributed to Victorian sailors. Tatting—we don’t know, it could be from multiple places. It’s likely someone has a more concrete idea but it’s not something I’ve spent any time on so I can’t say which of the competing explanations is most likely.
Most of my recommendations will focus on bobbin, needle, or crochet lace—that’s what’s most documented (and, you know, propagandized).
For online resources:
Definitely the Textile Research Centre (and please, please, please donate to them if you are able I cannot lose them). Up-to-date on research, willing to look at new evidence, very clearly written and in-depth, has a lot of information correct other sources don’t, links to academic articles. Like, this is the definitive history of lace website I’d recommend, especially their blog.
https://www.trc-leiden.nl/trc/index.php/en/
Home
Books:
Okay so my first recommendation would be “History of Lace” by Bury Pallister but the edition she edited. The updated version “corrects” her and it got a lot of information wrong. She was maybe swinging too far, too excited, but there was plenty of evidence behind the base of the claims she was making and it got buried under a mass of propaganda that followed her. A lot of her articles at the time held up surprisingly well.
Second up is Marian Powys’s 1953 book “Lace and Lacemaking”. It sounds like a how-to book but there’s one tutorial at the end. It’s fairly short, of all the books I would recommend, it has the least focus on surrounding atrocities, but still alludes to them. I think it’s public domain, as well. It has, and this may have been accidental but considering how skilled she was as a writer—maybe not—great insights into lace’s reputation in the 1940s and early 1950s and the various types of revivals that were planned (and then promptly abandoned when feminists took it over in the 70s and 80s). Some of the lace also had different names at the time (most notably, point de gaze in the US was called “rose point”, which can impact your archival trolling).
and I apologize in advance, because again, a lot of lace sources are very, very bad (and the ones that might be good are hilariously expensive—like, as expensive as lace itself).
Now … to the weeds:
atrocity warnings for human trafficking, domestic violence, etc for all of them BUT ESPECIALLY Pinchbeck’s. HEED ME on this. She is why I have to include “baby death” in the disclaimers:
If you want a book that on early needle lace (the earliest we know of as a tradition, in fact), you’ll want A Venetian Island: Environment, History and Change in Burano, by Lidia Sciama. The sections on lace are phenomenal. If you can read it online, that’s actually better because you can control + f for any mentions of lace. It goes through centuries of documents, culture, attitudes… it is amazing for understanding how professional lacemakers think about their profession and why.
If you want a book on crochet lace, misogyny, and colonialism in India: “The Lace Makers of Narsapur” by Maria Mies is incredible. She has to make a lot of inferences for lack of data but she really puts the lifestyle of professional crocheters into perspective.
There’s a much newer (2025) academic book on the history of Irish crochet lace and I want it so bad (there are also a few pamphlets I am deeply interested in reading) but unfortunately it’s over $100 and I can’t justify the expensive. Unless…
If you have a very strong stomach and are interested in why there is so much propaganda about lace in English, Ivy Pinchbeck’s “Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution” is a landmark book about the economic changes caused by middle class white women fighting to work outside the home and poor women fighting for higher wages. The worker protections are nothing and the hours are every minute of every day, while the work is constantly being undermined and undervalued as both too mechanical and too handmade. Take care. Double atrocity warning for whatever Pinchbeck was on. Her records were primary sources and meticulous. It really was this bad.
If you want a more industrially-focused look at the rise of machine lace, Pat Earnshaw’s “Lace Machines and Machine Laces” is a loooot less horrific. Her “Dictionary of Lace” (and, in fact, any lace dictionary) acts as an important reference for lace history because they’re so scaled back. “Threads of Lace: From Source to Sink” is more about the makeup of… wait. Wait. Hold on a second.
“Lace” by Virginia Churchhill Bath is about how to make lace but it’s also about WHY it’s made like that I love it so much. I refer back to it if I need a “why”, not a “how”. Usually you need to read French for that.
So, back to “Source to Sink”, it’s biased and a little outdated (much like “Lace”, but neither are as biased as ones I will put in the other post) but it is also about the whys of how lace was constructed, focusing on the threads used. It’s a real look on the qualities and technology of lacemaking.
I've been working on making a little batch of tablet woven bookmarks, I think I can get one more full bookmark out of what's left of the warp and then enough to make a tiny one to keep as a swatch of this pattern.
Every now and then I look through the internet archive for interesting vintage sewing and fibercraft books. Today I found one that's really cool!
Clothes for Independent Living is the earliest source I've seen about altering clothing for people with disabilities. It was published in 1978 by the Michigan State University Cooperative Extension. They have hacks to add flexibility for better range of motion, help for people who use crutches and some basic stuff to improve clothing fit for people who use wheelchairs. The info on fastenings is pretty outdated, I think we have a lot of better options now, but otherwise the whole little pamphlet is useful and accessible.
When i started i was going off of diagrams from old websites, and struggled a good bit. I hope this post will help you get started! Feel free to ask questions!
This video shows the very basics (not in english, but quite clear). This video explains how to read patterns before you start doing it backwards, mirrored and upside down (which is what i did!).
Basic tools; the beauty of tablet weaving is that you need minimal supplies to get started.
Cotton yarn (I use 8/4)
Cards (thin cardboard and a hole punch will do)
A chair or door handle, to tie the threads to
A belt, to tie the threads to yourself
A shuttle (you can start with a pencil, old credit card, ruler, your fingers,... i use a bone folder)
Variables to understand before trying to use a pattern
S/Z card slant or threading
The direction the cards face
Forward or backward turns
ABCD or DCBA
This video (mentioned above as well) explains these variables and how to read different patterns you will find. There is no universal way to write a tablet weaving pattern, resulting in different patterns directly opposing one another (& lots of frustration on my end </3).
General tips from me, a novice
Start with a thin band
Start with a simple pattern, where the cards all turn forward for the whole band, like this one
Then move to a pattern that alternates forward and backward turns, this one is simple but very pretty
After that, try a pattern that has you divide the cards into groups, like a ramshorn or dublin dragons
Be sure to use contrasting colours (in hue and/or tone). A black and white filter can help you here
Get some bag clips to prevent tangles (ikea!)
Always turn the edge cards in the same direction. This gives a neater end result. The edges can be the outer two cards, or a group that forms a decorative trim
Personally, i like looping the thread around a door handle instead of tying it, which makes untwisting threads very easy
You can eventually omit the written ABCD on the cards, but it is a good crutch to lean on when learning
I use some scrap wood with bolts that i tie to my belt, making it a little easier to manage tension and move the woven band along as i go
Finding patterns
I use pinterest for the most part. Twisted threads has many patterns, with a built-in program, but the search function is not great.
I made you four pinterest boards; for the sake of simplicity, the patterns are all GTT which means tablets face RIGHT, S/Z refers to the THREADING direction, use ABCD, forward turns the tablets AWAY from yourself (forwards = D over A)
Level one: all forward turns
Level two: alternating forward and backward
Level three: groups of tablets that turn differently
Level four: a fuckton of tablets with complex patterns
This video made me understand double-face weaving, this one is shorter and easier to follow. Double-face is a fun technique but i would reccommend getting good at following a regular pattern first.
My main mistake when i was starting out:
Whether the slant is S or Z, the cards should all face the same way. For some reason, I made the S-cards all face right and the Z-cards left. Simple, repetitive patterns will turn out fine but anything slightly more complex will be distorted, and you will be frustrated:
Your first few projects will likely be messy! Don't be too discouraged. Here's a couple of my firsts:
My "Transparencies" quilt took 1st in category (pieced modern traditional) in my guild's recent show!
This was my first big guild show and while I hoped to place, landing in first was a happy surprise! I've also entered this quilt into an upcoming juried show (also my first), so keep your fingers crossed for me.
