Card-woven Belt in 70s Colours

I warped this belt in January in order to show a couple of guilds a setup for weaver-tensioned card weaving (tablet weaving) and let the guild members try if they liked.

The cotton yarn was generously donated by another member.  The colour contrast made it easy to see where individual threads were positioned and how they moved from shed to counter shed.  It was also good to work from four cones of yarn because that allowed me to use the quick method of continuous warping, which I prefer.

A few people tried weaving a small amount.  Then the warp sat on the cards and cloth-beam-belt-tool thing for months while I nurtured hopes that someone else would want to learn.  Then an occasion came up requiring a belt.  In one day, I undid the weaving back to the first two inches (which I now wish I'd taken out as well because the weft is too loose there) and I started again, finishing the whole length.  Strike one more unfinished object off the list.  Hurray for deadlines that prompt action.

I regret that I didn't stagger the position of the cards to produce a chequered pattern.  The harsh stripes make me think of coral snakes.

I am happy about the looped end, it's the first time I've tried a wrapped loop after Collingwood's The Techniques of Tablet Weaving.  A woven loop is more elegant and tidy but cuts the warp length in half and I needed a long warp for a belt.

The feel of card-woven cloth is pleasantly substantial.  Here you can see the side, how thick the belt is. The photo is taken at a reversal line, where I had to stop turning the cards forward by quarter turns and start turning them backward because too much twist had build up in the warp.  Card weaving is warp-twined.  Each place you see a blotch of a thick stripe in the photo above, that's a reversal line.  I reversed wherever the yarn dictated without any sort of plan and I didn't bother finessing the selvedges by reversing the outside cards at a different spot.