Cardweaving...the new addiction

Ah yes, yet another new craft addiction. Derek mentioned card weaving for SCA stuff and I remembered it when I went to the convention center with my mom for a bead show. That happened to have a weaving section that had books on card weaving. So of course I bought some >.> The blue, yellow, and purple piece is the first one I did and you can see all the irregularities where I was learning. I learned to use a butter knife to beat down the threads so they are more dense. I learned that I need to color the tops of the cards when I'm weaving so that I know when I've done four turns. I also learned to use my scissors to indicate whether or not I needed to be turning the cards towards my body or away. I have a tendency to space off and then I forget which way so that can change the pattern. Oh one more thing the weft thread should be the same color as the ends it's hard to see in the photo but it was dark blue since I ran out of embroidery floss of the same color and it definately doesn't look as good on the edges of the piece because of that. Oh well it was my first one.

The second piece the red, blue, and yellow is a pattern that Derek created for me that is supposed to emulate lotus blossums in an egyptian style it didn't quite fan out as well as it did on the graph so we will have to work on it when I do my actual belt for my garb. My first piece was ten strand and the second one was 16 strands. The second piece I started out with 36 inches for each color and ended up with approximately 18 inches of woven material that's how much it condenses it down. Honestly the hardest part of card weaving is getting all the strands cut and then set up. The wewaving is quite simple and relaxing. Making your own patterns isn't too difficult either. I plan to continue to learn this craft so that eventually I can do even complex things such as creating letters of the alphabet in the weave.