Inkle Woven Bands vs Tablet Woven Bands

Inkle weaving is an umbrella term that has come to envelope a lot of different forms of woven bands. The word “inkle” means band and is typically used to describe woven bands in a variety of techniques as well as the looms used to weave them.

The phrase “inkle woven” typically refers to the bands whose structure mimics that of other woven fabrics like Inkle Woven Chains shown below. . They’re made using heddles to create sheds. These heddles are typically either homemade with cotton or commercially produced Texsolv heddles that are intended for multi-shaft looms. but you can also use plastic and wooden heddles (see the Additional Notes and Materials section for more details). Although these bands are simple, Annie MacHale’s book In Celebration of Pain Weave shows how a simple technique can be used to design stunning bands.

Inkle Band Example

n contrast, “tablet woven” and “card woven” are used interchangeably to refer to bands made by turning tablets (also called cards) to open sheds. The result is a series of twisted cords that are held together by the weft. As such, tablet woven bands are typically stronger and thicker than inkle woven bands and can put more tension on the loom. With Tablet weaving, there is a lot of variation possible in techniques—skipping holes when threading, changing the number of cards that turn in which direction, etc. Claudia Woolny offers an extensive guide to tablet weaving techniques in her book Tablets at Work. Here, we’ll be focused on the simplest variation of tablet weaving--what Woolny calls “threaded-in pattern” and Otfried Staudigel refers to as “tablet plain weave”--with all four corner holes threaded and all cards turning together in a twist neutral turning sequence. This form of tablet weaving is one of the more popular, and there are a plethora of recently woven examples available online as well as a collection of free patterns available in addition to Bowties and Diamonds shown below.

BowTies and Diamonds - Table Woven

on the left (for more information see Appendix III).

A Cautionary Note about Pattern Reading

Whether you’re interested in making inkle woven bands or tablet woven bands, be careful when you’re approaching patterns that are written by a designer you’re unfamiliar with: when it comes to band weaving there is a distinction between inkle woven bands and tablet woven bands, but the standardization ends there. Different authors use different terminology for bands with the same characteristics and vice versa.

With inkle woven bands, pay close attention to the thickness of the yarn used in the suggested materials, as some styles use a thicker pattern yarn with thinner yarn in the background and border, and the ratio of the thickness of pattern to background yarn is often a key element of the design. You may also see a mix of fibers for a desired effect. While you can often make substitutions, also pay attention to the characteristics of the yarn used: while you can easily substitute between mercerized/ pearl cotton, you cannot substitute superwash for non-superwash wool as the latter felts and the former does not.

With card woven bands, weaving is a breeze, but pattern set up can sometimes be ambiguously written. The pattern will usually have threading directions that refer to S or Z, and you will need to decipher from the pattern whether that refers to the tilt of the cards or the twist of the threads. Therein lies the rub: the tilt of the tablets is opposite the twist of the threads, which can lead to what is often referred to as sawblade edges in the design which look jagged and choppy instead of the crisp, smooth edges that are expected. Sometimes you’ll get lucky when you misread a pattern and you’ll be able to just weave the band upside down or turn the band over. Other times you’ll be able to flip the cards and start some cards at a different point-- Ellisif Gydasdottir has a great video explaining how to do this and it’s listed in Appendix III. The majority of the time, though, rethreading the cards is the path of least resistance. The good thing is designers will typically pick one way of writing their patterns and stick with it, and there are a lot of great resources to help you decipher which threading is intended (see Tablet Weaving on a LoftyBand Loom and Appendix III for more information).