Change of plan

I had planned to do another pile weave cloak for my next project but this has been shelved for the time being in favour of an early Saxon peplos for a reenactment event I am hoping to take part in later this year.

I'm using a nice dark brown Hebridean fleece that has lots of long guard hairs that I am separating out to use for the warp. If there isn't enough for the whole warp I shall mix in some Herdwick of a similar colour.

The photos show how far I've got today. Guard hairs have been separated from the soft undercoat and turned into a roving ready for spinning. Several skeins of spun singles have been soaked in a thin mix of wallpaper paste and hung up under tension to dry. There is enough to start making the warp. Two warp bundles done, only another 26 to go!

Recipe for the pile weave cloak

The warp is two ply worsted spun norwegian rovings madder dyed. The rovings purchased from www.worldofwool.co.uk

Weft is woollen spun, plyed, madder dyed mixed British fleece

The pile is unspun gotland locks.

Authenticity is not an important issue for me but this rug/cloak compares well will actual Viking Age finds. Thor Ewig in his book 'Viking Clothing' mentions shaggy piled trade cloaks from Iceland measuring 5'4" x 2'8" being smaller than other trade cloaks because of the weight. Mine is 5'6" x 3' and ,yes, it is quite heavy but very warm. He also says this about the actual weave: "Viking piled fabrics from Kildonan, Isle of Eigg (AD850-900), from Jurby, Isle of Mann (c.AD900), from Lund Sweden (eleventh century) from Heynes, Iceland (tenth century), and from Volynia, Ukraine (9th century), all appear to have had a pile worked into the cloth during weaving.......Pile-woven cloth was often dyed; at least one example from York was dyed with madder, and one of the Birka examples is worked in a combination of red and blue dyed yarns. AN EXAMPLE FROM DUBLIN HAS A DARK BROWN PILE AND WEFT WOVEN AGAINST A RED WARP."

There is great variety in the base weave, tabby, as singles or plyed (as is mine) or finer twill weaves. Sometimes the background cloth was woven first in a coarse fairly open weave and the pile threaded in after in the form of a prespun yarn so there was plenty of variety.

The completed cloak

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Attaching the warp to the loom

Here are some pictures of the progress of the cloak.

Warp

separating the warps

Measuring the warp

Measuring the warp

How we prepared the warp

I always have 'help' when I'm doing a job like this thats full of entertainment value. The pictures speak for themselves. The warp under construction is for a pile weave cloak/rug intended for viking reenactment.

Another rug

This one is woven from madder dyed fleece, black Hebridean and various odd bits of yellow. You will see that my family enjoy making use of it.

I had to include this one

This is Bracken weaving herself.

The finished rug about to be cut from the loom. After fulling it is 7' long.

Meet Gytha

Gytha is my loom. She waas made for me by a viking reenactor friend out of pine bought from a local timber merchant. Made to be a reasonable height for me to work on comfortably and compact enough to transport to events the uprights are 6' as is the cloth beam.


The heddle rod is a donated spindle tree trunk and the forks are two tree branches, of uncertain variety, collected in a local forest and thoroughly dried out.

The weights are sea pebbles each weighing approximately 22 ounces collected from beaches along the North Wales coast. Each weight is contained in its own flax (hand spun of course) string bag made using detached button whole stich worked over the weight to get a perfect fit.

There are also eight clay dohnut weights from a group experiment which entailed modelling the weights and baking them in a simple earth kiln in my back garden. Since we started with 24 I suppose we were lucky to end up with eight that were useable! These weights are much lighter than the stome ones but I do somethimes use them in the middle of the weaving just for effect and the purpose of demonstration.