Progress on the peplos

I Have started the weaving now. There are 420 warp ends on 28 weights, 14 each front and back. There wasn't enough guard hair to do the whole warp so I ended up using the undercoat as well but spun very tightly for strength.

The weave is plain tabby but I couldn't resist adding two rows of blue pick-up at the top for decoration. So now its just plain weaving!

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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