Spirals can be found everywhere, in a vast array of sizes. They occur naturally in anything from shells to spiral arm galaxies. They are also found in manmade items like pottery, sculpture, and wire jewellery. The arms in a spiral can be evenly spaced (aka Archimedean spirals), or the distance between arms can vary depending on the distance from the centre of the spiral (e.g. Golden spiral or Logarithmic spiral).
ca. 7th–6th century B.C. Iran (Met Museum)
I wanted to try and depict an even single-arm spiral in double-face tablet weaving, because I’ve seen it so often in ancient jewellery found anywhere from Iran to Scandinavia.
While pieces like this pendant can have spirals with many turns/circuits, I decided to limit the spiral in the tablet weaving pattern to about 3 circuits so it could fit onto a moderate number of cards.
When I was testing the design, I found that working from a double face chart was proving to be more time consuming than I expected. I was checking far more often whether I’d turned the right number of cards in the correct direction. So, I turned back to written instructions, reminiscent of those in a knitting pattern. These allowed me to work more quickly, but still only at speeds similar to working on a twill band.
Try out the pattern! I’ve provided both the chart and written instructions side by side. To work the band as it appears in the featured image, work both parts of the chart. Alternatively, just work the first part of the chart repeatedly for a slightly different look.
Stringcrafter 