Garters from the Codex Manesse

6/11/2023

Late 2022 a dear friend sent out a call for assistance in making tablet woven garters pulled from the pages of the Codex Manesse ... and WHOOSH up my hand went. SURE! I wanted to make these for her, and what a splendid thing to recreate things from a manuscript. "The "Codex Manesse", also known as the "Great Heidelberg Book of Songs" (Cod. Pal. germ. 848), was created between around 1300 and around 1340 in Zurich and is the most comprehensive collection of ballads and epigrammatic poetry in Middle High German language." I knew these were being made for HER Codex Manesse project, to recreate a whole outfit!, so I wanted to do it right. What I didn't know at the time was they were destined to be a part of her Elevation outfit in May 2023; I'm talking about Dame Cyneswyth the Quiet of the New Forest.

The Inspiration

and

THe finished product

SO... where to start... Looking at the illustration I thought hmmmm a rigid heddle AND cards... ummm... this artist didn't know how to weave. And I'm not the only one who thought the same thing. But... is that even possible? I immediately chucked that idea out the window, and instead focused on drafting the pattern and getting to work.

There is a fun article on Arachne's Blog Past & Present about the possibility of weaving with a rigid heddle as shown in the Codex. I found this blog AFTER I completed my project, and I would not have done it this way, but it is interesting to read about it.

The Materials

I went to SAFF and searched for lovely fiber goodness. I found a treasure of crewel wool skeins I felt were a good lace size and 2 ply, so I bought out the vendor. The light pink and yellow were the colors that Cyneswyth chose to match The Codex.
I have NO idea what breed of sheep would have been available in the early to mid 1300's Germany, but I'd love to learn!

The Pattern and weaving

So did I need 6 sided cards? Ehhh I decided to try to pattern with square, 4 hole cards first, because that is what I had on hand and I figured it is an easy pattern. I couldn't get GTT designer to work on my Chromebook so I started here as I had used this draft designer successfully before. I couldn't get the pattern to work with 4 hole cards. It is possible that someone with more tablet weaving and drafting experience than I could have done so. But I chocked it up to "Hey I guess the illuminator of the original did know or observe something of tablet weaving because BOOM designing the pattern with 6 hole cards was easy pea-sy. That is where the easy stopped.

OH MY. This pattern did NOT work. The short story... I have at least one foot of weaving trying to make this work. For whatever reason, it didn't. I consulted experts. Did I switch S/Z? Yep. Change directions? Yep. One shed or two? None of us could figure it out. so I went searching for a different pattern.
Insert the sound of Angels singing. Whatever the difference, it worked... and OH MY. Please go try TwistedThreads and their pattern generator. I'm in love. The tools are amazing, including an interactive pattern and, AND you can use it on your phone.

Do I weave it on the flat of the card, with one shed? No, that was not the way. Oh, so weave on the point and have two sheds. Bingo! That works!
Finally, THE pattern arrives on the threads.

But you can see above, there was not a whole lot of contrast there to SEE the pattern. So we decided to change the color of the pink to the darker. This was definitely the right decision.

But now I had other challenges to figure out. What color works best for the weft? Well now the pattern is there, but why don't the edges match. one side looks like dots, and the other looks like spirals? Uuugh this is a puzzle. Is it my tension of the weft threads? No. Is it one weft thread wrapped in a spiral between the two sheds? or two separate shuttles that cross back and forth? Ok, I'll do TWO shuttles, in two separate sheds.
Yes! that works! Eww that color doesn't! Oh, what about the Finnish tablet weaving technique of Tubular selvages? Yessss, that looks lovely.

Completed in time

Y'all. This whole process of figuring out the pattern, the 6 hole cards, the colors, the this, the that... it took a solid month. yup. I said it, a month.
I am SO glad I didn't give up. I'm very happy I continued because the end product Cyneswyth said she felt she could pull out of the illumination.
That fills my heart with joy that I could help make her dream of a complete outfit from the Codex Manesse come true.

I used a particular way to finish the ends of the garters that is persona specific to me, as a sort of an artistic signature. I think the plaited tassel is a beautiful way to finish the ends of tablet weaving and for a garter that will get pulled on, it also provides structure much like a belt tip.

sister Garters

Remember how I restrung/ threaded the colors? Well I thought... why waste?! I already have the pattern strung! I know! I'll make a sister set of garters! So I threaded dark pink where the yellow was. I've done the same plaited tassel ends, but used contrasting gold for the braid at the ends.

For these, I knew the pattern well by now, and instead of focusing on perfection, I just wove.
It was glorious.

Besides the color, the biggest difference between this set of garters and Cyneswyth's was I did not weave tubular selvages on this second set. I find that ironic since *I* have the Finnish persona, not her. Why did I do this? I don't have a fabulous story or reason. Once I started and realized I wasn't doing the tubular selvage I just went with the flow and decided to keep any imperfections or mistakes, plus I was restricted on the length of the light pink after weaving feet of the original colors.

I knew the pattern well after weaving something like over 4 feet ... so I didn't make many mistakes.
I'm happy with my tensions both warp and weft. and look forward to wearing them.

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