Weaving a Burgundian-inspired Table cloth

Some time ago I read an article in Historical Textiles about a fragment of cloth dating to the fifteenth century. It was a length of linen with blue stripes at the end. As I recall (sadly, if the post is still anywhere in their archives, I can’t find it), it was a full-width piece of cloth, but had been ripped across. So the researchers could only guess at the actual length, but they had some solid information on which to base their guesses.

“I can do that!” I thought. So I bought the finest linen thread I felt comfortable weaving on - I still had my beast of a Hammer loom which I feared would eat a single ply. So I chose bleached 20/2 linen. And threaded it, and slayed it and wove up a swatch. I washed it and pressed it and laid it flat.

“Too gauzy,” said I, and re-slayed it closer together. I wove another bit of a swatch, washed it and pressed it and laid it by the first swatch.

“Much better,” says I, and started to weave up a piece. But things started going weirdly awry. Threads at the left and a few others were strangely loose. The rest of the warp was fine, so I wove another couple of pics.

”Never going to work,” I opined (I’m having fun with dialogue tags. Please humor me.).

I followed the threads through the reed and into the heddles: loose, but looking fine. I got up and hiked around to the back of the loom, being sure to schedule my route with loved ones.

“Hah!” I said, said I. “Ramona!”

She sat looking demure. But threads were chewed through.

I have to admit I really didn’t know what to do, so I did what any self-respecting weaver would do and went off for days to “think about it.”

I took a week to think about it. Maybe two. But I couldn’t think of anything to do but cut even across the entire warp, even out the threads, and knot across the back. I preserved the cross before I cut, which turned out to be a Good Thing (c). Then I wove until the knots came through, pulled everything through, and began again. With a nice hemshitch.