Just made some new tablet weaving cards for future tablet weaving… a cheap and easy way… :D

Woohooo! I just made my very first tablet weaving cards! And now I have 54 new tablet weaving cards to play with! 😀

Well, not that I really need all these tablet weaving cards right now but I suddenly felt the urge to make some. It all started while I was working at my husbands christmas present – a new 12th century tunic. I suddenly worried that I might not have a suitable tablet woven trim to embellish my sweethearts new tunic…

Fortunately I found a lovely tablet woven trim in my stash which worked beautifully with the lovely raw silk fabric of the new tunic. However, I also noticed that my stash of tablet woven trim was growing smaller and smaller with every new tunic project for my husband. And as I just recently realized, while I was working at the black and white tablet woven band for my new silk garters, I only had a very limited amount of cards to work with.

Well, the solution for this problem was quite obvious – I needed new cards for my future tablet weaving projects! And I also was in need for an easy way to make them…

Fortunately I remembered that during the past years several people suggested that tablet weaving cards can be easily made from playing cards. Well, till rather recently this information was just one of the crafting related hints my brain soaked up and stored away as tablet weaving was just another small side hobby I was playing with. And now, that I wanted to make some more tablet woven trim and needed more cards for weaving, this hint just sounded like the best idea ever and it captivated my thinking…

A pack of playing cards was easily found among our game collection and I am still stunned how easily I could convince my husband to donate a deck so I could “play” with it… *lol*
And now let’s take a look at my old tablet weaving cards and how I made my new ones – enjoy! 😀  

When my sister Martina gifted me her weaving loom and cards, the cards had already seen some usage. And after I started using them for several more tablet weaving projects of my own, the cards showed some slight damage around the holes due to the rather high tension I am working with.

Well, at this point the cards are still usable. However, the last time I was looking for tablet weaving patterns, the small number of cards I have revealed a limitation concerning the width of patterns I can create before I run out of cards.

The first decision I made was to keep the basic size of the playing cards instead cutting the cards down to the size of the cards I already have. This way I only had to make 2 cuts instead of 3 which made cutting the cards less complicated. As I had no cutter to cut the cards with, I decided to use a very easy technique to ensure a rather constant size length of the final cards:

I simply took two cards at once and aligned them perpendicularly and then I cut off the excess parts of the cards. The pictures above and underneath show the alignment of the cards before I started to cut them with paper scissors. You can see how the card on the left provides a very clear “cut line” on the right side as I am working right handed…

After cutting off the excess part, I took my scissors and cut the pointy edges of the cards into a rounder shape:

Though I first tried to round the edges of two cards at once in order to save some time, I soon discovered that it is much easier to just work with one card at a time. This way the round edges turn out much nicer.

I used a very simple hole punch to make the holes which I borrowed from my husband:

Before I made the very first hole in one of my new tablet weaving cards, I used one of the excess parts which I just had cut off to determine how I had to place the cards in the hole punch to get a similar distance from both edges. It turned out that with just 2-3 mm of the card showing next to the hole punch I had a rather perfect placing at the corner.

And here a photo taken during the early stages of my tablet weaving card project:

…and here a photo of my finished tablet weaving cards – 54 new cards for the win!

And last but not least I used a pencil to mark three sides of the new cards. This should help me a little when it comes to following the rotation patterns in the future:

I hope you enjoyed todays small tutorial of my fast and easy way to create new tablet weaving cards. It might take some time until I actually get to use them but well, they are finished now and I will be able to start a new tablet weaving project when the mood strikes me… 😀