Sunday 26 August 2012

Viking Whipcording

I first saw this technique five years ago at the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum. Although it looked quite complicated two girls where doing it and having a lot of fun in the meantime. We took the explantion with us, but unfortunately it was in Danish. The leaflet got lost and I forgot about the whole idea.

Earlier this year at the Pfingsten Vikingmarket at the Archeon a female visitor complained about all the viking women doing the same crafts. There isn't really much choice to begin with and somehow we always seem to pick the same thing simultaneously. One event everyone is nalebinding the other one everyone seems to be sewing... When I started to thing about a different textile technique I remembered whipcording but didn't know the name anymore. Untill I bought the book Viking dress, clothing by Nille Glaesel.

With our next viking event coming up fast. Remko decided to make me some wooden bobbins.


This is how our first cord turned out.


Here Remko is teaching our son Myrddin the technique.


And like the girls at the viking museum he like make the cord this way.
Time for me the read up on the history of the technique. 

Pity that not all pictures load... http://genvieve.net/sca/whipcording-howto.html
Whipcording for one person http://www.eithni.com/Whipcordingdemo.htm
The leaflet of thee RoskildeVikingship Museum in english http://genvieve.net/sca/interlocking.pdf

Whipcord bobbin construction http://wymarc.com/artifacts/artifacts.php 





1 comment:

Fanny said...

Oh, I love those wooden bobbins! I usually just use small plastic bottles with a bit of water in them to weigh them down... Works just as well, but are not nearly as pretty! And I've never actually tried doing it together with a partner, I've only done it solo. Which works fine, but I'm sure it's much more fun to do it with a friend!