Repairing a tablet woven band

A friend of mine had a tablet woven belt which was partially eaten by her cat, and this band has a lot of meaning for her, so I offered to repair it.  I've done this a few times before, though this is more extreme than some of the others.  However, the pattern was simple, and I was provided with the original material.  Unfortunately, I rushed a bit, and made a few mistakes, so the repair is not as clean as I would have preferred.

I decided to tackle the big chunk out of the side first, as it was the largest, as well as being the most complicated since the threads would need to be rewoven into the band at both sides of the gap.

 First I trimmed the excess threads, so I could see the intact weave.

 Then using a needle, I anchored replacement threads into the band, by running them along the warp, through the weft channel, or a combination of both.  I staggered them so they would not increase the bulk of the band as much.  Once a thread has been run through the weft, it is pressure locked into place and can be trimmed, especially if it is a sticky fiber like wool.

As I placed enough strings, I threaded them onto cards.  On this part, I screwed up when placing the initial threads, because I should have placed half on the front of the band, and half on the back of the band, but I placed all of the threads on the front.  This meant that I had to unpick and draw the original weave into the band, or it would just hang out the back of the band.

The purple dots in the middle of the band are places that I did not pull taut before trimming, so I fixed them by pulling them tight using tweezers, then re-trimming.

I folded the band around a peg, and attached it to itself using pins, then tied the replacement threads to another peg, with the original band secured next to them on the peg.

Once I finished reweaving the damaged part, I used a needle to run the thread ends into the weft channels to anchor them.

I used pins to hold the thread bits from the original weaving where I wanted them, so the replacement strings would pin them in place, since they were not long enough to draw into the weft with a needle.

A little wonky in places, but functional.

The remaining damage.

On this part the damage was minimal, so I just used a needle and thread to replace the broken parts, anchoring my thread ends through the weft to "tie" them off.

The last repair was at the end of the band, and the damage was extensive, but the threads from the replacement weave would not require being drawn back into the band.

I added new threads in the same way that I did before, and threaded them onto cards.

Attached the band to the loom, and added some extra strings to hold up the rest of the band.

I should have added more threads to hold the rest of the band in place, and pulled them tighter, because the thread ends from the original belt obscured that the band was slightly twisted, not flush with the replacement section.  That would have made this a much cleaner repair, and it would not have been as squirrelly to weave.

Repairing a broken warp thread

Broken warp strings happen to everyone, and there are multiple ways to repair them.  This is my preferred method.

In this instance, I broke two threads at the same time.

First, I shift the broken section attached to the weaving into the weft channel, so it can be trimmed later.  Then I remove the other section of string from the warp, but leave it tied, so if needed, it can be used to replace another broken string, if it is long enough.  I add a pin to use as an anchor for the replacement thread.

I tie a new string to the beginning of the warp, then run it around the pegs, and through the empty hole in the card where the broken thread was.  Then I wrap it around the pin to hold it in place.

After a few passes, I remove the pin, and use a needle to run the thread end into the weft channel and out the side, where it can be trimmed off.