December 2011 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Summery New Year Wishes

Well, it’s that time of year again…that feeling of endings and beginnings and my own personal need to do some serious downsizing. My policy is usually “new stuff in, old stuff out” which means that if I return from a trip with something new, something has to go. The new policy is “old stuff out, out, OUT”. Wow, how liberating. I have space again! And the spaces are not, repeat NOT to be filled again…ever.

I uncovered some long forgotten stuff in the recesses of the closet like this Guatemalan sampler that I made not long after I returned from my trip there. At the time I could hardly stand looking at it. It was way over-the-top too colorful for me but the purpose had been to practice my newly learned supplementary weft patterning techniques and use the thread I had purchased from my teachers.

Now I kind of like it. After looking at the red, white and black of my current projects for so long, this is so joyful, and refreshing…very summery, as I sit here in temperatures up in the high nineties and fan myself with a condor feather. (I should explain that I used to live near a condor nesting site when I lived in southern Chile and I picked up a feather or two from the base of the cliffs…something else that I have uncovered in the downsizing spree). I am without air conditioning at the moment…long story.

Here are some more detailed shots of the supplementary weft patterns….

The uppermost pattern technique in the next shot, above the birds, is soumak, something which I really want to explore more.

All the figures, the birds, the ladies and the plants are worked on a warp-faced ground weave. Two sheds are programmed on pattern sticks under which the supplementary wefts are passed to form the motifs. This means that threads do not have to be picked or dropped each time the wefts are wrapped around warps or simply laid in to form the designs. You can see the warps that are raised in each of the two patterning sheds in the speckled brick-like design that is woven immediately above and below each row of figures.

There is a tutorial here on my blog in which I show how to set up the patterning sticks and then use them to create these kinds of motifs.

The three rows of “X” design are temporarily programmed on two additional pattern sticks which are then removed so that the other motifs can be woven.

So, back to the present and my current project…the chamanto inspired wall hanging.

My piece won’t look anything like the gorgeous Chilean ponchos, not even a miniature version of one.

I have just taken the idea of the big, bold solid motifs that speak of the rich, green, temperate central Chilean valleys and vineyards.

I was lucky this week to find the official APEC site which invites one to download a high resolution image of all the leaders attending the 2004 conference in their beautiful ponchos. This has enabled me to cut to just the chamantos and get quite a nice view of the pattern layouts and color combinations. It’s like my mind was read! Just last week I was saying how I would love to see all the ponchos at the APEC meeting up close.

So let’s enjoy looking at some of those…

Here is the piece I am working on…

This is to be one of a series of wall hangings all in the same color combination but I have a feeling that this one will be the sampler as I have had thoughts about the layout and size since starting it and would like to change quite a few things….or maybe not! I hope to weave a patterned band and sew it to the four edges so that the construction resembles that of the Chilean poncho.

As for the nylon string heddles that I mentioned last week…I made them, used them and hated them….took them off and made cotton ones…what can I say?

In the meantime, I uncovered something else in my downsizing frenzy…

This lovely tapestry hanger was given to me by its maker at Convergence last year and it will give me a very nice way to hang my Starry Night piece once I have that completely finished…I am still pondering that fringe. The hanger works by clamping the top edge of the woven piece between two pieces of wood. Justin Adams makes them in various lengths in his home in New Mexico. He doesn’t have a website that I know of and you can contact me for his phone number if you would like to know more about his work.

The hanger is posed on a Navajo-style weaving that I did many many years ago dyeing and using up as best I could all my left over odds and ends of Navajo wool. There’s that red again. I started it with a twill saddle blanket weave until I realized I didn’t have enough yarn in the three colors to complete it. So, I wove the top and bottom in the saddle blanket structure and filled in the center in plain weave.

What else have I been up to?

Well I am still messing about with weaving nice curved figures in warp-faced double weave but don’t have anything worth showing design-wise this week. However, I have a nice tip to give you for how to get really nice edges in this double weave technique.

In the picture below you will see one of my double weave mug rugs made with a 12wpi cotton. The edges are pretty good but you can see how the weft is exposed on the sides as it travels from the upper layer to the lower layer of the double weave. I have inserted a toothpick under a couple of the wefts to make this clearer. This is very exaggerated with this heavy yarn.

While this doesn’t look bad and the edges are still neat, I have found that when working with finer yarn, the edge warps tend to want to “roll off” the edge along with the weft as it travels the distance from the upper to lower layer and this can give the edge a bumpy look. My weaving teachers here did not show me any other way to do this and it was frustrating looking at other double woven pieces from here and seeing beautifully even and rounded edges and not knowing how they had been created. In the end I had to cut and pull apart a belt I have.

double weave edges — The Bolivian double weave belts above left have smooth two-color rounded edges. My camera strap, on the other hand, has slightly bumpy edges as some of the edge warps are pulled out of alignment by the weft as it turns down to weave the lower layer.

So, here is what I believe is the secret: If you have read or worked your way through my double weave tutorial you will know that both borders and pattern area are warped with doubled threads.

If you start and finish your warping with two revolutions of single threads in your border color, you will create a rounded edge and the gap between upper and lower layers will be beautifully bridged. (Two revolutions give a more rounded edge, one revolution also works well and gives a flatter edge with a little bit of exposed weft but it’s enough to keep the edge warps in check. The method you choose will depend on the appearance you prefer).

Pictures next week! I am working on samples now so that I can show you how these two options look next week and will add all this new information to the tutorial page.

So, enough of my experiments. What have the Ravelry weavers been up to this week? I have a couple of things to show. All of you who are currently in the throes of winter will appreciate these…

Heidai has been making scarves using the set-up known as grindvev in her native Norwegian. There she has a wooden rigid heddle on her backstrap loom and there is even an extra wooden piece that serves to raise certain warps according to the structure she has chosen to weave. What a neat little collection of pieces!

So, we have agreed to add “weave a scarf using a rigid heddle on your backstrap loom” as part of the new year’s weave-along activity. We don’t have an official start date yet which will gives us time to put some thought into the ikat and other project proposals we have been discussing. I could probably do with a scarf or two if I am to make more fall visits to the US.

Down in the summery southern hemisphere, Luchita in Argentina showed us the gorgeous pillow cover she made by sewing together three bands she had woven with Mapuche inspired patterns using supplementary warps. I love this!

I can’t think of a better way to finish this post…as it started…with uplifting, vibrant, exciting colors inspiring strong positive thoughts and wishes for you all for the coming new year. Happy New Year to you all and thank you for all your support!

Backstrap Weaving – Two Faces to Every Story

One of the most exciting things for me about finishing a pebble weave piece is looking at the other side. Sure, I do take a peek at it when I first start the piece but I try not to do so again until I have the finished fabric off the loom. Nine times out of ten, I am astonished that I like the other side better but I think that just comes from having gotten so used to seeing the “right” side.

So here is the Starry Night piece off the loom so you can see both faces…

Which side do you like better?

I decided to finish it with some very simple twining rather than twine a motif as originally planned as I felt it would look too cluttered.

I am still deciding on whether to edge it with tubular bands and I am not sure what to do with the fringe.

I do like the look of a full fringe and, as it will be a wall hanging, it shouldn’t cause problems but then, I like braids too.

Maybe I should let it sit for a while and see what it says to me!
I have spent most of the time after taking this off the loom charting and sampling motifs for the next chamanto-inspired piece.

I have been looking at examples online and trying to figure out scale in my charting.

As I have mentioned in other blog posts, chamantos are ponchos woven in one particular region of Chile which have come to be part of the national costume of the huaso, the Chilean cowboy.

One description I read online says that it a “summary” of indigenous and Spanish textile influences. I also discovered when researching these some time ago that they are also worn occasionally by Texan cowboys. Take a look here. 😉

That was at an APEC conference in 2004. Imagine all those participants each with their uniquely patterned poncho. How I would love to see each and every one up close. I have seen a few of the motifs repeated from one chamanto to the next. There are certain flower and leaf designs that turn up quite a lot but each weaver creates her own unique piece in her choice of colors and layout.

I hope to use my adaptation of one of the grape leaf patterns in my next wall hanging and so I have been charting and weaving, correcting, charting and weaving and using two of my handy sampling tools…my black Sharpie and white correction pen.

With these I can make adjustments on the cloth before changing my chart and trying again.

I know that the Chilean weavers use much finer thread than I do as I am not able to get as much detail as they do in motifs of the same size.

I also know about the thread they use as I got to see one of the ponchos, which was woven without pick-up patterns, at the exhibit of Chilean crafts in Washington DC recently.

The striped warp-faced ponchos are called mantas.

So, that is my next project. I have made my calculations…my goodness, what a job that was. My head just wasn’t functioning well the day I got the calculator out and I made a fine mess of it but fortunately caught all the blunders before I got the warp off the stakes.

Prepare for another onslaught of red, white and black…

I warped my piece in three sections. Here is the first one completed and about to be taken off the warping stakes.

Above you can see the first section placed on the loom bar and wire that I use in place of a header cord. And then you can see the three sections on the floor on the loom. What I do next is transfer the cross on all three sections to one long pair of cross sticks and lash the wire to a loom bar.

And now I am ready for heddle making. While tidying up the other day I came across this ball of very fine nylon that weaver Deb McClintock gave me a long time ago when I met her at the MD Sheep and Wool Festival. From what I remember, she brought this from Laos and gave it to me as I was interested at the time in having a bamboo reed made and this is the thread that the reed makers in Laos use to space the bamboo slivers.

Well, I didn’t get the reed made as I managed to buy two beauties and so I am thinking of trying this as heddle string. You might already know that I hate nylon for heddle string although all my Guatemalan weaving teachers use it happily. It’s just that I haven’t tried any as fine as this and would like to see how it goes. I hope it works as there are a heck of a lot of heddles to make!

So, there I was planning and planning, but, you know what?…a bit of spontaneity is good too! And that is what hit us thanks to Tracy in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group last weekend following my blog post with the tutorial for warping the traditional Bedouin al’ouerjan patterns.

Tracy suggested a warp-along for the weekend and a few people jumped in with enthusiasm while others watched-along and cheered. Some people chose to use the seven-square warp above right for which I gave instructions in the tutorial while others warped wide pieces with several strips of al’ouerjan patterns in different widths.

Some used their handspun wool, Tracy used handspun wool that she bought in the Souk in Doha, while others used crochet or perle cotton. We had both traditional and non-traditional color combinations, Some didn’t quite get it straight away but soldiered on and were able to declare success by the end of the weekend. It was fun.

Janet used her handspun. I love the way the grey looks against the red and white. Renate Petra chose the three-square warp and wove what I call the triangle design. She admits that the design would show better if she had chosen colors with higher contrast but the design is there and she has done a great job.

Above left is Tracy’s piece made from handspun wool she bought in the market and on the right is another piece she warped using perle cotton that she happened upon. What a contrast! Tracy has difficulty tracking down suitable yarn in Doha and so is constantly coming up with these surprise finds.

Jennifer really went to town warping up three projects, the first with three strips of al’ouerjan pattern, and partly weaving two of the warps.

I think Traudi was the last to jump in but she finished her band and even did some weft twining along the ends.

And then Tracy added some twining to the mix….

Maybe some day we will be making things like these….

Look at the beautiful al’ouerjan patterns in this chair seat fabric.

Ansam518 has allowed me to show these pictures from her blog post about a visit to an Open House event at the Beit Al Sadu, home of the Al Sadu Weaving Cooperative Society in Kuwait. Their Honorary President says that “We aim to promote and to celebrate Kuwait’s cultural and textile heritage. To tell the story of the land. To speak the languages of the arts … of the soul … ”

It was Alaa from the Ravelry group, who has been to visit this place, who gave us the link to another blogger’s repost of this report which led me to Ansam518’s original post which is packed with pictures. She shows us images from the gorgeous building itself which houses the cooperative to the displays of textiles, dye sources, books and crafts. Take a look at the stunning meeting room. I think I need to toss out all my furniture and put cushions on the floor (well, I pretty much live down on the floor as it is anyway!)

It looks like there will be more black, red and white on the horizon. Jennifer has just showed us her loaded spindles with yarn waiting to be warped for her next project (once she gets her three warp-along pieces done, I suppose).

You may remember my showing you how one of the features of the warp substitution technique, by which the al’ouerjan patterns are created, is the creation of long warp floats on the back of the textile.

We may find them bothersome but obviously the Bedouin people don’t.

You may also remember that Tracy showed us an Omani textile, which was made for sale in a textile cooperative, on which the weaver had used a clever way to secure the floats.

Having seen all this, Phil from the Ravelry group posted a picture of a textile that was collected on a trip to Indonesia. This textile forms part of the greater collection of his and the late Dennis Penley’s now owned by C.Philip Willett.

You can see the front and back of a warp-faced textile patterned with supplementary warp floats. Now, I would have been there forever scratching my head trying to figure out how they managed those color changes if I had only seen the front of the textile. At first, I thought I was looking at supplementary weft floats as the image had been posted side on which didn’t make the color changes difficult to understand.

There are two faces to every story, right?

And then Janet took a look at both front and back, figured out that the picture should be turned around, and that we were looking at warp floats which were all woven in off-white and then colored orange and blue after the weaving was completed. The long floats on the back are secured by a red weft in much the same way, I would imagine, as the Omani weavers in the cooperative are securing the floats on their pieces. Of course Phil already knew all this and was teasing us by not telling!

Dyeing the warps after the weaving? This had never occurred to me. At first I was rather disillusioned by what I perceived as “cheating”. But, then again, all sorts of embellishment can be added to a piece of fabric once it is off the loom…embroidery, stamping, beadwork, painting, resist dye patterns to name just a few so why is this any different?

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To finish, here are a few odds and ends…pictures from the groups and my other online weaving acquaintances, interesting links etc…

Tracy and Pam shared pictures of their backstrap weaving set ups.

It is always helpful to show these kinds of pictures to give people ideas of what they can do in their homes.

Tracy gets down on the floor while Pam sits up on her sofa. She sits cross-legged (jealous!).

Tracy made some adjustments by adding an extension to her far loom bar as she said that she was tired of banging her head on the table as she neared the end of her warp.

Pam was fed up with the card table always toppling over and so has wood pieces wedged between it and the sofa.

And here is super flexible Karla weaving in Chinchero where she was working as a volunteer for the CTTC.

She looks perfectly at home there, doesn’t she?

Some finished projects…

Another super guitar strap by Annie MacHale. Pam made a bunch of keyfobs from a pebble weave band she wove using four-shafts on her table loom. I like the hardware. Those tabs just clamp onto the ends and the rings are added…one little bit less sewing to do and less band used up in what would normally be fed through the ring and sewn down.

Ben has not only been braiding but has been making entire Peruvian-style slings. Here is one of his latest ones….

It looks to me like the Margarita braid but don’t take my word on it…there are so many variations to these braids and I would hate to give you the wrong information. I will have to ask Ben about that.

Some great links!….

This one comes to you via Kaz Madigan who writes the curiousweaver blog.

This link is for a free download of David K Barker’s 2nd Volume of Textile Designs of Bhutan. I have the first volume which I don’t think exists as a download but which can still be purchased as a hard copy.

The file is 73MB and even I with my erratic internet connection was able to get it quite quickly and with no interruptions…lucky!

And on the subject of Bhutan, this is a link to a blog which I recently found and which I think is sure to develop into an incredible textile resource. I have been trying to contact the author, Wendy Garrity, but I guess that she is out of internet contact and can only get online now and then to add to and update her information. I would love to talk with her and know more about her life.
And finally, a little information about my book, Andean Pebble Weave.

The download is available as usual from Patternfish.com with the version in German here.

And then there is the follow up book that I am working on!

So, I will leave you now with all the very best wishes for the holidays with this Mexican weaving showing a nativity scene (courtesy of Karen Elwell aka Teyacapan.) It is blue indigo-dyed cotton with silk figures and is from the coastal Mixtec community of Pinotepa de Don Luis, Oaxaca

Backstrap Weaving – “Al Sadu” and Warping a Bedouin Pattern

I would like to share something that Alaa wrote in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group this evening quoting from the book published in Kuwait Al Sadu: The Techniques of Bedouin Weaving.

“The word Al Sadu in Ibn son of Mandhurs’ Lissan* Al Arab* The Tongue Language of the Arabone of the earliest known encyclopedia dictionaries of the 13 C denotes the extension of the hand towards an object, as when camels move forward with their forelegs. The word Sadu equally implies the movement of the head as in the way camels and horses move their heads thrust forward. Earlier, Al Jawhari (d. 398 Hijri) in his book Al Sahah also means the long and gentle stride of the camels. Al Sadu is the term used for warping and means what is extended.

In its widest linguistic meaning Al Sadu means: to extend or to stretch and spread, and, as used by Bedouin of Kuwait it means the process of wool weaving, the actual woven objects as well as the loom itself. Thus, it is an old Arabic term that evokes images and meanings derived from the desert environment and the Bedouin traditions.”

Extending, stretching and spreading…fitting words to have in mind when one thinks about the process of warping or even to apply to this idea of the Worldwide Weaving Web that I often refer to…which allows designs and textile techniques from people thousands of miles away in a dry sandy desert to enter the home of someone in humid jungly lowland Bolivia.

I read so many comments in the online weaving groups about the “joys and traumas” of warping. I don’t think I will ever think of it in quite the same way after that lovely description of the meaning of Al Sadu….that graceful extension of head and limb and thread….beautiful!

Some people love warping and see it as relaxing, some detest it, while others fear it. And then there’s the old “back-to-front” versus “front-to-back” debate…that’s floor loom talk…I have little idea of what all that means but I do know that there usually isn’t just one right way to do things.

I love learning about the way warps are created for the simple looms I see in use here in South America and around the world, whether they be for backstrap weaving, or for the horizontal, vertical loom or leaning loom.

Sometimes all it takes is a toe and a forefinger…two points around which the threads can turn and measure out the length of the warp with a simple cross between.

For certain woven structures a startling amount of stakes are required so that the weaver can carefully place all the threads in their correct positions before the warp is transferred to the loom. Of course it also depends on whether the weaver is creating a circular, dovetailed, discontinuous or single-plane warp.

For those not familiar with circular warps, think of the inkle loom. You can see above left the very short sample warp I wound on my inklette and removed for this picture. When the band on the inkle loom has been woven, it is cut and opened up to its full length. Above right you see the same circular warp next to a warp that was created in a single plane for my backstrap loom. The finished inkle band will open out to be longer than the other one. Both kinds of warp are commonly used for backstrap weaving. A circular warp provides a practical way for long pieces to be woven on a backstrap or other loom without needing a large space in which to work.

Warping for a large single-plane warp-faced piece may require two very long stakes between which the weaver walks carrying the thread. The weaver who was creating this warp in Chinchero was working alone. I have been told that often two weavers will sit, one at at each stake, and roll the ball of yarn to each other.

A belt with a complementary-warp pattern might need four stakes for its warp with the weaver sitting and carrying the threads at full stretch…

Some weavers, like my Montagnard teachers in the US, have a permanent warping set-up that stands on its own which they can pick up and transport from place to place. Below, Ju Nie is teaching other Montagnard ladies to make a circular warp in a community center. (picture by Andrew Young)

Her process will create the circular warp that you can see here…

The warp end nearest the weaver must be clamped or stabilized, as you can see, so that it won’t slide around the loom bar as the weaver beats.

I love the improvised warping set-ups…

Indoors at a gathering of weavers in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Chinchero weavers used table legs around which to warp practice bands.

The same table was even used by a Guarani weaver to demonstrate the dovetailed warp that she uses on her vertical loom. The dovetail warp occupies one end of the table while an Aymara weaver from Chile winds her single-plane warp on the other.

Often warping can involve more than one person. Above, Hilda and I in Potosi Bolivia, are warping the horizontal loom for warp-faced double weave embedded in plain weave. She is about to roll the ball of yarn to me so that I can turn it around the loom bar before rolling it back to her.

Mapuche weaver Marta and I warped together at the recent exhibit in DC which meant I couldn’t get a video of the process but warping with her rather than filming was much more fun!

Beth from Beer Sheva in Israel gave us a link to a wonderful set of videos on Bedouin weavers in Lakiya village in Israel. One of the videos shows how it takes three people and a lot of walking to warp their long horizontal looms for the making of warp-faced carpets.

You may remember the next video that I posted some time ago of the poncho weaver from Paraguay warping her tremendously long single-plane backstrap warp, carrying the thread up and down on her own for three hours.

I love watching that weaver at work!

Which all brings me to the warping tutorial I promised this week for the Bedouin al’ouerjan patterns which are woven with the warp substitution technique.

Tracy in Qatar and Helena in Brazil have been playing with these patterns as well as a couple of other members in the Ravelry backstrap group. You can see Tracy and Helena’s work above. We have all fallen in love with these patterns.

We had fun playing with one of the many versions of this pattern when I wove with friends in California. We combined the technique with weft twining.

And look at Tracy’s latest project!!

You will find the tutorial on warping the al’ouerjan patterns here. The weaving technique (warp substitution), which you will need to learn first, is detailed in a tutorial here. A tip for securing the warp floats that are typically created on the backs of pieces woven in this technique is within this blog post.

And, thanks to Alaa in Jordan and several other people who pointed out to me the Interweave newsletter this week that included a link to a video on Bedouin weaving on the UNESCO site which is definitely worth watching. UNESCO were kind enough to give me the embed code but WordPress doesn’t like it! So, here’s the link. I just love how the loom is perched over mounds of desert sand. Nothing could be further removed from this moist jungly place in which I live.

Earlier I mentioned a link that Beth in Israel provided which leads to a page with several videos on the Bedouin weavers of the Lakiya Negev Weaving Project.

The one on finishing techniques is very nice. And here’s the link to the page with all eight videos.

I have a feeling we will be seeing many more projects inspired by Bedouin textiles in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving group…a lot of black, red and white which also happens to be the color scheme of my latest pebble weave project. It is coming along…

Here it is all rolled up and reaching the end. It will be a wall hanging so it doesn’t need to be any specific length but I would like to weave as much as I can on it. I will change those thick cross sticks for thin ones and replace the end loom bar with piano wire and then lash that to the loom bar. That will give me more working space. I am still thinking about twining a design into the end.

In the meantime I am itching to warp up the next wide piece in these same colors…another wall hanging inspired by the Chilean chamantos.

And more things come into my inbox to inspire future pieces in this color scheme…

Roman K sent me this image of this beautiful man’s wool sash that he owns which is from western Podilia which Wikipedia tells me is in south-western Ukraine.

This sash has been woven in the simple two-color warp float technique but we are not sure as yet what kind of loom was used. Roman is a great resource for information on traditional folk clothing and embroidery. My online friend Sharon first sent me a link to his post on Central Asian embroideries and, while looking around his extensive website, it occurred to me that he may know something about the origin of the complementary warp weaving technique on some of the Russian Old Believer belts that I have been studying.

He has sent me pictures of other gorgeous sashes and belts which I will save for another post.

I know that my weaving friend Annie will be eyeing that sash. She is building a nice collection of sashes from around the world which I got to admire when I stayed with her this last fall. On top of that she weaves guitar straps and sashes of her own design on her inkle looms…emphasis on the plural…I think she has about seven inkle looms and is forever creating new and unique patterns.

It really seemed to me that her creative process was completely natural and effortless. There was no charting and not a calculator in sight. She just seems to pick up this color and that, move her skeins and balls of yarn around and then come up with something fabulous.

I think it is a wonderful opportunity to add a splash of color to the end of this blog post by showing you some of the guitar straps that Annie, aka AspinnerWeaver, creates and sells in her Etsy store.

These are done in plain weave with all the patterning created in the warping, letting the colors do the talking.

She has taken the supplementary warp technique and really run far with it working it into her own unique patterns.

Color!! She has made minimal but very effective use of the simple warp floats technique in these next two straps and turned out two gorgeous designs.

Mental note: never fear the half revolution on the warping board…a lot of these clever warp designs that Annie has created require half revolutions when winding a single-plane warp which is something I usually just don’t bother with to avoid having knots at my starting end (not a problem with circular warps)but, then again, not really a problem with single-plane warps either especially if you plan on starting with a fringe.

More plain-weave beauties…

And one last supplementary warp color burst and a two-color warp float strap that is one of my favorites.

Have this got you all keen to warp up something on for your inkle or backstrap looms? If you are in need of even more inspiration check out Annie’s Flickr guitar strap album.

I was asked recently to make a guitar strap for a friend. I chose to make it in my favorite pick-up technique…you guessed it, pebble weave. I added in a couple of extra heddles which made it quite fast to weave.

I happened to mention to Annie that I had to make a guitar strap and the fact that I would need to buy the hardware to finish it. In the mail arrived a package from her with all the pieces necessary to complete my project. What I didn’t realize at the time is that she actually cut the leather pieces and put it all together herself. Better still, she is selling this now here so you can weave your own guitar strap and have everything you need to finish it off beautifully.

I definitely owe my boyfriend a new guitar strap. The pebble weave one I made him is constantly being confiscated and taken with me on the road to show friends.

There has been some buzz in the inkle and backstrap groups about Anne Dixon’s book which is due out next summer I believe.

I am happy that I will get to meet her at the Braids 2012 conference in Manchester next August….400 warp-faced weaves. Imagine!

It seems so far away now but time is bound to fly. And what about Convergence and Maryland Sheep and Wool? Are you planning to go? I hope I will meet some of you at at least one of these events.

Well, back to my red, black and white pebbly Starry Night piece and hopefully I will have the start of piece number two in this series to show you next week.

Backstrap Weaving – To Float or not to Float

An inkle loom? I bet you didn’t expect to see that here! I have been playing with my Ashford inklette this week…but more about that later!

I have this star motif memorized now! You would think so after having woven seventeen of them and then another seventeen of the mirrored version.

I am really enjoying weaving this wide piece.

I love using the big swords and hearing the clacking sound they make as I insert one to hold the picked-up warps while withdrawing the other. I like the feel of the chunky polished wood and I like the look of all those string heddles neatly lined up across the warp.

The wideness of the warp which is very close to my body width makes me feel even more that I am part of the loom itself and I like that the opening of the sheds feels more natural now and less of a workout.

I guess that I am just over halfway now…at least with the weaving part. I am thinking of finishing it with weft twining and trying to work a similar star pattern into the twining. And then I wouldn’t mind adding a tubular woven band to the edges.

So, this may not be truly finished for some time.

In any case, I am already charting my design for the next piece in this wide red, black and white set and am taking inspiration from the chamantos which are ponchos worn by the huasos of central Chile.

An online friend who lives in Chile has allowed me to use the picture she took of a chamantera at work at her loom.

I am excited about this next project as I have not woven designs like these before and can’t wait to see how they turn out. Of course there will be a good deal of sampling beforehand.

And I can’t help but think ahead to the next pieces after that!

We will be starting a new weave-along in the Ravelry group in January. One of the themes that I have suggested so far is ikat so I will try to incorporate some of that in one of the pieces in this set.

Again, much sampling will be done before I try ikat in one of these large pieces. I have only done three or four ikat experiments so far so, naturally, there is still A LOT to be learned .

I guess I have been a fan of this bold color scheme for some time. Here’s another pebble piece I made some time ago with these colors.

It certainly keeps appearing in my life…the Montagnard weavers use a lot of black which beautifully sets off the red and white twined designs that adorn the edges of their pieces.

Many of the Bedouin pieces I have seen online and in books make a lot of use of these three colors. My online friend Tracy, who lives in Doha Qatar, is constantly sharing pictures of Bedouin textiles she sees with us on Ravelry . The ones below, which Tracy photographed, are from Oman, (on the left) and Syria.

I remember back in 1993 or 1994 when I first went to live in Chile, before I could learn Navajo weaving or make my first trip to Peru, I knocked together a wooden frame, hammered in some nails and made some small tapestries using a cardboard rigid heddle, (it wasn’t very rigid!) cotton warp and acrylic weft yarn.

I had no resources at the time and all I knew was that I wanted to weave something “ethnic” and so the cover of the Split Enz CD with its Maori designs was my inspiration!

I made a small tapestry pillow cover using the motifs. I so wish I still had those early weavings. Many things got left behind when I moved up to Bolivia.

Only last month I was in the library of the Textile Museum in DC and found a book with charts of a lot of twined Maori pieces including ones with very similar designs to those on that old CD cover. I expect I will be making something with those one of these days.

There are a lot of curves in those Maori motifs and that is one thing I learned from twining letters…it is not too difficult to make figures with curves.

That’s another reason to love the warp substitution technique whether it be the single layer or the double-weave version…with enough threads to work with, you can produce all kinds of shapes.

I have been sampling for a future double-weave project and trying to get the scale sorted out for the #10 crochet cotton that I want to use. For example, I have been trying to figure the ratio of warps to weft shots to make a square, sampling to see how the thickness of a two-warp vertical line compares to that of a single weft-shot horizontal line among other considerations.

Again…I am just loving the backstrap loom and the way it enables me to make small samples.

At left you can see the Abba Yohanni motif that I wove some time ago. The original card-woven motif on the curtain in the cave church in Ethiopia is pretty much square whereas you can see that mine is elongated.

Can you tell that I didn’t sample before I wove this motif into the wall hanging?

The solution was pretty easy after all. All that was needed was to weave only one row for the horizontal lines instead of two and that was enough to change it into a more square-ish figure.

Below is the improved Abba Yohanni motif now looking more like it should. The diamonds in the four corners are my own invention.

Figures that comprise pure horizontals and verticals are fairly easy to chart and I have been finding other interesting knot-like designs with these features online.

It’s the curves that are troublesome!…trying to get the horizontals and verticals to behave in such a way that they give the illusion of a curve. Even getting the right angle for diagonals can be challenging. It seems that the vast majority of Celtic knot designs in my books include these pesky curves.

Fortunately I really like messing around with these kinds of things.

I went through all this when I did tapestry weaving in Chile and was trying to figure out how to make just the right angles for diagonals so that I could weave the design on a Mexican piece that I had seen in Joanne Hall’s book.

The resulting piece is at left. I would have used red for the background, to have my favored red, black and white combo, except that my Wild and Woolly yarn order to Chile somehow got messed up and that pinky color arrived instead of the Ganado Red that I had wanted.

So, I have been sampling…only one sample done so far and still a long way to go to get the desired result but I expect I have learned enough from this to get it pretty close to right next time.

Yes, I love double weave…those clean crisp designs on the solid color backgrounds on both faces. It is, after all, just two layers of plain warp-faced weaving with substituted warps. It is easy to chart and I find it one of the easiest patterning techniques to “read” as I weave.

I have had a lot of fun using it for African and South American inspired motifs….

…as well as designs from Mexico (again from Joanne Hall’s book).

Supplementary weft inlay motifs like the ones from Bhutan on the bag I made above right can be easily woven in double weave. They conveniently use exactly the same charting system (although the reverse is not always true, that is, not all double weave designs will translate well into inlay as the floats in the inlay technique need to be kept short).

I have been able to take elements of motifs woven in other techniques like the simple warp float patterns I wove on the placemats above and weave them into matching mug rugs in double weave.

Cell phone pouches are nice double weave projects. The designs on the one on the right, which are based on Guarani motifs, are quite curvy.

Here are a couple of projects made by my online weaving friends Traudi and Sharon.

Traudi charted and wove the designs on her green and yellow mug rugs. Sharon created a series of butterfly motifs for double weave projects. This is just one of four that she showed me.

And how did Traudi reach this point? She started off with the warp substitution technique. Below you can see a band that she made using the Bedouin shajarah motifs charted here as well as the Bolivian flowers charted on the double weave page. She also created designs of her own.

I think that the word “double” in double weave for some people may immediately bring forth ideas of something complex and difficult. In warp-faced weaving, it isn’t!

You are basically doing plain weave with two sheds as you would normally, except that you are using doubled threads, one in each of two colors.

To create patterns, you simply drop one of the two threads…the color that you don’t want to have appear in your pattern. The solid color borders will also be warped with doubled threads as shown above.

You only need to drop warps to create the shed for the upper layer. After doing a special maneuver, the pattern shed for the lower layer forms automatically. Only one weft is needed to weave first the upper layer and then the lower.

This technique’s “little brother” is the simple warp substitution technique which Traudi used to weave her band. The same kind of warp is used except that the solid color borders are not warped with doubled threads.

As in double weave, the pattern shed is created by simply dropping the warps that are not needed to form the design. The warps that are dropped simply hang below.

While I recommend the simple warp substitution technique as a good warm-up before moving on to double weave, it is those discarded warps that form long floats on the back of the textile that most people don’t like.

I guess that’s the price you pay to have a smooth “float-less” front face on the band.

You can see at left how long and awkward the floats can be.

If you read my post last week, you will remember that Tracy showed us a beautiful textile from Oman which has been woven with the simple warp substitution technique. I showed it earlier in this post but it is worth seeing again don’t you think?…

Both the bands of patterning on this piece have been woven with the warp substitution technique. The Bedouin call the style of patterning in the center band shajarah and the checked pattern al’ouerjan. You can see some close-up examples that I wove below. The al’ouerjan pattern is a partial warp substitution design in that only the red and white sections are warped as doubled threads. The blacks are all single warps.

My samples would have unsightly floats on the back if Tracy had not shown us the back of the Omani textile which showed how the weavers use a second fine weft to secure the floats. This is the first time that Tracy has seen this in use and she suspects that designers in the cooperative store that sells these weavings are encouraging the weavers to use this second weft to make the textiles more attractive. The technique is not used in traditional Bedouin pieces.

So here is how it is done…very simple!!

I decided to put this on my Ashford inklette, just for something different. Here is the draft…(the split squares show where two threads are wound together as one. The borders are not included).

(I am sure that inkle weavers are familiar with this style of draft. Winding a circular warp on the inkle loom or for a backstrap loom with this pattern is very straightforward. I will create a new page on this blog for next week showing how to wind this for a non-circular, or single-plane warp, for the backstrap loom using both two and four stakes.)

…and I used non traditional colors.

Above you can see the cross. Note that the yellow and blue threads have been warped together as one thread.

Above left you can see one of the sheds opened. From each pair of yellow and blue warps, one warp must be dropped and one kept to form the pattern shed. Then the weft is passed as shown above right.

Then I reopened the original shed and passed a second fine weft (I used some tatting thread which is about sewing thread weight). You can see on the back how this fine thread secures the warp floats. Compare it to the following samples where the floats have not been secured…

And what about the shajarah style of patterning where all the warps are substituted? This is how it would look front and back as the Bedouin traditionally weave it…

And here it is using the system on the Omani co-op textile where the floats have been secured.

While the extra weft serves to secure the floats, it doesn’t really create a pretty second face. However, I think that it makes enough difference to enable you to use this patterning technique and create a very much more practical piece even though you would probably still prefer to have the back hidden from view. So, although you may not want to use it for a guitar strap, you may find it works well for a bag or cell phone pouch. You won’t have to worry about things getting caught on the floats. Bear in mind that the resulting band is fairly thick as you are, after all, using doubled threads.

I hope that I have inspired you to try this technique. (See the tutorials for simple warp substitution and double weave). Give the simple warp substitution a try and maybe you will be tempted to go on to double weave so you can have two pretty float-less faces.

I am in the process of charting more beautiful designs from my friend Pam’s gorgeous rug from Uzbekistan to add to the warp substitution and double weave pages. They will go up soon.

Backstrap Weaving – Bringing Out the Big Sticks

This Montagnard inspired piece was on my loom this time last year

Wow, it’s already December! I have a couple of milestones to note as the year winds down….last week’s post was my 100th and my blog will celebrate its second birthday in a few days.

So, I looked back to this time last year and then again to this time two years ago and noted something in common…I was having the urge to weave something wide. Well, wide for me anyway…maybe not that wide in the world of backstrap weaving.

Funny that I have arrived back from this latest trip with this same urge and a color idea not all that different from the Montagnard inspired piece that I wove last year.

Around this time last year I was arriving home after having learned the weft twining technique practiced by the Jarai and Rhade people of the Vietnamese highlands. I warped for a wide-ish piece to practice their simple warp float technique as well as the weft twining that they use to finish the ends of their textiles.

This time two years ago I was very excited about having received 12″ rigid heddles in a swap and was busy weaving simple balanced plain weave runners and placemats. I was so happy about how easy and fun it was.

Now I have the idea of pushing my weaving width just that little bit further and have warped up for something which is just about half as wide again as that Montagnard piece. Maybe it’s because I have been on the road weaving lots of narrow bands with friends in the US that I have this urge to get my hands into something wide.

So I have had to dig through my bins of tools and pull out the big sticks and I have to say that I am very grateful to Lorraine in California who sent me a loom that she had bought in Guatemala when she traveled there in the 70’s.

I could easily make long loom bars with a trip to the hardware store. In fact, the painters have just left a very long wooden pole upstairs on the terrace. I am patiently waiting to see if they come back to claim it before snapping it up. In the meantime I have Lorraine’s long Guatemalan bars. What I value most of all from the things she sent me are the swords…five beautiful long ones in varying widths as well as the shed rod…a good, thick, yet surprisingly lightweight piece of wood.

See how that large, polished heavy one looks next to my favorite little band sword from Peru!

Without these swords I would not be able to weave as wide I would like. I do have some battens left over from my Navajo weaving days but they would not do the trick as beaters anywhere near as well as these Guatemalan beauties. I would have to have some specially made.

Above you can see the tools on top of the wide warp…an old favorite color scheme. I have decided that I would like to make a series of weavings in these three colors. I have no plan for the finished pieces. They could be sewn onto the storage bags that I have been wanting to make, used as one face of a pillow cover or simply hung on the wall (if I can find space!). For now I am just enjoying the process of winding and preparing all those warps ends and am discovering that opening the two sets of heddles for the pebble weave is quite a work out!

I am weaving a pebble weave pattern using the two-heddle technique that I learned in Peru which I teach in my book Andean Pebble Weave. The design is from a band I saw on the website of tablet weaver Kurt Laitenberger.

Here are some other wide-ish pieces that I have woven this year:

Setting up for a wide piece is the same in many ways as setting up for a narrow band. However, all those warp ends can be scarey! Let me tell you that I am in no way an expert on this and these so-called “wide” pieces I am talking about are nothing compared to some of the widths indigenous backstrap weavers around the world are weaving. Nevertheless I may be able to help you with a tip or two should you be contemplating weaving something beyond a narrow inkle-type band. My main advice would be to:

1.know your yarn, know your width and know your technique.

What I am saying is, don’t go wide with a yarn you have never used or sampled many times.

I know that some people don’t bother with this but I also like to know the width I am aiming for rather than just warp up and see what turns out. So, there is a lot of measuring and calculating that goes on before I start warping. I warped for 14 1/2″ for the pebble weave piece above and calculated how many warp revolutions I would need for the 6 1/2″ pattern area and then drew my chart. Then I calculated how many ends I would need for the solid color parts to make the 14 1/2″ desired width.

I based my calculations on other finished pebble weave projects and my notes.

And, finally, I wouldn’t attempt a wide piece using a pick-up technique that I had just learned or was trying to learn. Leave that for the narrow bands.

My next suggestion…

2. Warp undisturbed and don’t disturb your warp.

Have everything you need for warping close at hand including the loom bars and cross sticks….scissors, rubber bands or tape, lashing string, string for tying off groups of warps for counting etc.. I also had my piece of piano wire on hand as I wanted to create a third selvedge (see the picture at left which shows wire inserted in the warp ends to make a third selvedge) Fortunately I still have one piece of wire that I haven’t cut down to smaller lengths.

Try to warp in one uninterrupted session…turn off the kettle, put the cat out, ignore the phone, forget that cup of coffee!

Now, how to keep all those warp ends in some kind of order?

I warped in three sections. The first solid color section has 184 revolutions (368 ends) of #10 cotton and I warped that as one section, put short cross sticks in and took it off the warping board placing it immediately on the loom bar and piece of wire on the floor next to me. I like to use cross sticks in the warp rather than cord as the sticks help keep the warps spread.

Another way to help keep the warps spread is to wrap yarn around groups of warps as shown in the picture above left. This also helps to keep count. I don’t do this myself as it means stopping frequently in the middle of winding and I like to keep the rhythm going.

Now, once you have wound that beautifully-tensioned warp, do your very best not to disturb it!

When I slide the warp off the warping board I try to keep my hand under the ends so that they are all lying flat and not bunching up. This saves a lot of tugging and rearranging later when the warp is on the loom. Too much tugging will mess up your tension. In the picture above right I show how I would hold a small group of warps when taking it off the warping board. Remember to put safety strings in your warp ends if you are separating colors using the four-stake warping method.

Once the three sections of warp were on the loom bar and piano wire, I replaced the short cross sticks with two long ones and then lashed the piano wire to the second loom bar. I lashed it in four or five places. Once I had the loom set up with the warps under tension, I untied and replaced the lashing strings.

The third tip:

3. Slow and steady…take the time to set up and start well. Check your knots, untwist the warps one by one and settle them on the loom bar or rod, measure. With the right amount of prep, once I have thrown the first few wefts and measured once again, I know that all will be smooth sailing from there on…just pure fun!

Once I was in my backstrap and facing my warp, I measured out regular lashing points…one for the exact half way point (counting the warps to find the center), one to separate the solid color from the pebble section, another to mark the center of the solid color section etc…while measuring, measuring and measuring again. This helps ensure that the warps are not too bunched together in one section or too spread in another.

You know what comes next….Please don’t hate me when I say that I like making continuous string heddles! And there are two sets to be made for the pebble weave method that I learned (well worth it I say for the picking up it saves you). But, wait! Did I tell you that my Guarani weaving teacher uses three sets of heddles when she does pebble weave?

I used two of the long swords to separate the pebble sheds and then sat down for a loooong heddle making session! Not a single mistake…that is VERY unusual.

And, finally, the weaving!!

May I remind you with the following photos that this piece I am weaving is NOT wide in the world of backstrap weaving.

Of course, pieces of all lengths and widths are woven on these simple looms. Above left, a lady in Santa Catarina Palopo in Guatemala is inserting the long sword into the heddle shed of her tremendously wide warp.

In contrast, above right, you can see the tiny sample band my Guarani weaving teacher, Angela, wisely made when she learned a three-color pick-up technique from a visiting Aymara backstrap weaver from Chile. Although Angela weaves on a vertical loom, she wove this piece on a body tensioned set-up with the warp end attached to her waist with cord.

In San Roque, Ecuador, the widest pieces are woven by the men in the household.

Celinda from the northern Chilean highlands is weaving a narrow band while a weaver from Pitumarca in Peru has a stunningly wide discontinuous-warp piece on her loom.

Narrow, wide and somewhere in between…I can only keep trying to push my width comfort zone little by little. I hope that the series of wide pieces I am planning will help me reach another level.

So, if you are contemplating going a little wider than your own comfort zone, don’t forget that there are lots of cool things that can be done with plain weave. You don’t need to do any complicated pick up patterning. I showed many examples of colorful stripes, resist dyed pieces and programmed warp patterning when our Ravelry group participated in a plain weave weave-along.

Do you remember Jennifer’s beautiful pieces?

Never mind if you want to make something wide but still feel nervous about all those warps… you can always join two or more bands together and create something amazing. Do you remember Amber’s tote bag?

I have done a little behind-the-scenes house cleaning and have put the two tutorials on the Guatemalan patterning techniques, used to create the weft patterns at left, on their own separate page so that they now show up in the tutorial list on the side bar.

As these tutorials were originally part of blog posts, there is a bit more chat in them rather than straight out instructions which I hope is not too distracting. You can see the tutorial page here.

And here is a little teaser for next week for those of you who may have tried the warp substitution technique in this tutorial.

Tracy, who lives in Doha, Qatar showed all of us in the Ravelry group a picture of a Bedouin textile a friend of hers had bought in a weaving cooperative in Oman. We all ooohed over the beautful black-and-white shajarah patterns and the familiar al’ouerjan design.

Those of you who have tried these techniques will know that warp substitution is really quite simple. Unfortunately the back of the pieces have really long floats which can be very ugly and impractical. One way to get around that is to weave the designs in double weave.

However, the weavers of the Omani textile had gone another route and have found a way to at least tie down the floats so that the back of the fabric is a lot tidier. This means that you could use the woven pieces for purses or bags without having to worry about lining them or having things get entangled in the floats. Tracy suspects that the cooperative has designers who are encouraging the weavers to employ this technique to make the textiles more attractive to buyers.

Tracy photographed the front and back of the al’ouerjan pattern strip on the large Omani textile. It was first thing in the morning when I saw it and had to sit down and warp up a sample straight away so I could figure out how they had tied down the floats. That’s my sample pictured above…right side on the left and reverse on the right. You can see that it makes quite a difference! The sample starts out with the typical long floats until I figured out what I needed to do to tie them down. So simple really!

So, enough teasing… I will go into that more next week with a more complete tutorial. 🙂