July 2016 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – When You are not the Loom

Weaving buddies of mine were recently at the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market and shared pictures and video of all the wonderful people, crafts and textiles they saw.

Marge Sume was in the right place at the right time and shared a small piece of video that she took of a gentleman from Kyrgyzstan weaving a narrow band. It was very interesting to see this as I have woven replicas of patterns of Kygyzstan woven in the terme structure and I wrote a tutorial on the method that I use to create the structure. It is always wonderful to be able to see the methods the weavers themselves use but this is not always possible. And so, 6 years after I wove my first Kyrgyz motif, I now have been able to watch one of the weavers at work via Marge’s video clip. Exciting! It turns out that although my loom is different, the method is similar. The gentleman from Kyrgyzstan uses fewer steps than I do and is more efficient.

You can see the loom on which the weaver is demonstrating and you will see more of it in the video. I, of course, use a backstrap loom for all my weaving.

When I am using a backstrap loom, I feel that I am part of the loom myself. The warp is attached to my body by way of the backstrap. My movements back and forth allow me to relax and increase tension on the warp and operate the loom smoothly and efficiently. I am part of the loom. In fact, on the occasions when I stretch the warp between my hips and my big toe, I am more than just a part of the loom; I am the loom.

My body movements enable me to easily open the shed controlled by the string heddles. A few coordinated moves which involve adjusting the tension on the warp allow me to raise the heddle stick and create a clean shed without having to struggle or scrape the heddles along the warp. All of you who have tried backstrap weaving will know what happens if you repeatedly scrape those heddles…fluff builds up, then pills and warp threads start to stick together making it very difficult to create clean sheds.

Watch two Peruvian weavers operating the heddle shed on their backstrap looms…

So, what happens when you are working with a warp that is under a fixed tension? Your body is not part of the loom and you can’t increase or ease tension at will.

If your loom is strong and fixed in place, you can grab hold of the heddle rod and pull with all your might…

Mariana is pulling the heddle rod with one hand in order to create a shed of all the white warp threads. Her other hand holds back the blue threads that want to stick and come forward with their white partners. The vertical loom is lashed to the floor and ceiling beams of the house and Mariana can put all her strength into pulling on the heddle rod without disturbing the loom.

But, what if the loom is not fixed in place like Mariana’s and, what’s more, is made of very light-weight material?

Marta, a Mapuche weaver of central Chile, is using a warp that is under fixed tension and her leaning vertical loom is very light. If she were to pull on her heddle rod, she would simply pull her loom away from the wall. She uses a different system for raising the warp threads that are controlled by the string heddles.

The heddle stick rests against poles which are placed alongside the leaning posts of the loom frame which means that the warps in the heddles are in a raised position. This means that Marta does not have to pull on the heddle stick in order to raise the warps in the heddle shed. You can see in the following video at the 28-second mark that by pushing down on the warps held on the shed rod, just enough space is created to allow her to get her fingers under the warps in the heddles and lift to fully raise them. (You might want to turn down the volume for this video).

Which brings me to the weaver from Kyrgyzstan. His heddles are in a position that keeps them in what looks like a permanently raised position. You will see that, like Marta, he does not need to touch the heddle stick at all in order to open that shed. He simply strums the warps to bring all the light-colored warps to the upper layer. He props the wide flat piece of board on its side to raise the dark threads. Many thanks to Marge for allowing me to share her video here.

The weaver uses what I call a ”simple” warp-float technique because warp floats are used on only one face of the cloth. It is based on two sheds with dark threads in one shed and all the light threads in the other. Plain weave on such a warp would produce a band of alternating dark and light horizontal bars.

You can see him selecting pairs of light colored warps and then adding them to the dark shed. Then he selects dark-colored pairs of warps and adds them to the light shed.

One of my other weaving buddies, Annie, took pictures of the woven band. The motif is not clear at all in the video but in the pictures I could see that he was weaving an ”S” shaped motif.

I was pretty tickled about that as it just happens to be the motif that I use in my tutorial here on my blog.

The patterns are formed by floating certain pairs of dark threads over light horizontal bars and certain pairs of light threads over dark horizontal bars.

I have woven some of my favorite pieces using this technique and motifs from Kyrgyzstan but I have also seen cloth woven using this structure in tropical lowland Peru, Mexico and the Middle East.

Now, let me show you some things I have been working on lately.

I have been continuing to use the tiny skeins of naturally-dyed silk that I was given.

Since I last posted, I have finished the piece using the blue and green tones and created a fourth piece using browns, tans and golds. I wanted to maintain the ”leaf” theme and wove a pattern of leaves and creeper into the blue and green piece and I invented my own leaf pattern in the Andean Pebble Weave structure for the brown piece.

I have yet to glue and finish the book covers.

I need to buy some nice paper in colors that match the fabric I have woven. I glue this paper on top of the ends of the woven fabric that get turned over to the inside of the covers. You can see an example below on the last collection of covered journals I made.

Here are the three pieces I have made so far. The fabric is just sitting around the books for now until I am ready to glue and finish them.

As for the fourth piece with the brown tones, I first needed to weave a sample as I had to see how the silk would behave and what kind of width it would give me in the Andean Pebble Weave structure. The first three pieces I had a woven with the silk were in plain weave…two simple versions with supplementary-weft patterns and one more complex one in double weave. I also wanted to see how my invented leaf pattern would look in case I needed to make adjustments. What looks good on paper often doesn’t weave up with the same happy results.

I was pleased with my new pattern. The light colored silk is finer than the darker colors and I wasn’t sure if the pattern would show up well enough as a result. It’s quite a narrow pattern and so I decided to weave two columns of it in my project using the browns, tans and golds from my collection of naturally dyed silk. Now I can finish the red sample and sew it into a wrist cuff…another one for the collection.

I have to admit that this new warp looked a little drab after the rich reds, purples and greens with which I had been working. However, once the light Andean Pebble Weave pattern started showing up against the darker tones, the contrast brought the whole thing to life.

As usual, it is hard to decide which side I like better. I had planned to use the darker side on the book cover and that is why I used light colors immediately next to the pebble weave section to provide a nice contrast. The back looks nice in its own way because the thicker dark-colored silk makes the leaves stand out more against the lighter finer silk background.

Here are the four finished pieces waiting to be turned into book covers. I haven’t washed and pressed the brown piece yet.

I still have plenty of silk left! There are lots of the deep rich red tones to play with and I might make something using only the finer of the two kinds of silk. The finer silk took the dye colors in a very different way and there are some very pretty apricot, melon, lavender and peach tones.Perhaps I will make some cuffs.

As for the wee journals, they might become gifts…although, I’ll be keeping the berry-colored one for myself! 🙂

Speaking of natural dye colors, I will finish by showing you just a tiny sampling of the bands I just received from Maxima and the weavers in Cochabamaba…

Backstrap Weaving – Leaves on the Snow

I can’t tell you how much fun I have been having with the tiny natural dye silk samples I was given on my last trip away! As the temperature here fluctuates every few days from the 60s to the 90s, I find myself buried in cool purples, warm golds and soft cheery spring-like greens and blues.

First I would like to show you what is going to become of the ”Leaves Amongst the Berries” piece that I showed in my last post. I am going to make it into a journal cover. I have woven journal covers before where I first found some suitable journals, wove a width sample with my chosen yarn…. and then wove fabric to fit…

This time, I have done things the wrong way round having first woven the cloth and then deciding to use it to cover a little book. I needed to find a journal that was just the right size and I got lucky…

Then, I dove into that lovely heap of naturally dyed silk and picked out some purples and golds for the next project…

The center has purples, rusts and greens mixed with off-white in what I planned to be a section of double weave. I wanted to have multi-colored naturally-dyed silk leaves on a background of solid off-white.

Here it is getting started on the loom. Only the center is double weave and it is flanked by warp-faced plain weave…”embedded double weave”, as I like to call this technique, which requires the use of two weft threads.

Of course, the back shows off-white leaves on a multi-colored background for an entirely different look. I am calling this one ”Leaves on the Snow”.

Now I have to figure out how to use this in a finished item where both faces can be seen. I had initially planned it as a book cover but it seems a shame to have the other face permanently hidden. Hmmm….I should have switched the background and motif color halfway. That would have made an interesting book cover with front and back covers being different. And this is one of the many things I love about writing this blog… ideas come to me as I sit here typing. I’ll weave another one that shows both possible faces!

So, here are both pieces showing off all those luscious natural dyes colors…

On to the next one….this time using greens, blues and golds with a few dark greys tossed in here and there…

This one has been planned for a book cover. I have bought the journal and I want to have a sort of ”leaf and creeper” pattern down the center of the front and back covers…

Between these larger projects, I sewed a wrist cuff from some of the sample fabric I had woven for my conference pouch and edged it with a ñawi awapa. I love it when my samples can also be turned into a finished item.

I made the one on the right some time ago with my hand-spun llama fiber. I dyed the fiber with cochineal and spearmint leaves and used that along with some natural brown. I was wiser this time with the blue cuff as I started and ended the tubular edging in the spot that would be covered by the button. It is pretty hard to finish it neatly.You can see the start and finish on the llama fiber cuff on the lower left-hand side where there is a noticeable bump.

Meanwhile, many of my backstrap weaving buddies have been in Santa Fe at the annual International Folk Art Market and have been sharing pictures and video. Marge Sume has kindly allowed me to use the video she shot of a gentleman from Kyrgzystan weaving a narrow band and I want to put together a post on these simple kinds of looms that have what I call ”raised” string heddles. Mapuche weavers here in South America use a similar system. I was particularly interested in seeing that weaver at work as I have woven several replicas of motifs of Kyrgyzstan. But, that will be for next time!

Other weaving buddies around the word have been sending me pictures and sharing what they have been creating on their looms. You may remember that Adem, in Turkey, was weaving a poncho for his niece as a surprise gift. Here is the fabric in progress on his vertical loom…

And here is the delighted Hazel showing it off! What a fabulous job Adem did.

Anne has been enjoying some summer outdoor weaving of complementary-warp bands on her porch with its spectacular views…

Aśka Kucharz, in Poland, sent me a picture of a double weave piece she created after having followed my tutorial. She used her piece as part of the exam to obtain the title of Master Craftsman in Poland as an external student of the Folk University of Artistic Crafts (ULRA). You can see more of her beautiful work on her blog.

I still have lots of the naturally dyed silk left. I have rolled all the tiny skeins into balls and sorted them into color groups. What a lovely sight they are and I have to thank Sara, Eileen and Diane who were responsible to getting these skeins into my hands. They are giving me a lot of joy.

Let me close by sharing this cute wool promotional video by Woolmark…

Backstrap Weaving – Winter Moods

It has been a couple of weeks since the last post and I started off weaving something in a woolly wintry mood. I guess the colors make it feel wintry to me…the blue and black alongside a greyish snow-like white. This is the piece that I was planning as the ”conference pouch” that I told you about in my last blog post. A few things changed along the way. I decided to weave it with four selvedges. It is a small piece and a nice opportunity to get in some more practice with finishing a weaving with four selvedges. For that reason, I decided not to include the little pocket that I had planned. One challenge at a time is enough for me! I would have my hands full laying in the last few shots of weft on a needle and didn’t need the additional challenge of creating the pocket.

First, I wove a sample to see how the pattern I had chosen would look and to get an idea of how I should lay it out on the real project…

I wove the sample with four selvedges too. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use the sample to give me one of the essential pieces of information as I had neglected to note an important detail…warp length. Normally, warp length is not an important issue to me. I generally wind one of my standard-size warps to try out a new pattern or material and decide when I am finished with the experiment what I would like the piece to be. I weave as far as I feel comfortable and then simply cut the piece off the loom. However, this time I was planning a specific product and had a specific size in mind for it. As I was planning to weave a piece with four selvedges, I needed to know what the take-up would be with the kind of wool I was using. That would tell me how long my warp would need to be to produce the 12cm long pouch that I had in mind. I wanted a ch’uspa-style pouch…one with an open mouth into which I could easily place and remove things without any fiddling about…so, no flap or closure.

Now I know that the amount of take-up is extremely small. It was very surprising information but it came too late. I over compensated for take-up and wound a warp that was too long and so my pouch now has a flap…oh well. A warp of 30.5cm ended up as 29.5cm of woven cloth which reduced to 29cm after washing and pressing.

Here is the project underway. I have started the weaving at both ends so that my piece can have four selvedges.

I wanted the ”terminal area” (the area where I have to stop weaving the pick-up pattern because the space between the two woven ends becomes too small to manage for pick-up), to be where I folded the cloth to form the pouch. This meant I had to do a bit of back-and-forth-ing from one end to the other to make sure the terminal area would be positioned just where I wanted it. I should point out that there was no need for this piece to have four selvedges. I have made cloth for many little bags by simple cutting the fabric off the loom and hemming the raw edge. I simply wanted to make this piece with four selvedges as interesting challenge. I had never attempted it in wool this fine before.

Here you can see the gap between the two ends of weaving getting smaller. I have changed to finer cross sticks and finer swords. I use the cross sticks to help open the heddle shed. I form a separate cross on two swords to do the pick-up. I wanted to keep doing the pick-up pattern for as long as I could. That involved a bit of awkward wrenching around with fingers stuffed into spaces that were too small and, as a result, the weft shots on one side got compressed more than those on the other meaning that the fell dipped at one edge. That made it hard to close the gap at that edge neatly.

The final needle-woven rows are a bit on the wide side. I am, nevertheless, pleased with the result as a first attempt in this fine wool. I wanted a tiny terminal area and I wanted it to sit at the fold in the cloth…

Then came the construction of the pouch with all the fun embellishments…

I edged the bottom of the pouch with coil stitches and added a couple of cute coiled pom poms.

The sides and flap are edged with a patterned tubular band called ñawi awapa.

I wove an Andean Pebble Weave pattern strap choosing a pattern that resembled the ñawi awapa and wove it without having to do pick-up by using 4 sets of string heddles.

The pouch is ready for my next conference…

Next, the lovely pile of naturally-dyed silk samples that I told you about last week was calling to me….

While I thought long and hard about how I wanted to use these small samples, I spent some time sewing my two wool panels together…

Both this and the brown wool blanket stand by while I figure out how I would like to edge them.

As for the silk samples, I gathered up tiny skeins of similar sort of berry colors and wound them into balls. I wanted to create a warp with all the berry colors mixed. I decided not to go with any kind of stripe formula or planning and just wound a bit of this and a bit of that together. It is a random mish-mash of colors and I like it! Not all the silk is of the same weight and so there is yarn of varying girth all thrown in together here…But first…. a sample…of course!

This may not look very wintry to you but it represents a different kind of winter mood to me. I love the way it looked as I sat at the loom with the soft low rays of winter sun falling across it.

I needed to sample to see what kind of width I could expect as well as figure out how many strands of embroidery floss were suitable for the supplementary weft. The sample gave me the ability to know approximately what width I could expect from the main project. It couldn’t be 100% accurate because of the mix of different weights of silk in the large project.

Random colors, random weights of silk and random placement of leaves…this is so not like me! But, I am really happy with it. I have used variegated tencel as supplementary weft to weave motifs on a single-color background in other projects. This project turns that idea around with solid-color motifs on a multi-color background. I like how the leaves change shape when they are placed on the areas of warp that comprise the finer silk warp threads.

Here’s the late afternoon winter sun illuminating the larger project…

I got the initial idea for this project from a piece by Mollie Freeman in which she stamped solid leaf motifs on one of her hand painted warps. I haven’t seen her piece woven yet.

I don’t have a product in mind for this. No doubt the cloth will end up being folded into some kind of pouch. It is a really fun project and I have lots more of the naturally dyed silk samples in other tones to play with. I am wondering how this will wash and hope I don’t lose too much color.

I am getting pretty close to the end here. I hope I can squeeze in a couple more leaves while I think about what I want to do with all those other gorgeous silk natural dye sample skeins.