December 2017 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Starting Small

I am back in Bolivia and as much as I wish I could throw all the lovely silk I bought at the ANWG conference in Canada earlier this year onto my backstrap loom and weave something large and lovely, I realize that I am simply not in the best state to do so. Why?… Jet lag. I’ll say it again….there is something about flying from west to east through all those time zones that makes the jet lag particularly brutal. I have been at home six days now and still struggle to stay awake long enough to be able to finish a meal!

So, I decided it would be wise to start with something small. Better still, I decided to finish off some projects rather than start something new.

I have been thinking about the lovely cloth that my weaving teacher and friends in the central Bolivian highlands make ever since I wrote my last blog post. In that post I told you all about the unsold pieces that Dorinda had taken with her to the USA after having attended the Tinkuy in Cusco. What a response! Many pieces were sold. Dorinda was thrilled and can’t wait to get back to Bolivia to tell the ladies. THANK YOU SO MUCH everyone who bought the long fajas and yoga mat straps. Julia showed all of us in the Ravelry group the three lovely pieces she bought…

Those are all natural dye colors. I hope that everyone who bought pieces will enjoy hanging them on their walls or maybe cutting them up to make bags or pouches. Don’t feel bad about cutting them up. That is exactly what the weavers themselves in the co-op do with these pieces. I know that Julia is thinking about using one of her pieces to sew a case for a charka that she is having built. Julia sews beautifully and constructs gorgeous bags. I have shown the bags and other items that she has made with her backstrap woven cloth on this blog many times and I can’t wait to see what she constructs with this cloth.

My own projects with this cloth tend to be a lot more basic. My sewing skills are very limited. I like to make small pouches similar to the ch’uspas that the ladies use to carry their coca leaves.

This is one of the bands that I had bought from Dorinda to use when I teach tubular bands and sewn embellishments to my weaving friends. I cut it into pieces so that each of my friends could have a piece with which to practice and perhaps later turn into something useful, like a pouch. While holding the beautiful cloth in my hands and breathing in that special aroma of the highlands it is hard to imagine the amount of work that went into its creation.

(The following series of pictures of Maxima and my Bolivian weaving friends are from the PAZA Bolivia blog and were taken by Dorinda Dutcher who works with the ladies.)

From shearing the sheep or purchasing skins and then washing them in the river…

…to preparing the clean fiber and spinning it…

…to gathering plants for dyeing and watching the pots as the skeins of singles take up the rich colors of the countryside… (if you are curious about the intense yellow color in this picture, read the PAZA Bolivia blog post on the ”magical dye pot”)

…to plying and then warping the looms, dressing the warp and eventually weaving…

For a long long time I have been demonstrating decorative stitching on a piece that I had cut from the long band pictured way above. I have created the stitches and then cut them out, created them again and cut them out again as I demonstrated the method over and over to my weaving friends. I decided that it was time to ”retire” this particular piece of cloth, that is, make it into something more than a demonstration piece and allow it to sit in peace on the table as a sample when I am not using it. So, I sewed it into a pouch and decorated it with stitches and bands that are typically used by weavers in Bolivia.

I like using Cascade 220 yarn and KnitPicks Palette as they have colors that very closely resemble the natural dye colors of the Bolivian highlands.

Here’s the finished pouch. I used ”coil stitches” along the bottom, wove and sewed a tubular band along the sides, decorated the top edges with cross-knit looping and wove a pebble weave band for the strap. It is just the right size for carrying my small purse when I travel.

Here’s a closer look at the tubular band with its ñawi pattern and the cross-knit looping. I wove the tubular band and the strap with KnitPicks Palette yarn. It is much finer than the Cascade yarn and the handspun that was used for the pouch itself and makes a a very neat tubular edging. See how perfectly the colors match? I used the Cascade yarn for the coil stitches and the cross knit looping .

And here’s a closer look at the coil stitches. I love those chunky coils!

With that project under my belt, I turned to something else that I could finish off. I really won’t trust myself to the critical task of warping with my 60/2 silk until I feel that my feet are completely back on the ground again…and they are not quite there yet!

However, I did find something silky to get into. It must be a couple of years ago now that I was offered a whole bunch of tiny naturally dyed skeins of silk from a guild member’s estate by friends in Grass Valley. When you are a backstrap weaver, amounts like these are not too small!

What fun I had rolling the skeins into balls while thinking of ways to combine the colors. There was cochineal, logwood, madder, indigo….

I didn’t want to risk wasting any of it and so I chose some colors and first wove a small sample as a width gauge. That sample has since become a wrist cuff. After that, I was free to plan some bigger things combining the reds and berry colors, then the purples and golds, the browns and tans and finally the greens and sandy colors.

First came ”leaves among the berries”using gold-color supplementary weft…

…followed by ”leaves on the snow” in double weave…

I designed a creeper pattern with leaves for the green piece…

…and finished with my own original pebble weave leaf pattern on the browns…

And, the pieces have sat since then waiting to become something.

I had the idea to use them to cover notebooks or journals but what were the chances of finding books of exactly the right dimensions to fit all four pieces?

Well, as luck would have it, I know a gentleman who makes books and who has a whole studio devoted to it in his home. On my first visit to his studio, I hadn’t taken the pieces of fabric but was thrilled when he offered me off-cuts of beautiful pieces of decorated paper that I could use inside the covers of the books. I had to try and imagine which bits of paper would best suit my woven pieces.

A year later, I visited him again and remembered to bring the fabric. He agreed to cut some books specially for my project. By scratching around in the stores here in Bolivia, I had found two suitable books and the project was at a standstill until could find two more. Each of the four pieces of cloth is a different width as I had just thrown together random amounts of the various colors until I liked what I saw.

So, there are my two beautiful custom-made notebooks for my project! We chose paper with a grid of squares so that I could use the books for charting. I intend to fill them!

Then came the time to match the paper with the weavings, something which I hadn’t yet bothered to do. Without all four books ready to go, I had had no interest in the project. I am really pleased with the way the paper and cloth look together. I think I just got lucky and managed to choose well.

Then it was time to get out the glue and construct. I use contact cement. It works well with the fabric and does not penetrate and stain it. It is tricky stuff however, as once those two glued surfaces make contact there is very very little wiggle room for adjustment.

I turn the edge of the fabric to the inside of the cover and glue it in place. It looks pretty rough at this point. Once it is holding there nicely, I apply glue bit by bit to the front cover, the spine, the back cover, and then finally turn the edge to the inside of the back cover. I don’t let the glue completely dry. While it is still wet, and there is still room to maneuver, I wrap the cloth all the way round the book and then open and close the covers to make sure that I have stretched the fabric just the right amount. Then I peel it back, wait for the glue to dry and make the final contact…that’s the point of no return!

Then I cut the paper to fit the inside cover and glue it into place on top of the raw edge of the cloth…

Two down, two to go…

What’s next before I launch into the big project?

I am trying to think of what best to do with the piece of cloth I wove for Marilyn. You might remember this piece in pink and purple I called ”sunrise, sunset” which I wove using Marilyn’s 10/2 perle cotton.

All I am seeing right now is a tool bag but I don’t have the right colors of yarn to decorate it to my liking. Perhaps I should just give the fabric to Marilyn and see what she would like to do with it. Or maybe tomorrow I will wake up with a whole new idea. I’ll let it rest for now.

Oh, and the other thing I have been doing since I got home is charting…lots and lots of charting… for my next book of complementary-warp/pebble weave patterns. I am drawing out the spotted charts and then my friend Sharon will draw up the block charts for me. So, yes, I have been pretty busy and quite productive since I got back.

And, I upgraded my internet. It pays to keep checking with the providers every now and then (which I have neglected to do) as prices drop and I find that I can now afford the faster and more reliable service. No more having the signal cut off every 40 seconds which means I can even use Skype now…yippee! And I have an unlimited Megabyte allowance.

I celebrated by listening to the WeaveZine podcasts, Weavecast, that I have never been able to listen to before. Seeing as the second volume of Rodrick Owens’ book on Peruvian sling braids has just come out, I decided to listen to his podcast first. These podcasts are wonderful things that Syne Mitchell has created for us along with all the marvelous WeaveZine articles that she published.

Another thing I have been able to enjoy with my new internet service, without stops and splutters and various other interruptions, is a new free video on Sprang Braiding that expert Carol James has made available on Taproot Video. In this free video she teaches the basic technique using a method that does not require any kind of loom or frame. It’s awesome!

My friend Tracy, who took a sprang class with Carol earlier this year, made this cool pouch for me. The technique is very versatile. The vest that Carol is wearing above was made with sprang braiding and you should see the gloves, hats and other items she shows in the video…

Julie has been showing pictures of bands she has been making using her MiniWave loom. She is well and truly hooked on the complementary-warp pick-up technique and, after studying the ”picking cross” method in my latest book and weaving some of the patterns there, she is now gobbling up the larger and more complex projects in my second book….This particular pattern is very dear to me. It was the pattern on the very first piece of weaving I bought on my first trip to Peru. It was a mere scrap I found in a street market and all I felt I could afford at the time and I bought it before I had found my first weaving teachers. I puzzled over the pattern for quite some time trying to replicate it before I realized that weavers quite often combine more than one kind of arrangement of floats in a single piece. Julie’s piece is beautiful.

Now she is weaving another great favorite of mine that I like to call the ”Rolling River”. I love this picture with Julie’s two swords nicely holding the picking cross and her pretty pick-up stick, all made by Terri at Magical Moons.

I am hoping to get the big silk project going soon and I think I will be able to show it to you in the next blog post.

I’ll be announcing the ”Cuffs and Bracelets” Weave-along on Ravelry soon. I am hoping to get it started in the first week of January once all the festivities are well and truly over. The idea is to weave several short and narrow projects in plain weave or pick-up that can be made into bracelets by applying ribbon clamps and other jewelry findings. I’ll write more about that in the next blog post.

Christmas will be happening in the meantime. I hope you all have a happy one.

Backstrap Weaving – Mother Nature

Mother Nature! From Wikipedia:

The Virgin Mary/Pachamama taking the form of Cerro Rico, the mountain of silver, in a painting from colonial Potosi.

Pachamama is a goddess revered by the indigenous people of the Andes. She is also known as the earth/time mother. In Inca mythology, Pachamama is a fertility goddess who presides over planting and harvesting, embodies the mountains, and causes earthquakes. She is also an ever-present and independent deity who has her own self-sufficient and creative power to sustain life on this earth. Her shrines are hallowed rocks, or the boles of legendary trees, and her artists envision her as an adult female bearing harvests of potatoes and coca leaves. The four cosmological Quechua principles – Water, Earth, Sun, and Moon – claim Pachamama as their prime origin, and priests sacrifice llamas, cuy (guinea pigs), and elaborate miniature burned garments to her. After the conquest by Spain, which forced conversion to Roman Catholicism, the figure of the Virgin Mary became united with that of the Pachamama for many of the indigenous people. In pre-Hispanic culture, Pachamama is often a cruel goddess eager to collect her sacrifices. As Andes cultures form modern nations, Pachamama remains benevolent, giving, and a local name for Mother Nature.

This trip away (which began for me way back in the last weeks of September!), has had its share of acts of Mother Nature. First, a cluster of hurricane activity threatened, but fortunately did not hinder, my flight into the USA. Then, I arrived in a devastated Santa Rosa, California just a week after fires fed by raging winds had destroyed hundreds of homes and taken lives. I saw the devastation. Solidified pools of molten metal on sidewalks were a shocking revelation of the incredible heat that the fires had generated. All so terribly sad. And now other weaving friends in southern California are on standby as fires rage in Ventura county.

On this side of the world (currently Australia), Mother Nature made her presence felt in the form of an erupting Mount Agung in Bali.

And, this time my plans were indeed disrupted! I was five hours into my flight to Bali. We had already left the Australian coast behind when the Captain made an announcement. I fully expected him to tell us that we would be starting our descent in 20 minutes. Instead, he told us that after months of threatening rumblings, Mt Agung had finally erupted and that our flight had to be diverted to Darwin because of the threat of ash clouds in the vicinity of the airport in Bali.

Reports said that tens of thousands of people from surrounding Balinese villages and settlements had already been evacuated back in September when the volcano first began to show signs of high activity. It was a waiting game and I decided to take a chance. For me it is a blip, a slight detour, in my plans. Here I sit safe and comfortable in Sydney while a reported 30,000 people’s lives in Bali have been dramatically changed.

So close! A picture from the inflight flight tracker….

It was all quite chaotic with a further diversion to Cairns along with passengers from four other flights. However, Mother Nature did provide some awesome distractions on the flight home from Cairns…views of the famous atolls and reefs off the coast of far north Queensland…

And, Sydney harbor always puts on a splendid show as we descend towards Botany Bay and the airport. You can see the bridge and Opera House…

I must give a shout out to Jetstar Airways who were amazing. They kept us safe, got us all home and gave us credit vouchers for our flights… for something that wasn’t even their fault.

Well….back in Sydney, I decided to make the most of my time. I wove and wove during the time that I was meant to be in Bali!

I got to work on my next book of pick-up patterns and I am pleased to say that I have 95% of the patterns woven and ready to be photographed. Then, I will start working on tidying up the charts. Many of the patterns I had in mind are way outside the ”Andean Box” and required a lot of weaving, un-weaving, chart adjustment and re-weaving. After over twenty years of weaving these intriguing structures, I am pleased to say that I am still learning!

I have been granted the use of many wonderful contributions from weaving friends around the world…motifs and shapes that I never thought would be possible to carry off in this structure. My weaving friends out there are awesome! So, it has been an interesting exercise in discovering the possibilities as well as the limitations of this particular structure. And, it has been interesting, challenging and very rewarding being able to find work-arounds for some of the limitations.

I have a lot of my weaving kit with me and it was just a matter of getting some yarn and finding a place to anchor my warp. Some railings in my brother’s home and a nice cushy bit of rug gave me the perfect spot in which to work. I have set up this warp for Andean Pebble Weave with its two additional sets of heddles. Setting up the warp this way is slower but it makes weaving these particular patterns faster as only every other shed needs to be picked up by hand.

Of course, you don’t have to use the two sets of heddles. You could just set up the warp with its two basic sheds…one dark and one light as seen above… and pick up every row by hand. People who work on fixed tension looms, like inkle looms, Wave looms etc might find this method more comfortable. This is the method I teach in my latest book Complementary-warp Pick-up. With this method, you can weave any of the various complementary-warp structures which include Andean Pebble Weave.

The first warp pictured above, was for a lovely pattern of galloping horses, ”Eldy’s Mustangs”, that my friend Deanna created. Then I moved on to a band of pink and purples with flowers, leaves, birds and butterflies, patterns that I have drawn and woven and developed over the years…

One thing that was missing from my kit was a small shuttle and I was glad for ice cream sticks that I had been collecting and throwing into my tool bag as they made sweet shuttles for these projects. I am not a fan of the combined beater/shuttle tools. They just don’t suit my rhythm. So, I always have a sword/beater and a separate shuttle. You can see one of the lovely Magical Moons maple swords in my picture above and some of the little shuttles I use below.

I like having a nice collection of shuttles of all sizes. The ones pictured above were made for me by my weaving friend Jim Smith. South American indigenous weavers use simple sticks around which they wrap their weft thread. If you need a new shuttle for a particularly wide piece of weaving, you can just go out and find one on the ground or on a tree! I am not fond of using those kinds of shuttles even though I see how practical it is to be able to just step outside and pick one up from the garden and cut it to the exact size you need.

Here’s a short video of two weavers loading their simple stick shuttles. The first lady is one of my Montagnard Vietnamese teachers and the other is from the Cusco area of Peru.

If the band I am weaving is particularly narrow, I don’t use a shuttle at all and prefer to work with weft lengths of a yard or so. I love just being able to whip the weft back and forth. My cat always found that very amusing! Plus, it makes un-weaving super easy! As for joining in new weft, the joins don’t show when I am weaving a warp-float structure which means that working with short lengths is not a problem. However, the joins do show when I am doing plain weave. So, I avoid running out of weft for plain weave and will load up a shuttle with a good amount of weft for that.

Here’s a video, just for fun, to show how I work with short weft lengths on a tiny warp. It also shows the speed of using multiple heddles…in this case I think there are seven. This is not the way I prefer to weave. In this video, I was pumping out one of several promised products and just wanted to weave fast! I am usually less concerned with product and more in love with the process and I enjoy having my hands in among the threads picking up the patterns.

In the video, the two light green heddles closest to me hold the pebble sheds. These are alternated with the other heddles that hold the pattern picks. I never put down my sword when weaving narrow bands and even do simple pick-up while holding onto it.

As for a Travel Weaving Kit and what one decides to take ”on the road”, one of my students, Kyoko, showed me what she has packed for her backstrap weaving while she takes a trip away…

Back to my ”get-over-Bali” weaving therapy: next came a Christmas-themed band. This was fun as I got to weave patterns that I had only charted but never woven. There was a bit of un-weaving and some adjustments to be made.

Yes, you will notice that I am not showing these delightful patterns….yet! They will be in the book! Things are still developing….I don’t like to tease but I do like surprises. 🙂

In the meantime, I have been receiving mail from friends who attended the Tinkuy in Cusco last month. I was most curious to know how my teachers and weaving friends Maxima and Justina had enjoyed the event. It was Max’s third time and Justina’s first. Dorinda, who accompanied the ladies and who was responsible for raising the funds to make the trip possible, has written a blog post about it. Here are Max and Justina on Day One getting ready to join the pre-conference parade through the streets of Cusco.

Photo by Karen Sprenger The ladies delivered a Power Point presentation on weaving traditions of their Central Bolivian communities.

I had been hoping that Max and Justina would present early on so that they could then relax and enjoy the rest of the conference but, no, it turned out that they were the very last pair to present just before the closing ceremony! I hope that they were able to put their nerves away during those first days.

Photo by Cat Bordhi. Max and Justina, sold products from their weaving co-op, participated in demonstrations and spinning competitions and took part, as students, in some of the workshops.

Please take a look at Dorinda’s PAZA website and blog post to read more about Tinkuy 2017. Like me, Dorinda is currently in her ”other home” in the USA and has taken much of the unsold product from Tinkuy with her. Are you still looking for Christmas gifts? Dorinda has a nice selection of yoga mat straps that the young weavers in Bolivia produce. They run at $21 and $22 and can be purchased by contacting Dorinda via the PAZA site…

If you have woven tubular bands with me in my travels, you will be familiar with the gorgeous lengths of handwoven naturally dyed cloth that I bring to sew into pouches. Dorinda also has these lengths of cloth available for $35. You can easily make four pouches with flaps from these lengths…

Visiting with Maxima last January sitting alongside one of my completed band orders.

But, HURRY! Dorinda can only accept orders until December 14! Order through the PAZA site.

Pictures have been arriving from people with whom I have woven on my trips away as well as from people I have never met. I love getting this kind of feedback from people who have been using my books and free tutorials on this blog. Thank you!

Caroline, who recently wove double weave with me with friends in Arizona, finished one of the bands she had started with a cute llama motif and attractive twisted fringe. Thanks go to Karen in Cincinnati who adapted the llama motif to a narrow band from one of my much wider pieces.

Claire in Tasmania, with whom I wove in August, used one of the patterns from my latest book to weave this elegant band in linen and cottolin. She commented that after a good hard press, the linen looked and felt beautiful. I haven’t yet worked with linen and I love the look of this band. I am excited that I will be able to return to Tasmania to weave with Claire again next year.

Bob Seymour followed my double weave tutorial on this blog and designed his own Kokopelli motif. Fabulous!

Below, you can see work from Julie using her Mini Wave loom and using the technique I teach in my book on Complementary-warp Pick-up. The first pattern is from that book and Julie is using the method to weave the second larger pattern which is in my second book. One of the members of the Ravelry group told me that she learned to weave patterns by picking up all the sheds by hand from my latest book and likes that method so much that she is using it now even for the patterns for which she could use additional heddles. Once people learn how to do complementary-warp pick-up and see how simple it is….just hands and sticks and no extra heddles….they quite often do not feel the need to add the optional extra heddles for the Andean Pebble Weave technique.

Jörg has combined two 12-thread patterns from my latest book. I love the combination of colors!

Karen Sprenger showed me how she has been progressing with the double weave bands we started together.

And, Kathy sent me a picture of what she has made on her draw loom using a traditional pattern from my second book. You might remember that she had me weaving on her draw loom when I visited with her some time ago…

You can just see a bit of the Tinkipaya-inspired motif and the marvelous system of pegs and cords that I am pulling to lift the threads for the pattern.

Here’s Kathy’s finished piece…

Vatinee in Thailand is currently into Andean Pebble Weave patterns as well…great colors!

And, here’s Wendy’s finished band in Andean Pebble Weave…we have pebble weave in luscious pinks and blues on looms in different parts of the world! What fun.