Backstrap Weaving

I have mentioned before that I am trying to limit all my projects to using yarn that I already have in my stash. I had no choice but to do so during the pandemic and found that it was an interesting challenge that often took me to unexpected places. It had me spinning all the wool that had been stashed away in my closet as well as learning to spin cotton. It’s been quite easy so far and I am trying to continue in this way. My projects are slow ones which means that my yarn goes a long way in terms of time. I made sure not to bring back any yarn on my last two visits to Australia but I did bring back some dyes and a pin loom.

The pin loom has kept me happily busy using up odds and ends of wool yarn that I have accumulated from the finishing techniques workshops that I sometimes teach. I guess I’ll sew these squares together to make a lap blanket for my eventual return to Australia and my new cold-ish home in the Blue Mountains. But what has made the pin-loom weaving all the more interesting is the chance it has given me to experiment with a little warp-and-weft ikat. That’s been fun.

So far, my ikat projects have all been about warp ikat. The fabrics have been warp faced with the weft threads completely hidden. I wrapped resist material only around the warp threads.

Warp-and-weft ikat, on the other hand, requires a balanced fabric in which both warp and weft threads are exposed. The pin loom gives me that. I was able to apply wrappings to some of the threads that run warp-wise as well as weft-wise. Where they intersect, you get an area of solid color from which extend finger-like sections of just weft ikat and just warp ikat. I’m doing this just for fun…just for something different, as well as for a chance to try out some of the new dye colors I had brought back with me from Australia.

It’s been a fast and low-risk way to play with warp-and-weft ikat. Not much yarn will be wasted if it all goes wrong. My favorite of the three ikat squares above is the one in the middle. The “fingers” that extend from the solid light square are just that little bit more out of alignment and I like the way that looks.

While I sit and weave these little squares, I ponder what my next backstrap loom project will be. When I took out the bag of grey mill-spun wool singles that I had bought from the farmer in California, within I re-discovered the piece that you see below that I had woven way back in something like 2004. It’s woven from my own handspun llama yarn and used to be part of a shoulder bag. The cotton base for the shoulder bag onto which I had sewn this llama-yarn band eventually got worn and shabby. I cut off the llama band and threw away the cotton cloth thinking that I could easily re-use the band. It still looks as good as new! And, besides, it’s handspun and some of the first I had ever done…I couldn’t discard it.

And so I am thinking that my pin loom might be getting its own handwoven pouch. I’ll flank the llama band with the singles wool in plain weave and use some sewn finishing techniques to decorate it. I’ll need to line it so that the loom’s pins don’t get caught in the weave.

Which brings me to talk about lining. I finally got around to making a couple of stitched shibori experiments. Being an absolute beginner at this, I wasn’t expecting much from these initial efforts. For that reason, I thought that the finished cloth would make good lining fabric. It would give me some practice in basic techniques as well as something useful which will be largely hidden away if it turns out to be hideous. It’s been a lot of fun. I really enjoy the part where I can sit quietly and stitch.

That’s the first experiment and one of my ikat pouches. These little purses and pouches are the kinds of thing that I would like to line with this cloth. Of course, my technique needs a lot of work but even so, after having completed this first piece, I don’t think that it’s possible to create anything truly hideous even with clumsy beginner attempts. It all looks pretty nice to me.

This is what it looks like when the threads are pulled and the cloth is ready to go into the dye bath.

Of course, traditional shibori artisans use indigo dye and there’s a beautiful video that I shared on my personal Facebook account of a Chinese gentleman taking all the steps to harvest the indigo leaves and prepare the dye bath before stitching and immersing the cloth. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find it on Youtube to share here. I am just using cotton dye made in Brazil that I buy from my LYS. It gives a very pretty blue.

I might use this piece to line this tool bag that I made about twelve years ago. It has traveled all over the place with me and is nowhere near as bright and clean now as it is in this picture!

You can see the Van Dyke stitch that I used to cover the join. My Vietnamese backstrap loom teachers used this same stitch to cover theirs. Below, you can see how it looks after twelve years of laundering and heavy use! The blue Anne yarn bled and toned the whole thing down and the green has faded a lot. I quite like this more subdued and weathered look….like a favorite pair of faded denim jeans. Now it will get a pretty lining. It will make me happy every time I look inside and see the shibori cloth. This bag is constantly by my side as I sit at my backstrap loom. It holds swords, pick-up sticks, scissors, small shuttles, measuring tape, elastic bands, sewing needles, seam ripper, sticky tape etc etc

As for upcoming projects on my backstrap loom…while looking around online, I have found inspiration in the form of certain color combinations that I just can’t seem to get out of my mind. The problem is that I don’t have the colors in the right weights of yarn to carry out any kind of plan. So, some of my time is being spent at the dye pot trying to get something that will match my expectations. I’ll be pleased when I have finally settled on a project and am back seated at my backstrap loom. In the meantime, there are pin loom squares, a woven pin loom case (woven on my backstrap loom), stitching and dyeing to keep me creatively occupied.