Backstrap Weaving – In and out of the Box

I just wanted to quickly show what I made with the fabric I was weaving in my last post.

Bear in mind that I am not much of a sewer and that my thrills from sewing successes, therefore, come cheaply. I do love stitching by hand, though.

I really liked a box-like purse that Handymum had shown in a video tutorial. She doesn’t speak at all in these videos and explains everything with hand gestures and occasional text in English. When I can also mute the music, it becomes my favorite way to watch these kinds of videos. They play at high speed and so I need to watch them several times to be able to catch everything. I save only the very simplest ones while I improve my skills. I’m not going to risk my handwoven cloth on something that is beyond my skill level.

YET, if I’d really respected my lack of experience and sewn a sample with fabric I have floating around, I would have avoided a silly mistake I made.

The sides and front of the box shape collapse inward so that when closed, the purse lies quite flat. I thought this design was really cute. What I love is that you can unclip the flap, open it up and clearly see everything laid out inside instead of having to dig around inside a zippered pouch. I occasionally have to tip out all the contents of some of my larger tool pouches in order to find something.

This was the first time I had sewn in the lining before sewing up the piece and the first time I sewed everything before flipping the whole thing right-side-out. I told you about my cheap thrills, right? I was so pleased with myself! As for the mistake, I sewed too close to the thick interfacing. In her video, Handymum sews on the lines she has drawn onto the lining and you can’t see how close she is to the interfacing on the other side. Rather than draw lines, I flipped my piece over and sewed around the interfacing instead, but much too close considering the thickness of the interfacing (I used two layers). I’m all for ripping things out and doing them over but it was too late. I’d already snipped the curve of the top, cut the points off the outer corners and cut into the inner ones. And so, the seams are really strained and stretched over the interfacing and some of my (black!) stitching shows as a result.

I have some of the same Guatemalan cotton in a color called champagne and I might have another go at this sewing pattern but in a longer version using fabric woven from that thread.

I’m sad to see my supply of that indigo-dyed Guatemalan cotton getting low although stash-busting is my goal after all. I just know that I’ll probably never get to replace it. It’s special because of the way it has faded after all these years. I love the way it weaves up with all its variations of shades of blue. I still have loads of the champagne color, though. I’m assuming that it was also dyed with natural substances but it doesn’t seem to have faded. I’ll know for sure when I compare the thread on the inside of the cakes to the outside layers of thread.

As for the next project, it will be yet another bag, hopefully. Not another, you say?! But I like to think that I’m thinking a bit out of the box with this one. I have this crazy idea of making a long bag in which to carry my backstrap loom that doubles as a backstrap.

I’m using Guatemalan cotton again except this is somewhat heavier stuff, also from Mayan Hands, that my friend Kate gave me. I dyed the black and it accompanies cochineal-dyed purplish-red (dyed in Guatemala) and natural white. I’m back to one of my old faithful color combinations.

I’ve tossed around various ideas for the structure and pattern and I think that I’ve finally (almost!) settled on rep weave to give me good sturdy fabric with complementary-warp pick-up patterns. I do try to learn something new with each project. I have in fact woven rep once before and so its not entirely new, hence the “almost” in parentheses. I keep thinking that I need to add a twist to this somehow. If not, creating the strange backstrap/tote bag may have to be the new part of this project.

In the two new projects that I’ve shown in this post, the thread has come from Guatemala. The finer stuff was bought from Mayan Hands at a conference many years ago in Bellingham. The heavier thread, also from Mayan Hands, was given to me Kate.

I wove this scarf using fine cotton thread from Guatemala that was given to me by Betty. She had bought it in the 1980s!

I haven’t done a whole lot with it because the quantities were quite small. I’d bought it with the idea of using it as supplementary weft rather than as warp. But here’s one thing I ‘ve used it for….

So, that’s another stash that I’d like to get into. And, on that same trip I bought a ball of handspun cotton singles from a spinner. The ball sat in the closet for close to ten years and then I got to use pretty much all of it for this sheer scarf project….

I haven’t been to Guatemala since 2008 but every now and then someone puts a Guatemalan warp in my hands and I get to take a trip down Guatemalan-weaving Memory Lane….(and it seems that this post is also turning into one!)

I hope to make another trip to Australia in October and I’m thinking that maybe I could make a little side-trip to Guatemala from Miami on the way back when I’ll be virtually empty-handed. Who knows?

As for now, I need to go and figure out what to use for the thick weft in my rep piece, if in fact rep is my final decision for this project. See you next time.