Month: September 2023

Backstrap Weaving – One Method doesn’t Fit All.

Does one backstrap loom operating method fit all? Definitely not, especially when working with sticky, sticky, mill-spun singles wool. Give it a shot of hairspray some people will say, or coat it in sizing. My reaction is “yuck” (mind you, I’ve never tried it!). My hands are right in there in amongst the threads in the kind of pick-up patterning I do and I like to feel the natural fiber rather than a starchy stiffness or chemical coating.

The process is more meaningful to me than the finished product and I would rather slow down and adapt my method for operating the loom than coat the threads with stuff. (I’m quite sure I’ll try it one of these days, though, as I get further along with weaving with my own handspun cotton singles and will then take all this back).

I don’t want to limit myself to only the smoothest and friendliest of materials that are deemed suitable for warp-faced weaving on a backstrap loom. And so I will occasionally jump in and make the sticky stuff work. I guess in a way I enjoy the challenge as well as the feel of the finished product. Of course much depends on the intended use of the finished product.

This is the mill-spun wool singles yarn that I bought from a farmer while weaving with friends in Petaluma, California.

I have used this wool in three small projects in plain warp-faced weaving so far. It has stood up well in the weaving process and with use. I had yet to use it in any kind of denser warp-float structures, let alone in the three-color structure that I was planning. I figured that I could weave a sample to see how it behaved and then decide if I wanted to take it on for a larger project. I was confident that I could make it work. It just depended on how much work I had to put into making it work. Working with yarn like this usually involves slowing down and gently coaxing unwilling threads to release their sticky hairy grip on their neighbors so that you can get something that resembles a clear shed without damaging the yarn.

Two of the plain-weave projects that I’ve completed with this wool….a travel documents pouch on the left and mobile phone case on the right.

What made things a little trickier was the fact that I dyed some of the yarn. In the hot water the singles sort of poofed up (surely there’s a technical term for this) and didn’t recover when they dried. The un-dyed yarn looked thin and wiry next to it.

I wove a narrow sample in the three-color structure and decided that it would be doable in a wider project. Surprisingly, the threads in the tiny plain-weave borders were ones that complained most with that alarming rasping and tearing sound that they make as their entwined hairy fingers are torn apart. It all sounds very violent, doesn’t it?! But in reality it all has to be done very gently. In the warp-float section, there were far fewer complaints but I still had to work to clear sheds.

I sampled both the reversible and non-reversible versions of the three-color technique and also played with different weights of wool weft. Using the same yarn as weft gave me the best result.

There was a lot of pick-up to be done in my much larger planned pattern flanked by a lot more plain weave. Because operating the loom for the wide plain-weave borders required slower more gentle operation of the loom, I decided to just weave the pattern on its own and to add the sides as separate pieces. That way I could just place all my focus on the pick-up.

Taming the mill-spun singles into a three-color pattern in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave.

I’ve woven this three-color structure several times before using Tencel, tapestry wool and my own plied handspun wool and have achieved nice crisp images. The hairiness of the singles yarn gives a much more rustic look to the figures. It grows on you and I love the way it feels.

Using 8/2 Tencel in the same structure.

I had set up my warp with two sets of string heddles and once I had figured out my method for working them with this extra sticky stuff, I was on my way and enjoying seeing the pattern emerge. It’s always good to have multiple ways of adjusting basic methods to suit the kind of material with which you are working.

I didn’t do a whole lot of color flipping on this one, unlike the hummingbird camera strap that I wove in my own handspun. I just flipped to outline some leaves in red rather than white in one part. This wasn’t the kind of design in which I could regularly flip the background color.

The camera strap in which I could play with changing the background color, the hummingbird outline color and filler color. It was a bit brain bending but fun.
A little further along with some cloth already rolled up.

One thing that I always try to do when weaving with wool is advance the warp as often as possible so that the heddles and rods are not abrading one spot for too long.

And here it is finished….

Next came the grey side pieces….

Now to decide on whether to join the three pieces without overlapping them using one of the decorative stitches that I’ve learned from my teachers here, or join them with the tiniest of seams.
The heddles from the two warps remained pretty much fluff-free. The one on the left is from the pattern warp and is discolored. I’m guessing that a fine film of fluff has discolored it.
This little pouch for my pin loom is made up of three pieces joined together with a tiny seam. The center is a piece I wove from my own handspun llama yarn that I was rescuing from an old project. I added sides made from the mill-spun wool singles.
A subtle joining stitch in cotton connecting two panels that don’t overlap. I’d woven a very long band on a circular warp and Karen-style backstrap loom that had been given to me. I cut the band into five pieces and joined them to make a table square.
The completed table square.
The stitch can be decorative as well as functional when worked in a contrasting color. I used it to join the panels of this wool lap blanket that I wove.
Another kind of stitch that my Vietnamese backstrap weaving teachers use. I used it to connect two bands and make a tool bag.
Sometimes the joining stitch can be one of the main features. I used this stitch which was shown to me by one of my teachers in the Bolivian highlands to join two cotton panels that I had woven. Maxima stitches it in many bright and lively colors.
Picture courtesy of PAZA Bolivia shows Maxima’s carrying cloth with its colorful joining stitches.

So, what is this project supposed to be? It will hopefully be the cover for a folder that holds my pattern charts. I just have to figure out how to construct the folder. I want it to have multiple pockets for the various categories of structures and it may need to be expandable.

While I figure that out, I’ll start washing my handspun cotton singles as I have a project in mind for them and I might start preparing the handspun wool I recently got in the market for some cochineal dyeing. We have a run of really high temperatures coming up and I can’t say that I’m keen on having the stove on for these tasks. I don’t have air conditioning. But never mind, there’s always plenty of other fiber-y things to do.

Natural brown handspun cotton singles waiting to be washed. I use these metal mesh pencil cups to hold the thread under tension in the pot.

I’ll just pop in a photo here of the box purse that I was making in my last post. I didn’t show a photo of the open box with its contents. It’s so handy…I love it.

I’m going to leave you with a couple of short videos I took of weavers in Peru working with wide wool warps on their backstrap looms. You will see that some time and effort needs to put into opening the shed-rod shed with the particular kind of warp material they are using. Its not just a matter of drawing the shed rod forward to the heddles and then sliding the two together. The threads don’t smoothly rise and pop through to the other side as you often see happening in the hands of some backstrap loom weavers on Youtube who are using other kinds of friendlier warp material. Those of us who are privileged to be able to work with all kinds of warp materials soon find out that there isn’t just one single method that fits all.

Backstrap Weaving – The Inner Chaos

The Inner Chaos…..I’m only talking about the chaos within my weaving tool bags and my weaving journal…nothing introspective….well maybe just a little bit. I am pretty jumbled up below the surface when it comes to my thoughts about my eventual move back to Australia. Now that I’ve let the cat out of the bag, I’m constantly being asked “when?”. I don’t know. There are so many complexities to be sorted out at this end!

But enough of that. Let’s talk about weaving and tool bags. I showed you the little box bag that I made recently in which I can carry basic sewing supplies. I love how it opens up to give me a clear view of its contents. My large tool bag often has me digging around in the dark and getting stabbed by needles until I eventually give up and tip out the contents. I don’t help matters by tossing in all kinds of random odds and ends that I pick up from the floor when I sit down to weave….the used cable tie that I am determined to pick open and re-use, the rubber band that broke and that I’ve tied into a knot, the little chunk of eraser that really is too small to be of any more use.

I love this little box purse. The project also gave me a chance to practice my hand-sewing skills.

The long zippered tool bag was a bonus that I could make with left over fabric. It holds several of my small swords and the smaller of my pick-up sticks.

A variety of things that I use to pick up threads to create patterns…hair sticks, shawl pins, chopsticks, a dpn and a stick from my teacher in Guatemala. The shorter ones fit in the zippered bag.
Just a few of my smaller swords. These were all made for me from Australian woods found in the state of NSW (my home state).

But what about the longer tools that don’t fit in the zippered bag? Well, of course, they need another bag of their own, another box-like purse, except longer. And then what about the poor old large tool bag that has served me so well all these years?

The old faithful tool bag that has been everywhere with me, looking bright and sparkly, fresh off the loom in 2010, and the way it looks today.

It won’t be abandoned. I finally decided to invest in a good pair of fabric scissors and a pair of pinking shears. They now live in this bag all on their own. I’ve been told that I really should learn how to do French seams rather than rely on the pinking shears and I’ll get to that one day.

And so I got down to planning a larger box-like purse. I decided to use the champagne-colored cotton thread from Guatemala. I had epi information on it from past projects. I just needed to dye some of it brown and decide on a pattern for it in supplementary weft.

One of the journal covers that I wove using this thread.

Some years ago, I took paisley figures and arranged them in order to create a pattern of my own. It was a lot of drawing, sampling and modifying…a lot of work before I could start weaving. I used it once in a silk scarf project and that was the end of that for several years. I decided that it needed to be used again.

I fished the large paper pattern out of the folder. Luckily it was still legible. My pencil patterns often get really worn and smudged during the course of a project. Sometimes I even throw them away! I think, well, that was a lot of work…I’ll never weave that again! Now I always photograph them when they are freshly drawn.

All the sketching and ideas go into my weaving book. At that early stage its all fairly neat and orderly. It’s when the time comes for number crunching that it all goes to hell…the chaos within the pages begins. I would love to be one of those people who can consistently write neatly, sketch beautifully and create art within the pages of their journals. I do keep detailed notes but they are a mess! I often need to return to them and then I might have to spend quite a bit of time deciphering just how I got from A to B. If you want to see an absolutely amazing journals (dedicated to travel), take a look at jose_naranja on Instagram…unbelievably beautiful.

Weaving cloth covers for my notebooks has made note-making so pleasurable. I just wish the insides were as pretty as the outside.

These ones are still blank.
My current notebook.

I made a little video that takes you inside…..

I’m glad that many years ago when I was making books to document all that I had learned from my various indigenous teachers, I was patient enough to write out everything neatly, make precise drawings and diagrams, illustrate with photos, as well as glue in woven samples. Some even have miniature looms complete with heddles to illustrate the warping set-up. Each of the eight books I made had some kind of weaving on its cover.

The first one, bottom left, was started back in 1996 when I was still living in southern Chile.

Here’s a glimpse of the inside of a couple. These have already gone to live in Australia…

The last project in my little video is the start of the long version of the box-like purse. Here it is on the loom….

After weaving the main paisley motif which sits on the curved flap of the purse, I just wove a very simple version for what will be the base…

And here it is finished. Lessons learned when I made the first box-like purse served me well. I am really pleased with it.

I posed it next to another pouch that I wove with the same thread some years ago. The color has changed quite a lot over the years but it’s not really apparent in this photo. It has lost its golden hue on that old pouch.
It lacks the cuteness of the smaller one, though.

So now I need a bag in which to carry around all the individual tool purses…lol. Actually, my next project idea is to make a fabric case in which to store all my pattern charts. They’re currently stuffed inside a plastic box folder. The elastic straps that hold the cover in place have perished. I wonder if I could design some kind of concertina inner so that each technique has its own section. The fabric would be the outside cover. I’ve started planning the cover using the mill-spun singles wool. There’s some dyeing and sampling to do first as I’d like to use the three-color reversible pebble weave structure and need to see if the singles yarn will stand up to it.

Three-color reversible pebble weave in my own handspun plied wool.
The mill-spun singles have worked well for me in plain weave. You can see that the heddles didn’t get clogged with fluff. I have yet to see how it behaves in a denser structure of warp floats. I want to dye some of it a darker grey and some black for the three-color project.

If the singles yarn isn’t up to the task, perhaps I’ll use the plied wool yarn and cochineal that I got in the market on my birthday.

So, in conclusion, the inner chaos of my large tool bag has been sorted. While I accept that the inner chaos of my weaving notebooks will never be, perhaps my chaotically-arranged pattern charts will get categorized according to structure inside a new case with handwoven cover.

Until next time…..