Backstrap Weaving – Spoiler Alert

Ikat and the eternal question….Will the result be a mess or a success? At most stages throughout the long process, I have absolutely no idea. Spoiler Alert….It all worked out in the end.

Things didn’t go exactly to plan with my latest project but with my usual “make it work” persistence, I ended up with something with which I am pretty pleased.

You may remember from my last post that I had discovered a blip in my ikat warp where I had neglected to wrap one of the sections with tape to preserve the first red dye color.

I took that as an opportunity to do a bit of spot-dyeing (but only because I knew that my piece of fabric would most likely never be washed. I have yet to learn how some ikat artisans make their spot-dyeing water resistant.)

That seemed to go pretty well. All that was left to do now was to remove the rest of the tape. I made a little video of my doing so for those who might be curious. Note that many ikat artists don’t tie knots in their tape. I do. It takes a while but it’s always exciting seeing the pattern slowly emerging.

And here’s the warp with all its tape removed. This is one of my favorite parts…

Unfolding the warp is also one of my favorite parts but it does have me holding my breath just in case I had messed up and mismatched the bundles from the two halves when I first folded it. I hadn’t. Phew!

Next in the process is recovering the cross….carefully. Please don’t let the threads that I used to save the cross break!

Once recovered, I can use the cross to guide me to making my heddles on one of the two layers of warp.

If you think you’ve seen me weave this pattern before, you’re not wrong.

This is the stage, before I throw the first shot of weft, at which I most ponder the “mess or success?” question that always comes to mind when I do ikat. The question looms even larger in my mind when I am using my own handspun cotton. The uniform nature of industrially-spun thread makes the result a little less uncertain. But, to be honest, in my limited experience, I just never can really tell what’s going to happen when I work with ikat.

Were the threads going to shift out of alignment more than I like them to? Spoiler Alert…..they were.

And I can’t account for that at all! I did every step in exactly the same way as I had for the blue project (except for the spot dyeing). Because there was what I consider quite a lot of shift going on I stopped weaving once I had the length of fabric that I needed for the wallet. It was getting to the point where the amount of shift just wasn’t attractive to my eye anymore. I cut the piece off the loom which means that I won’t have any any fun left-over bits to play with in a sewing project six months down the track.

I wanted to make the inside pockets of the wallet from stitched shibori cloth and so I stitched some diamond shapes on some scoured cotton cloth and pulled up the threads so that the folds in the puckered cloth would resist the dye. I needed to first dye the cloth red and then overdye with black in order to hopefully produce the same brownish-black of the ikat cloth. I also dyed some plain cotton to line the ikat piece and make the bill pocket.

I didn’t put much thought into the design of the red figures. Someone said they look like puckered lips and now I can’t unsee that! Would I be able to match the brownish-black of the ikat warp? Spoiler Alert…I wouldn’t. Well, not on the first attempt anyway.

I don’t have the equipment to weigh and measure such small quantities of cloth and dye stuff. It’s all guess-work which makes it very hard to reproduce a color. However, after giving the cloth a second round of black dye, it came out just right.

You may remember that I placed a coin purse on the outside of the other wallets that I recently made. I wasn’t keen on doing that this time because it would cover the ikat work. So, I sewed a small expandable coin pocket to the inside instead.

All that remains is to decide if I want to use a slim tab to hold the wallet closed. One might be necessary if the coin pocket gets very full.

That probably marks the end of the wallet phase! It’s time to fish around in my stash and see what’s next.

What did I learn from this project? It gave me some more experience with some spot-dyeing and it made me realize that I can layer colors in stitched shibori just as I do for ikat. And, as always, It added to my admiration and appreciation of the fabulous and meticulous ikat work done by the Masters in Indonesia, particularly those who use their own handspun cotton.

I’ll leave you with some news about Sue Richardson’s new blog. You might remember that I mentioned her work as writer for the Oxford Asian Textile Group (OATG) blog in my last post. I’ve also mentioned at various times her work with husband David documenting the techniques, history and cultural significance of textiles that they have encountered and researched in the field in Indonesia and other regions throughout Asia in their travels. The exciting news is that they have just started a new blog of their own….Asian Textiles Studies Blog. You might like to take a look and perhaps subscribe.

There’s no chance of my giving away any spoilers about my next project because I haven’t yet been swept away by a new idea. I’ll have to peer into my stash drawer and see what leaps out me.

Until next time……….