Month: March 2024

Backstrap Weaving – What’s My Style?

Many years ago an online acquaintance told me that she could instantly tell which of the images of woven pieces that had been posted to one of the online groups were mine. I thought that was fun…wow, it seems that I’ve developed a “style”. However, as I think back to some of the things I have woven over the years I’m sure that’s not true at all.

I’m thinking that perhaps my work was so easily identifiable back then because it stood out as being warp-faced in a group where the vast majority of work wasn’t. Also, in those days I did seem to weave a lot of patterns that could be described as big-and-bold and decidedly “ethnic-looking” at a time when replication was a big part of my learning process. The products were hardy belts, straps and shoulder bags. The thread I used was locally-sourced 8/2 cotton which was almost all I had access to here for this kind of work.

Now, I’m not quite sure that I want my work to be so easily recognized. It feels like that would mean I was not branching out and trying new things or heading in new directions. And that might very well have been the case if I hadn’t been given so much yarn by weaving friends over the years….yarn that I probably never would have chosen on my own…like the cones of 140/2 silk I was given by two friends, eeeek! Who would ever contemplate weaving with that? It was offered to me, gratefully accepted, and eventually I used it (and loved it!). I can only hope that I wove something worthy of the lovely gift.

One of the projects using the 140/2 silk as warp was the last two panels in my Within These Walls series.

I suppose that if there had to be something that somehow categorised what I do, or my “style” of weaving, I would like it to be the fact that I use a backstrap loom. For me, the process in most cases is more notable than the product. I’m rambling on about this a bit because of a couple of things that I have seen in my online groups recently. One was a comment on a photo of my latest warp…

The commenter asked me to make sure to eventually post the finished project because she is fascinated by “backstrap weaving”. The thing is, once the fabric is off the loom, there’ll be nothing to indicate that it was woven on a backstrap loom. It could have been woven on any kind of loom that allows one to create 18- 1/2″-wide warp-faced cloth. For me, the product isn’t “backstrap weaving”….the act of creating it is.

What I’m trying to say is that I think that the term “backstrap weaving” is suitable for describing the act of weaving on a backstrap loom…. I’m out in my back yard today backstrap weaving, for example. I don’t think it works as a word to describe the cloth that comes off the loom and I have a feeling that this is the way many people use the term. I suspect that the person who asked the question is interested in seeing the cloth (and of course that’s fine) thinking that somehow it’s exclusive to the backstrap loom. If she had been interested in “backstrap weaving”, the activity, I think she would have asked to know more about the loom, my set-up, how it all works etc..

It makes me wonder, as I have often done in the past, what people think “backstrap weaving” is. And it makes me regret not having made it clear when I decided to name this blog Backstrap Weaving almost fifteen years ago. Maybe I was unclear about how the term should be used myself back then or at least unaware of how it might cause misunderstandings. I know that in the past I have been guilty on my many occasions of referring to my cloth as “my backstrap weaving” as a quick way of saying “pieces I have woven on my backstrap loom”.

One clear indication of misunderstanding was when someone posted that they were doing backstrap weaving on their inkle loom (simply because they were using a pick-up patterning technique that is often used by weavers who use backstrap looms in the South American highlands).

So, here I am “backstrap weaving”. The cloth that I’m weaving is in a balanced doubleweave pick-up technique known as Finnweave which can be and is woven on other kinds of looms. I don’t think anyone is going to pick up my finished cloth and identify it as “backstrap weaving”.

The fact is that, with will and skill, so many different kinds of fabric can be woven on a backstrap loom (with obvious width limitations, of course). The fabrics don’t have any particular characteristic that make the backstrap loom the only possible piece of equipment. The product could be weft-faced, balanced, warp-faced. It could be cloth where all structural and pattern elements are created by pick-up, or the loom could have been set up with multiple sets of string heddles and other aids to make those elements completely loom controlled, or a method that lies somewhere between those two could have been used.

A weaver from Pitumarca that I watched at Tinkuy 2010 creating weft-faced fabric on his backstrap loom.
A weaver from San Ignacio de Loyola in Peru has made the weaving of her warp-faced pattern totally loom controlled by using multiple sets of string heddles.
My weaving friend Sharon Kersten is currently sampling balanced cloth on a backstrap loom using a 15-dpi rigid heddle. Note her cool temple…push pins in a length of balsa wood.

By the way, I seem to have been asleep the last few years as far as rigid heddles go. I had no idea that they’re now available in 15 dpi. Sharon says that unlike other weavers who tend to have shaft envy, I on the other hand have dent envy.

This gorgeous sheer cotton cloth was woven on a backstrap loom by a weaver in Mexico. It’s yet another kind of fabric that I think is more accurately described as having been woven on a backstrap loom rather than with the blanket term “backstrap weaving”. The range of achievable structures and techniques is wide! (Image from the Flickr page of Teyacapan and used with her permission).

The other thing that had me pondering what is meant by “backstrap weaving” was a question in another group: “What is the best book on backstrap weaving for beginners?” It leaves me wondering if they’re referring to the activity or the product. Do they want to know how to make, set-up and use a backstrap loom or do they already have one and just want to learn the patterning structures that are most often associated with this kind of loom? Are they looking at “backstrap weaving” as the process or the product? I haven’t asked but I am curious to see what other people reply as I think it will give a good indication of how others understand the term.

Anyway, let me get on with what’s currently on my loom…..I’ve been working on my latest project with the latest gift of yarn from my friend, Will, in Australia….some lovely variegated 10/2 silk which sits alongside some luscious white 20/2 silk that Susan had given me many years ago. I have admired work done with variegated thread but never thought to branch out and buy any because I really had no idea what to do with it. With the gift of this lovely mother-of-pearl thread, I’ve been given the push that I needed to come up with something.

My piece is all kind of soft and feminine-looking which might shock you if you’ve come to think of my style as big and bold. This is another example where gifts are ensuring that I don’t fall into any particular style box in terms of product. The common factor is the loom. It’s all about the loom.

It’s always lovely when the threads have all been settled into place and I can get started on the pattern.

The colors in the variegated thread have aligned themselves quite differently from the way they did in my much shorter sample. In the sample there was less space between the darker threads across the warp which meant that there was higher contrast between the leaf shapes and the surrounding white supplementary weft. The effect in this longer warp is much softer. I’m doing some white-on-white patterning with supplementary weft on the sides. (This isn’t the “mad” idea I mentioned in my last post. I decided I wasn’t going to take a chance on trying that in this “real”project).

That’s the extent of the foliage pattern. I’ll weave this band of pattern again at the end. I am, however, continuing with the white-on-white along the sides.

I’ve had to keep an eye on the width because I broke one of my rules and didn’t sample the doubled 20/2 silk on the sides to get a width reading. That’s the price I pay. I guessed how those threads would want to settle and now I have to keep an eye on them in case they decide otherwise.

And now a hummingbird and flowers start to make their appearance. This might be the only motif I weave between the upper and lower strips of foliage….keep it clean and simple, perhaps. We’ll see.

I’ve just joined a hummingbird group on Facebook and it’s so much fun seeing the joyful posts as people announce the return of their friends after their winter away.

Before I switch off the bedside lamp at night, I take a quick look over the edge of the bed to see my loom with its limp warp lying on the floor. I love the way this looks in the soft yellow light. I wonder if I can get silk thread in these colors?

I’ll leave you with this photo that Kate sent me after having read my post last time which touched on the subject of width. Kate recently returned from a trip to Mexico in which she was able to visit with backstrap loom weavers and received permission to share this photo. As I sit at my loom quite pleased with my eighteen-and-a-half inch warp, I am in awe of the forty-eight inches (by Kate’s estimate) this weaver is managing…..and that’s wool! The fabric she produces is used for a very unique kind of cloth which is used as a man’s garment about which I’ll tell you more in my next post.

A backstrap-loom weaver from the Chamula municipality of Chiapas in Mexico.

Backstrap Weaving – Wonderfully Wide

It’s been a while since I’ve had something wide (wide for me, anyway) on my backstrap loom. The last thing was the cotton rep-weave warp from which I made a backstrap/loom carry bag. This one was 15 1/2″ and had 800 ends.

The warp is made up of white and cochineal-dyed cotton from Guatemala. I dyed some of the white black.
The finished backstrap which doubles as a loom and tool tote bag.

As I said, these kinds of warps are wide for me but not necessarily for backstrap loom weavers in other parts of the world. The widest warp that I’ve seen over here was 39″. It was a light cotton ikat warp that was being woven by a weaver from northern Peru. She stood while weaving in order to manage the width. That makes my 15 1/2″ seem quite ridiculous. Backstrap loom weavers in parts of SE Asia routinely weave what look like even wider pieces while seated at their looms. Maybe when I am eventually living back in Australia, I’ll be able to explore that side of the world and maybe sit beside those weavers to see how they skillfully create their warps and manage those widths.

An ikat shawl weaver from Tacabamba, Peru, standing to manage the wide cotton warp on her loom.

I like the fact that, as far as the loom is concerned, going wide simply means getting hold of some longer sticks. I have a piece of painted metal curtain rod that I’m using as the cloth beam of my latest project. A dowel rod acts as the warp beam. The weft thread can be wound around a suitably long stick if I don’t have a long enough shuttle.

My Montagnard (Vietnamese hill tribe) teachers always use the beams and swords that are designed for the widest pieces of skirt and blanket fabric that they weave no matter how narrow the piece they happen to be weaving.

My current project is 18 1/2”…a very humble width in comparison. However, to me it feels wonderfully wide and I love having my beams loaded up like this.

The other thing to which my “Wonderfully Wide” blog title refers is the fact that I feel that I have a wonderfully wide range of techniques and structures that I can draw on when it comes down to planning a new project. I wandered through several ideas when it came down to figuring out what I would do with the silk thread that I had been given by a couple of fiber friends in Australia.

I wasn’t one hundred percent sure about the size of this silk thread but after fishing out silk examples from my stash drawer that range from 30/2 to 140/2, I came to the conclusion that the variegated is most likely 10/2 and the white 20/2.

I thought about doing rep with alternating thick and thin weft and some pick-up. That idea got discarded in favor of ikat…a variegated ikat pattern on a solid-color background. In the end I settled on using supplementary weft to play with positive and negative space.

I felt that I’d already explored the idea of a variegated ikat pattern in this piece (although the thread in this case isn’t actually variegated. It’s just a mix of lots of different colored ends of warp). I had to look back at this to be reminded that I hadn’t particularly liked the effect at the time (although it’s funny how things can grow on you!)
When I do ikat on a multi-colored warp, I prefer having wide stripes of color so that there’s only one color in each pattern segment, as you can see in this silk example I made some years ago.

The warp on which I’m currently working will hopefully be fabric for one face of a pillow/cushion cover. I am using the 10/2 variegated thread alongside doubled 20/2 to give me the width I need. Please bear in mind that I’m not saying that doubled 20/2 equals a single strand of 10/2. I’m just hoping that the two will play well enough together to give me the width that I need.

But first, as always, comes the sampling. The pattern will be foliage and hummingbirds. I wanted to weave the foliage using white supplementary weft (multiple strands of 30/2 silk) to fill the negative spaces. This means that the foliage pattern would be revealed in the underlying variegated ground cloth. Normally it’s the supplementary weft itself that forms the positive part of the pattern.

This covered book that I created is already living in Australia. I dug up photos to see what the various colors of supplementary weft looked like in the upper and lower foliage patterns. Again, it isn’t variegated thread but rather a combination of four strands of three different colors. In this case the supplementary weft is used as the positive part of the pattern on the green background.
In this example, the gold supplementary weft has filled the negative space around the flower pattern which is revealed in the black ground cloth. The red patterning shows the use of supplementary weft in both positive and negative space.

So, I wound a warp of what I figured would be a suitable width to give me the information I needed for the larger project. With this sample I would find out the number of ends I needed to create X inches of cloth, the number of strands of 30/2 silk that would give good coverage as supplementary weft, the best weight of silk to use as the main weft and the warp span of the longest practical weft float. I took some old foliage patterns that I had created for other projects and altered them to reduce the negative spaces to what I guessed wouldn’t create impractical lengths of floats….the kind that would sag or get hooked on things when the cloth was in use.

The pattern needs to be busy so that there are never any excessively long floats of the white supplementary weft.

I was very happy with the result and made a note not to have the pattern on the real project extend all the way to the selvedges. The first couple of little triangles you see there are where I was testing the ideal number of strands of 30/2 silk to use for the supplementary weft. The 30/2 silk comes from my weaving friend Deanna. We made a swap….a very large cone of 10/2 cotton (which had also been a gift from my friend, Betty) for a cone of 30/2 silk.

Susan’s gift of 20/2 silk is being used as warp alongside the Will’s variegated 10/2s in the real project. Deanna’s 30/2 silk (which in a roundabout way also comes from Betty) is the supplementary weft. I am weaving the generosity of all these fiber friends into this piece!

Off the warping stakes and onto the loom. As usual, when winding wide warps, I wind several small sections removing them one by one from the warping stakes and placing them on the loom beams that are waiting nearby on the floor. I don’t take any risks with having my warping stakes lean, even if ever so slightly, by having too much thread loaded onto them.

The next task was to make 593 heddles.

I placed a couple of cardboard strips in the sheds to help me see if any sections of the warp are set more closely than others…as I’ve said here many times, there are varying degrees of “warp-facedness” which means that some warp threads might be positioned closer together than others. When weaving with supplementary weft I need to weave a little narrower than is my natural tendency so that I make sure that the patterning weft is not exposed at all when it travels between the layers of warp. That can be a bit tricky….fighting against muscle memory.

It’s normally my habit to start with a selvedge in which case I would remove those cardboard strips and start weaving right at the base of the warp. However, I decided to leave them in place this time. Although the two aren’t visible in this photo, I can tell you that the 10/2 silk and doubled 20/2 seem to working together well.

This is the point where I will start weaving the pattern. And here I’ve stopped for the time being while I figure out my design. My sample was on 142 ends. I need to extend it to 1186 ends! I plan to have a strip of pattern the same length as my sample, once again using the supplementary weft to fill the negative space. Then I plan to weave scattered frolicking hummingbirds in white supplementary weft, this time using the variegated thread as the negative space surrounding the figures. I’ll finish by repeating the first strip of pattern. Well, that’s the plan anyway.

I’ll have a choice in the style of hummingbird figures….either using the supplementary weft to “draw” the swirls within their bodies as can be seen on the left, or use the weft to fill in the negative space within their bodies so that the swirls appear the underlying ground cloth, as on the right. I’m leaning towards the latter but maybe a combination of both?

This is what I mean by “wonderfully wide”. Choices, choices, choices. I have another idea, which I won’t go into yet, for including some very quiet pattern in the white sections of warp. I thought of it about two minutes ago! There’s something about writing this blog that helps with the creative process, it seems. The idea is a little mad so I might wait and see how that goes before I reveal it….or not! The madness might be just temporary, lol.

So, thank you so much all my extremely generous fiber friends for these lovely gifts of thread. Here I am weaving in a color palette that is not a common one for me. It does remind me a little, though, of the piece I wove when weaving friend Marilyn let me pick colors from her stash of 10/2 cotton.

Maybe this sunrise I had witnessed with Gwen while in Florida was on my mind at the time……

The lake had alligators in it!

I’ve spent several evenings now just working on the pattern. Let’s see how much progress I’ve made when next we meet…..

Backstrap Weaving – Belt Up

It’s just a short one this week as I’ve had other projects going on lately that have limited my time at the loom. I’m giving myself a bit of time off to write this post and then I’ll be back at them.

My stash of weaving materials has been reduced pretty much to one drawer now, most of it lovely silk in various sizes. I really didn’t have an idea of what I wanted to weave next. As you’ve probably figured out, my projects are born from a desire to just be at my backstrap loom weaving rather than a need for any kind of product.

I opened the drawer to see what would leap out at me and this is where I ended up…

This is the naturally-dyed cotton from Mayan Hands in Guatemala that Kate had given me many years ago. It was what she had left over from a towel weaving kit that she had purchased. The beautiful light blue thread was dyed with indigo. I love the washed-out look it has like a very faded old pair of jeans. The other colors were dyed by me using synthetic dyes….a variety of blues that I had used in other projects.

The light indigo-blue features in this bag for my cotton spinning tools and supplies along with the other shades of blue that I’d dyed myself.

Because my supply of this light blue thread was now so low, I’d need to come up with a smaller project than the tool bag. I decided on a belt using the same structures that I’d used for the bag fabric above.

That fabric was woven using both complementary-warp and complementary-weft structures, a combination that I’ve only quite recently been sampling and using. The darkest blue and light blue sections use the warp threads for making the patterns. In the other horizontal bands of pattern in other shades of blue the weft threads create the figures.

I used the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave for both. I turn the Andean Pebble Weave structure sideways in order to be able to weave it as a weft-faced rather than a warp-faced structure.

I started experimenting and sampling with this a bit over a year ago, first by alternating bands of weft-faced pattern with warp-faced plain weave….

I really enjoyed the way it allowed me to change colors at will. Then I decided to combine complementary-warp and complementary-weft in the one piece, rather than just doing plain weave between the weft-faced sections.

The orange and white sections are complementary-warp and the burgundy and yellow are complementary-weft.

The first challenge was to adjust the way I wove the warp-faced sections so that their width matched those of the wider weft-faced ones.

Then I was able to go on to weave the fabric for the tool bag….

Because both structures are complementary ones, both faces of the cloth show the same figures except that their colors are reversed.

The strap for the bag uses the same two techniques except that I didn’t weave any figures into the warp-faced sections. Using only one color instead of two in the warp-faced sections made the strap less “noisy” against the busy bag fabric.

Using a complementary-warp-float structure, even though it’s just in one solid color, between the weft-faced sections gives a thicker, sturdier band than I would otherwise get with just plain weave.

Now after all that introduction, we finally get to the latest belt project. I wove it in much the same way as the strap above….solid light blue warp-faced sections with no pattern alternating with patterned weft-faced sections. I had to alter the way I did the weft-faced sections so that my little hummingbird figures would be well proportioned. That meant passing my weft over and under groups of fewer warp threads so that the figures wouldn’t turn out stretched and “flattened”.

The little hummingbird figures that I designed in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave normally sit on my bands aligned like this, looking like they’re about to fly off the edge…

Weaving them sideways in the weft-faced structure meant that they would be flying along the length of the belt and be seen the right way up when the belt is worn. (BTW, I did actually try to design a different hummingbird aligned sideways on my charting paper but couldn’t come up with anything that I liked).

And there it is off the loom.

The first little fella’s beak was too short. I don’t think he’ll be able to get at much nectar with that. The split in the band at one end will allow me to accommodate the belt buckle’s “tongue”. This is the first time I’ve woven a belt and thought far enough ahead to weave that split. It certainly makes things easier when adding the buckle later. The other end is a nice selvedge, something that my backstrap loom allows me to easily create, so I don’t need to worry about hemming or otherwise stabilizing it.

I took a walk down to a local store called Hebilandia, which translates to Buckle Land. It’s in the narrow chaotic streets near my home which are packed with fabric and upholstery stores. I’m always glad that that the gentlemen there tolerate my requests for just one of this and one of that. They really are geared up to selling in bulk to professional belt makers.

There I got a buckle, a thingamajig to hold down the excess bit of strap, a metal tab to go on the end (although, it isn’t quite wide enough….not a problem because that end is a selvedge anyway) and some webbing that I used as backing. I always back my belts, even the heavier double weave ones, because I like them good and stiff. After having tried different things with belts over the years, I just go with gluing on the backing. Oh, and while there, I also got the holes punched. It’s such a great little store to have just a few blocks from my home.

Buckle, thingamajig, end tab and holes.

Now I’m pondering this….

Both of these are gifts from Australian fiber friends. Susan gave me that skein of silk many years ago and it caught my eye as a nice thing to dye to combine with the variegated silk that Will gave me on my last visit. I think they might both be 20/2. Now, I’ve never used variegated thread as warp before and I am not quite sure about the best way to use it. Many years ago I was given some stunning Just Our Yarn variegated tencel that I was using as supplementary weft. Most of it got used by my students in workshops and it was absolutely gorgeous as supplementary weft.

I love the mother-of-pearl colors in the thread that Will has given me and am thinking that perhaps I could combine it with a matching solid color in rep weave. But, I don’t know….does anyone use silk for rep weave? It seems like that chunky structure doesn’t suit the delicate nature of silk.

I’ve only ever done two rep weave pieces before in cotton.

But then there’s ikat. I think that dyeing a solid color over an ikat pattern in variegated thread could be interesting. You can see that the last thing I’m thinking about right now is the product! I really don’t need anything. Maybe it could be fabric for a pillow cover? I might have enough thread for the front, or at least part thereof, of a pillow cover which can be backed with something else.

Going through old photos the other day, I saw this one which reminded me that this silk ikat piece is sitting at the bottom of a drawer. The finer patterning is in supplementary weft.

Pillow cover came to mind for this piece too, something for when I am living in Australia, although I’m determined not to get into home decorating when I’m there. I’ll be starting from zero as far as furnishings go and want to keep things as minimal as possible. After clearing out so much stuff from my place here, it’s nice to see how little I need in the way of furnishings….as long as I have something to which I can anchor my backstrap loom!

I’ll keep pondering that variegated silk and let’s see where it takes me. Until next time….