Category: bags

Backstrap Weaving – The Big Bag Theory

In my last post I left you with the fabric that I had woven for pockets for my new tote bag. It’s part of a stash-busting project using the small balls of Omega Sinfonia cotton that I’ve accumulated over the years.

Fabric for two pockets that I wove using the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave. My backstrap loom enables me to create a nice neat third selvedge at the start of the fabric.

Then came the task of weaving the fabric for the body of the bag. Again, I wanted to be able to use up as much of that stash of Omega Sinfonia as possible. I knew that I could over-dye the lighter colors dark blue. But the dark colors would have to be dyed black. There weren’t enough lighter colors to allow me to create entirely blue fabric but I didn’t want the bag to be completely black either. I decided the cloth would be both blue and black. Oh my gosh, I had so many doubts about what this was going to look like!

The fact that each color that I overdyed would give me a different tone of blue and black was another thing to consider. This could be a mess. The differences in tone were not fully apparent until the warp had been wound and spread out before me. I suppose I could have taken the time to arrange the stripes in some sort of clever Fibonacci sequence of widths but once the warp was wound and on the loom beams, I wasn’t keen on fiddling around with it.

You might notice the absence of a coil rod on this warp. I’m in the habit of using one when I do warp-faced plain weave using material that has little to no stretch. Inserting one locks the two layers of threads together and stops them from see-sawing back and forth around the warp beam as I operate the loom. That see-sawing can cause the cloth to form a corrugated look. This time, I wove a inch or so at the far end of the warp to lock the two layers together instead before turning the loom around to start weaving at the knot-less “good” end.

I planned the cloth to be 19 inches wide. That’s a fair bit wider than what I usually have on my backstrap loom but certainly not as wide as the cloth I have seen on the backstrap looms of weavers in Indonesia and other parts of SE Asia. The widest cloth that I have seen on a backstrap loom in my travels in South America was 39 inches. It was light cotton cloth and the weaver had to stand to weave it.

This weaver in Peru stands weaves a wide, light, cotton ikat warp.

I had to get out the long sticks and swords.

The sword on the right was just right for this project.
Laying the pocket fabric on top to see if I could imagine what the end product would look like.
Almost there.

Omega Sinfonia is quite hefty thread compared with what I have become used to using over recent years and so it was quite a work-out operating the loom and beating. My longest sword is not a particularly hefty one.

Before and after wet-finishing and pressing. The straps in the picture on the right don’t belong to this bag. I had just placed the cloth on top of another tote that I own to get an idea of strap placement.

The original idea had been to have two outer pockets, one on each side, showing the two faces of the Andean Pebble Weave pattern. In the end I went with one outside and one inside pocket instead. It was a fairly basic sewing project. I created box corners and then set about weaving the straps.

It has already been on its first grocery-shopping outing….

Its a winner. I’m really pleased with it. Well, that took care of about a third of the Omega Sinfonia scraps. What’s next? I have two kinds of reds and three kinds of browns left, none of which look good together, and a bunch of other odds and ends. I have in fact used red and brown together before but I guess that they just have to be the right kinds of red and brown in order to work…

Two wool panels that I wove and later sewed together to make a lap blanket.

People often ask me how I go about weaving wider pieces. For me, it’s all about the warping. Once a good evenly tensioned warp has been created and you are seated at the loom, there’s not a whole lot of difference in the process of dressing the warp and weaving. Additional sticks and other tools might be needed but operating the backstrap loom with a wide warp works on the same body-movement principles as with a narrow warp. It just requires more physical effort.

I have a few tips for creating and managing wider warps. I stress that this is just the way I do it. There are many different ways and of course, no one single correct way. This isn’t a step-by-step description…just some tips that I can share after perhaps having made every possible mistake over the years.

Tip 1: Make sure you have a stable warping set-up with stakes that aren’t going to shift or bend:

I always warp in sections and won’t pile up any more than two inches of threads on my warping stakes to avoid having them lean. I tie off and remove each section from the stakes and place them on beams and cross sticks that are waiting on the floor. Always use safety strings in case there’s an accident along the way!

First of several sections of a silk warp I created some time ago removed from the warping stakes and placed on beams and cross sticks on the floor.
This is the second warp that I created after returning from my first weaving lessons in Peru in 1996. I was in a big hurry to create a wide piece using both the Andean Pebble Weave and supplementary-warp structures that I had been taught but I didn’t yet have a good warping set-up. Take a look at the disaster on the warp beam!

Tip 2: Know your yarn, know your width, know your technique:

What I am saying is, don’t go wide with a yarn you have never used before. First weave a decent-sized sample.

I know that some people don’t bother with sampling but I like to know the width I am aiming for rather than just warping up and seeing what turns out. So, there is a lot of measuring and calculating that goes on based on samples that I have woven, preferably fairly recently, with the yarn I plan to use. I had a sample using the Omega Sinfonia thread for my bag project in both warp-faced plain weave and Andean Pebble Weave and used it to make my calculations. That way I knew exactly the number of ends I would need for each of the two structures to create my 9-inch-wide pocket fabric. The plain weave sections in the pocket actually came out slightly wider than expected (perhaps my sample had been too old and I have since then unconsciously changed the way I handle the weft). I was able to use that updated information to plan the warp-faced plain-weave cloth for the body of the bag.

One of my sampling warps. This one was more about sampling a motif that I was designing but it also gave me a chance to update the ends-per-inch information that I have for this 20/2 cotton warp as I plan to use this thread as part of my next project. It turned out that my epi info hasn’t changed since the last time I worked with this thread.

My brother still has the wedge-shaped wall hanging that I had gifted to my mum back in the early days. I had woven it with new-to-me yarn, so no sampling had been done, and I started off too narrow. It started to widen and didn’t stop widening all the way to the end. There’s an inch difference in width from start to finish. But because it never settled down into a consistent width, the gradual widening almost looks intentional.

Another thing worth mentioning that applies to wide warps more than narrow ones, is that I find it best to set up my loom in one place at one angle and then keep it there for the duration of the project. I had started my mum’s wall hanging in Bolivia and taken it unfinished to Australia. It got set up in a few different places at various angles while I struggled to finish it in time. I even had to work on the short warp with the warp beam awkwardly lodged behind my feet for a while (I didn’t have another rod or cord handy to extend its length). That awkwardness accounts for the fact that the cloth isn’t straight.

Many lessons were learned from this one project from back in the day.

I wouldn’t attempt a wide piece with a technique that I had just recently learned either. (Obviously I hadn’t added this to my advice list on that red warp back in 1996!)

Tip 3: Warp undisturbed and don’t disturb the warp:

Have everything you need for warping close at hand including the loom bars and cross sticks….scissors, rubber bands or tape, lashing string, string for tying off groups of warps for counting etc.

Try to warp in one uninterrupted session…turn off the kettle, put the cat out, ignore the phone, forget that cup of coffee! It’s amazing how things can change from one day to the next. I never leave a warp half-done until the next day.

Once you have wound that beautifully-tensioned warp, do your very best not to disturb it. When I slide a section of warp off the warping board I try to keep my hand under the ends so that they are all lying flat across my fingers and not bunching up. Then I place them very carefully onto the beams. This saves a lot of tugging and rearranging later when I’m seated with the warp and tension and getting ready to weave. A lot of tugging can mess up your tension. Below right, you can see how I place my hand to lift the threads off the warping stake. Another thing you can do is chain thread around groups of threads as I’ve done on the red warp. It can help stop threads in a larger section of warp from shifting and climbing on top of each other, which all means less work and less time spent straightening things out later. One of my Guatemalan teachers did this.

Tip 4: Slow and steady…take the time to set-up and start well:

If necessary, settle the threads one by one along the cloth beam untwisting any that have overlapped. I learned to love doing this from my teacher in Guatemala. She so calmly and patiently lifted each thread on the tip of her pointed sick and placed it on the beam and I’ve learned to do the same. This is not entirely necessary if you are starting with a fringe and using waste yarn or cardboard strips as weft for your first few inches, but if you’re going for a third selvedge, this exercise will give you the neatest possible start.

Learning the patterning technique with supplementary weft with my weaving teacher in Guatemala. The cloth did not have a third selvedge. She carefully arranged the threads along her cloth beam which enabled her to press her first shots of weft hard against the beam for the least possible amount of loom waste.

Then I measure sections so that I know that my sett is consistent the whole way across the warp. There are varying degrees of “warp-facedness”. In some sections your threads might be crammed up tightly next to each other. In others they might be just a hair’s breadth apart. Mine tend to be the latter and I want that to be consistent. It’s especially hard to tell when you are working with dark colors or very fine threads. The overall width might be correct but the warp threads may still not be evenly distributed across that width.

I calculate the width that each of those sections that I removed from my warping stakes should be and make sure that the threads in each section are settled at that width. I can sometimes use up a whole morning fiddling around with this! However, with the right amount of prep, once I have thrown the first shots of weft and measured once again, I know that all will be smooth sailing from there on…just pure fun!

I’m going to finish with the The Big Bag again because after spending so much time doubting the success of this project, I now love it so much!

Backstrap Weaving – Winter Colors

I wonder what colors spring to mind when you think of winter…blues, greys, winter white? As I sit here in shorts and a tank top, I have to remind myself that it’s actually winter here in the tropical lowland part of Bolivia in which I live. It’s the same in the fall when flowers are still blooming and the city is alive with the bright colors and fragrances that are usually associated with spring. It’s easy to forget that the leaves in the fall season in other places are turning all sorts of stunning colors.

I was lucky to have been visiting my friend Lausanne in Vermont one year around the Columbus Day weekend.
One sign for me that the seasons have changed is when the rays from the low winter sun find their way through my bedroom window to fall softly across my work at my backstrap loom. At other times of year, my windows ae blacked out to keep out the heat.

I guess all this has been on my mind lately because I am in the midst of a long move back to Australia to a place that has four very distinct seasons. It will be a little too cold in winter for my liking but hey, I lived at the southern-most tip of the South American mainland for five years and spent eleven seasons living in ski resorts. I’m no stranger to cold…just getting fussy in my old age! I do look forward to the more classic fall colors but I’ve heard that the winters can be grey and foggy. The locals like to call that mountain mist “the champagne air”.

So, what are winter colors here in Santa Cruz?…all the bright colors of tropical fruits and flowers.

I love going out for a late afternoon stroll and coming home with these little tastes of sunshine. Pineapple and papaya vendors selling slices are scattered about the street markets ready to skin, de-seed and chop just the right amount for you.

And in keeping with that, I’ve had some quite bright colors on my loom lately. As you know, I am only working with yarn that I have stashed away here…no new purchases. I decided to pull out the tub of Omega Sinfonia cotton thread that I often use to prepare workshop samples. It’s a riot of tiny balls left over from years of workshop prep. I almost took one look at the mess and turned around to put it straight back into the closet. The worst part was that what looked like the bigger balls of thread were actually made up of dozens of tiny quantities all rolled into one ball.

From the days when my living room would look like a yarn jungle with piles and piles of Omega Sinfonia workshop warps.

In my last post, I talked about weaving a grocery tote using the Mayan Hands naturally-dyed cotton but I just couldn’t get inspired. I turned to the Omega Sinfonia instead and decided for a start to scrape together enough to dye navy blue for outer pockets for the tote bag. If I wove the pockets in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave, I could show both faces of the cloth…one pocket on each side of the bag displaying each of the two faces.

As for the rest of the bag, well you know my style….I’ll figure that out later. I grabbed some other colors from the tub and set out to plan a pattern…something very colorful and jolly. I was going to say spring-like but it would actually be all-year-round-like here where I live. It would certainly be something lively to brighten the days of “champagne air” when I end up living in Katoomba.

Then it occurred to me that I had never actually woven anything substantial with this thread and that I would have to, therefore, sample….eye roll…..I wasn’t in the mood for sampling! But no, fortunately, I remembered that I had put together a warp for the cover of my video class, Operating a Backstrap Loom, in good ol’ Omega Sinfonia.

My video class that is available to stream on Taproot Video. There might even be some copies of the DVD left.

Having done its job as the DVD cover, the warp had sat unloved in a drawer for quite some time until I had the idea to unweave that small woven section and turn it into a backstrap with a bit of pick-up patterning. I took it traveling.

Weaving outdoors in beautiful Maine.
The finished backstrap which happens to be the one that I am currently using (almost all the others are now living in Australia)

Speaking of weaving one’s own backstrap, let me show the one that Natalie wove using the instructions in my free tutorial here on my blog that includes video clips. I love how the yarn she used has created its own pattern.

Backstrap woven on a backstrap loom by Natalie Marie Robinson.

So, I had all I needed to be able to make my width calculations, I dyed the scraps navy blue and drew up an idea.

Not my usual color palette and way out of my safe color comfort zone, to be honest, but it looked okay on paper, so why not?
Off paper and onto yarn, the warp kind of freaked me out…argh, I didn’t know if I could live with those colors.

I remembered a colorful warp that I had taken traveling with me years ago…hastily put together the night before I had left. I had hated it so much that it never left my bag. But I did eventually weave it when I got home and made it into a sewing kit pouch. It had grown on me, and I still like it.

Fortunately this latest warp also grew on me. I think the pockets will look very jolly against a dark solid-color bag.

I haven’t woven using thread this size in ages. It wove up so quickly!

All these patterns are in my Complementary-warp Pattern Book. If you have followed my instructions for either complementary-warp pick-up or Andean Pebble Weave, you’ll be able to weave these.

I wove 20″ on this 26″-warp, enough for the two pockets and some extra just in case. You’ll need to put on your sunglasses to look at the other face!

I love the fact that my backstrap loom allows me to create lovely neat third selvedges…

A third selvedge means one fewer hem to sew and saves a little warp waste at the start.

I have what you might call an unconventional way of setting up to create my third selvedge in that I don’t do it the way my teachers here in South America showed me. But then who is to say what is “conventional” when it comes to this kind of thing? You can see the way my indigenous teachers do it here. I talk about how I do it here. That link takes you one of my FAQ pages….a resource that is often overlooked by my readers or perhaps forgotten. In my latest project I used an umbrella rib as the header to create my third selvedge.

To create the neatest third selvedge, you do need to dedicate some time to making sure the warp threads are all well settled in their correct positions before you start weaving. Then you open a shed and beat really well against the beam. When doing the four-stake warping that I show in Method 2 in my free warping video, paying attention to how the doubled threads pass around the two end stakes will make all the difference to the amount of time you need to spend tidying up before you start weaving. Try to have them pass consistently with one of the two colors always sitting above the other on the stakes. Of course, if you plan to start with a fringe, none of this matters.

In the meantime, another pouch got lined with a stitched shibori learning piece. This time there was an attempt to create a bird. I will do better next time. You probably know where this is heading and perhaps hummingbirds will make their appearance soon.

You could turn the bird figure upside down and call it a stem and flower.

I scoured the fabric on which the shibori pieces sits in the hope that I can do some stitched resist on it. I am intrigued by the idea of using the technique on printed fabric. I know that I’ll have to place the figures carefully or the original dark blues of the cloth and the dark dye color will just merge. If that happens, the figures won’t have clearly defined outlines.

I threw a strip of this scoured fabric into the dye pot when I was dyeing the Sinfonia thread blue. The scouring did the trick and the fabric took up the dye nicely. You can only faintly make out the pattern and I think this will be a nice effect.

A much better dye result than my experiment with the fabric that had simply been washed with regular laundry detergent.

I’ll finish with a quick reminder of the pages on this blog that list and provide links to my free tutorials and video clips. These may not be immediately obvious to those viewing the blog on certain devices. Check them out 🙂 See you next time.

Backstrap Weaving – Building the Bag

The good news is that I FOUND IT! If you read my last blog post, you’ll know what I’m talking about….the lost balls and skeins of silk that I had dyed with cochineal bugs. It had been a quite a task dyeing that silk as I slowly learned by trial-and-error about just some of the mysteries of dyeing with cochineal. It had got me through the tedium of being stuck indoors during the 36-day general strike that we had here last November. I had tucked all the thread away in a small zippered pouch and then misplaced it. The thing is that my apartment is tiny and its pretty hard to lose anything here. That made it all the more frustrating.

As expected, it turned up in a very unexpected place at a time when I wasn’t even looking for it. It was in a different zippered bag on a shelf in the bathroom of all places. It was safely tucked away in a very sweet zippered bag that I had got for a mere $3 at a used clothing store while visiting Washington State in the US. I had been thrilled with this find. It’s made of backstrap-loom-woven cotton cloth that was woven by the Women’s Skills Development Project in Pokhara, Nepal. I often use it as my toiletries bag when I travel. I can’t think of anything more perfect for me with its little label displaying a weaver at her backstrap loom. It’s beautifully put together and was in brand new condition when I bought it.

In this picture it sits on another piece of backstrap-loom-woven fabric that my aunt brought back from a trip to India. It’s an interesting combination of warp-float patterning, supplementary weft and weft twining. I’ve been twice to Nepal but never as a weaver. I would love to return and trek with a spindle and loom and see how I can connect with women along the way.

I look at my little bag from Nepal and wonder how long it took the weavers to construct it. I know, I know….I’m not a fan of the “how long did it take?” question but I can’t help wanting to compare their construction process to mine. The black bands around the mouth and base finish it so beautifully. You can barely make out the seam where they start and finish. Only the base is lined and covers the seam where the base meets the sides. I watch Handymum’s videos on Facebook and marvel at how she cuts and prepares all the parts for her bag projects. She then methodically sews everything in place and just leaves a small opening through which she eventually pushes all the fabric to reveal the finished bag right side out with everything in place ready to go. It’s like magic to me!

I tend to just make things up as I go and admit that I really don’t have much idea about what I am doing as I hand-stitch my bag projects. I look at pictures that I see online and take it from there. I am not looking for speed. I love sitting and slowly hand-stitching but I can never truly be sure about the success of a project at any point in the process. There’s almost as much time spent de-constructing as constructing and this project was no exception. But when its finally done, it’s very satisfying!

As you know, it started with uncovering the ply-split strap in my closet and deciding that it would look nice as the sides and base of a bag. How I was going to sew this rather thick and stiff strap to my backstrap-loom-woven fabric, I had no idea. That’s all part of my make-it-up-as-I-go style. I’ll just figure that out later. In the meantime, I’d go to all the trouble of weaving an ikat patterned piece to use as the outer pocket. There was wrapping and unwrapping of ikat tape and three dye baths. And then onward to the bag itself. After all that effort I’d just have to make it work.

Two hundred and sixty-eight heddles later came the black fabric for the body of the bag. I scraped together several colors of yarn and dyed them all black. Surprisingly they all came out with the same intensity of black color.

Construction underway….or should I say, construction, de-construction, re-construction. Still unsure at this point if I was going to be completely wasting my time.

Let me tell you that when you cut a ply-split band, it goes completely bonkers. I sewed back and forth across the band to secure it before cutting. All the twisted cords immediately unraveled and splayed out wildly in all directions. Help! I remembered that I had a leather backstrap that had been given to me by a guild. It had been part of one their deceased member’s estates. It was in just the right shade of brown. It would often be the first backstrap that I would put my hand on when I leaned over from my seat on the floor to open the bottom drawer and it got quite a lot of use. I hope that its former owner wouldn’t have minded my cutting it up in order to rescue this project by covering and protecting the end of the cut ply-split band.

With the leather in place and the bands for the zippered top woven and sewn into place, I was starting to think that maybe this project was going to be a success after all. I only then prepared the lining. It had to be lined. The wild ends of the ply-split band on the inside needed to be hidden! Where would the straps go? No idea at this point. I was still just making it up as I went.

This is basically a mini backpack that is designed to be slung over one shoulder. I haven’t yet been able to find a one-inch length-adjustment buckle and so I had to improvise. The strap can be attached on the left or right depending on the shoulder I want to use. The leather backstrap yet again came to the rescue.

Done! It’s ready to use now but I’ll keep looking for that length-adjustment buckle so that I can change from double d-rings to a hook. I just had to get this finished because I know that if I left it until I found the buckle, it would never get done. If I were to do it over, I’d have the zipper go down another couple of inches. Making it up as you go is kind of fun but sometimes leads to poor decisions.

Another thing that I have been doing on the side is preparing some print fabric for another stitched shibori project. I brought back some soda ash with me from my last trip to Australia (I hadn’t been able to find a way here to buy it that didn’t involve industry-sized quantities). I dismantled a Vera Bradley toiletries bag that I no longer use…it’s too big! (this might give you a clue as to what led me to the bathroom shelf to eventually find those balls of cochineal silk) because the fabric is so pretty and I’ve been busy washing and scouring it. I’m only guessing that it’s 100% cotton as there isn’t a sewn-in label. A burn test seemed to indicate that it most likely is. I wonder how well I can expect dye to cover the print.

What’s next on the loom? Well, as you know, I am weaving only from stash and I still have a fair bit of this Mayan Hands cotton that my friend Kate gave me several years ago. This is the cotton that I used to weave the fabric for my cotton spinning bag that you see below. I also used it to weave the straps for the bag in this post. I wove them in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave in just one solid color and they are good and sturdy.

If I have enough yarn, I’d like to weave a very brightly colored tote bag for grocery shopping, mostly in plain weave and with a little bit of pick-up patterning. I take four cloth bags with me to the store, two slung over each shoulder and walk the seven blocks there and seven back. The bags and the straps in particular need to be good and strong and comfortable in order to support the weight of the groceries over that distance. The bags are not just riding from store to vehicle in a shopping cart. Some of my bags are weaving conference tote bags that are looking a bit shabby now. I still use the one from CNCH 2010! It has been the best of all the conference totes I have.

I’ll finish by telling you about the latest issue of Tiny Studio Creative Life magazine in which I have an article. The theme of the latest issue is Magic and I really enjoyed writing about the science of the craft and the magic of the art of creating cloth on a backstrap loom.

Editor Suzy Brown describes the magazine as being for spinners and yarn crafters and she does a beautiful job putting each issue together. Once again I have to thank her for laying out my article so nicely. The magazine is available in both digital and print formats and you can buy single issues or subscribe to receive them quarterly. It’s been wonderful watching Suzy build this business and create an international community of fans from her home in New Zealand.

Backstrap Weaving – Where is it?

The slooooow move back to Australia is presenting some problems. One of them could have been easily solved by simply making a list of things that I have taken over there so far. That would save me from having the annoying ”Where is it?” question occupying so much of my time.

For example, I can’t find the silk that I dyed with cochineal last year. I have a certain photography spot beneath the bedroom window and I remember removing from it the little zippered bag that holds all those silk cochineal-dyed balls of thread so that I could place an item to be photographed. Now where the heck did I put that zippered bag? If I can’t find it here, surely that means that I must have taken it to Australia. But that doesn’t make sense. I wanted all of my yarn stash to be here so that I have things to work on between trips to Australia.

Anyway, something good comes from combing through plastic bags and cupboards….you find other stuff. You get to say….”Ooooh, I’d forgotten all about you” and feel all warm and fuzzy with the memories that the unexpected item triggers.

The first example of this was the band woven from my own handspun llama fiber that I uncovered in the closet. That brought back memories of a trip to Bolivia’s amazing Uyuni salt lake way back in 2002. It was on that trip that I met a farmer who sold me bags of llama fiber. I was grateful to be able to take the fiber back with me to spin in the fiber-less tropical lowlands in which I live.

I wove a long band from the mill-spun wool singles yarn that you see in the photo, cut it in two and used it to flank the llama band. I joined the three pieces with the tiniest of seams and it has become the slip case for my pin loom. What can I say?…. I love to weave and anything that is not nailed down around here will eventually get its own woven pouch.

Here’s a look at just some of the black-and-white bags, pouches and slip cases that house all manner of things around my home. They showcase a variety of techniques. Top left is a two-color ikat with a little supplementary weft patterning at the bottom. Top right is a shoulder bag patterned in the intermesh structure with a little weft substitution at the bottom. Bottom left is a three-color ikat using my own handspun cotton. Bottom right is a laptop slip case patterned in a single-faced two-color warp-float structure.

I like that I can keep learning and practicing stitched shibori techniques and use the learning pieces to line my latest creations.

I never seem to decide on the lining until I have finished sewing the bag which means that I get a lot of practice installing drop-in linings. This third stitched shibori project taught me about the effect of different spacing in the stitches and now lines the llama-band bag.

Find Number Two: This was some cotton fabric that I had picked up from a give-away box at a guild meeting I had attended years ago. I had no plans to sew it into anything. I took it because I like to use fabric as backdrops for some of my photos and no one else seemed to to want it. This find gave me the idea of trying the stitched resist technique on print fabric rather than plain white. I gave the fabric a quick wash in hot water which was obviously not enough to truly scour it and make it ready-to-dye. This was just a sample and I wasn’t willing to go to too much trouble. It was okay for a quick experiment and I think this idea is worth pursuing. Ideally, I would have the surrounding print almost totally covered by the dark dye. I don’t know if that’s even possible but I will do some research and put more effort into the scouring next time.

Flower pattern idea for stitched shibori from the website of Townhill Studio where you’ll find lots of tips and tutorials.

Find Number Three: This was a ball of indigo-dyed reeled silk that a former English teaching colleague had brought back for me from Japan. Dear Sayuri (r.i.p) had totally surprised me with this thoughtful gift. She was about the only one among my many teaching colleagues here who showed any interest in what I do but even so, I had never expected her to bring back such a treasure for me. I remember that I had been initially disappointed because my fingers had been stained blue as I was winding the thread off the skein into a ball. I wasn’t sure how that would affect my weaving with it and that might be why I set it aside all those years ago.

I decided that it was time I did something with this gift. I wound some off into skeins and washed them over and over until all the blue had been released. The difference in color as it appears in the photo is subtle but is actually quite significant. I prefer the post-wash color. This silk and some pictures that I had seen of indigo-dyed clothing worn by Chinese minority groups gave me the idea to weave something using a motif that had a kind of eastern flavor. I set about designing one to be woven with supplementary weft.

I used several strands of two colors of silk on a base of 20/2 cotton for my sampling. I love how a backstrap loom allows me to whip up these small samples without wasting too much thread. It took a couple of attempts to get something I liked. That first one was wrong! I was happy with this and was just getting down to the number-crunching part of the preparation process (I like this part because I get to write in my weaving journal with its handwoven cover) when I got distracted by Find Number Four.

Many years ago, I had bought these two ply-split straps. They were made in Colombia by Wayuu artisans who generally use them as straps for their crocheted mochila bags. In this case, they were being sold online as guitar straps but did not come with any hardware. I had become fascinated with the mochila bags and the band weaving of the Wayuu people after buying Dutch weaver Mirja Wark’s book on the subjects back in 2011. My Dutch friend, Anna, (if you are long-time follower of my blog, you might remember “bicycle Anna”) had arranged to get this book from the Netherlands to me here in Bolivia. The following year, 2012, I actually had the opportunity to travel to the Netherlands and spend a day with Mirja Wark. You can see that my recent unearthing of these these two straps has also unearthed a whole string of lovely memories.

My friend Dorothy owns this Wayuu mochila bag with its ply-split strap.

I am usually pretty good at focusing on one weaving project at a time. I may take time out to spin some cotton, weave a pin-loom square or stitch some shibori cloth but once I have chosen a weaving project, I usually stick with it from start to finish. Not so this time. The “eastern” project has been set aside so that I can plan a bag around the darker of the two ply-split straps. I had the idea of using the strap as the sides and base of a plain black bag and weaving an ikat patterned outer pocket to complement the strap pattern.

Wrapping warp threads with tape to resist the first of the three dye colors.

And away we go. I planned a very simple ikat pattern to mimic the “M” shapes in the ply-split strap. I used 20/2 cotton. I have woven two ikat projects with this weight of cotton in the past. The first was the two-color drawstring bag that appeared in the photo near the start of this post. The second was this one in three colors….

These were the pieces that would help me make my calculations. In my latest project I would use four colors. I wrapped bundles of thread that were twice the size of those that I had used in the first two projects. That fact, together with the small spacing between the wrappings, meant that the dense bundles of threads emerging from the wrappings did not have much room in which to spread and evenly take up the dye all the way up to the very edges of the wraps. I spotted the problem after the first dye bath using the tan color but it was too late to fix. I didn’t want to throw it into a second tan bath because I figured it would darken the color too much. In the subsequent brown and black dye baths I worked on moving the threads (as much as I could with rubber-gloved fingers) so that the dye would penetrate all the way to the edge of the wrappings. Every project carries a lesson. I just have to make sure that I add that to my notes….don’t make the bundles too thick if the wrappings are going to be placed close together.

The completed pocket fabric. The tan areas have little fringes of white due to the problem mentioned above.

Sides and base of bag….done. Outer pocket…mostly done. I am deciding on whether it needs a zip. I am going to scrape together thread to dye black for the body of the bag (remember that I’m trying to work solely from stash and so that will mean over-dyeing some colors black). I know from past experience that I’ll most likely end up with various intensities of black color as a result but that could be interesting. As for the shape of the bag…that’s yet to be decided. I wonder if I can actually figure out the lining this time before I sew the bag.

I still haven’t found the cochineal-dyed silk. But I am sufficiently distracted now. It will no doubt turn up when and where I least expect it to. Looking for it has resulted in some beautiful memory trips, though!

Backstrap Weaving – Taking Flight

The Jaunty Bag is finished and will be taking flight with me tomorrow night to Australia. It’s stuffed full of Upland white cotton sliver, my mortar spinning bowl, and takli spindle. I don’t plan to spin on the flight although I wish I could. I don’t think my fellow passengers would appreciate having my extended arm in their faces.

It’s one heck of a trip…60 hours from door to door. There’s a reason why some tickets are less expensive than others! At least I arrive at my brother’s place in the evening and can go straight to bed. A million thanks to my weaving friend Emerald who will help me out with my 150lbs of luggage (this is Phase 1 of my eventual move back to Australia) while waiting in Sydney for the train up north. The hardest thing about traveling alone with so much luggage is queuing to buy food and then somehow finding a hand free to carry it away, and going to the restroom.

As for the Jaunty Bag, here’s where I left it in my last post…

The bag had been constructed and I was weaving the strap. I used the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave in only one color rather than two for the warp-faced part of the strap. I turned Andean Pebble Weave sideways and wove it using weft for the little figured squares. I had planned to weave the strap with four selvedges but overestimated the amount of take-up. With four selvedges the strap would be too long. But I am crazy and created the four selvedges anyway because it’s good experience! As I mentioned in a previous post, I find it much easier to fill the gap between the two ends of weaving with weft-faced weaving rather than warp-faced.

I cut off the excess length of band and sewed it onto the bag. It doesn’t have its lining yet but I did buy a book on stitched shibori which is the technique I would like to use for the lining. When I looked online again for that thirty-five-dollar Stitched Shibori book, it had magically become twenty-six dollars. I’ll have plenty of flight time in which to read it. Even without its lining the Jaunty Bag will go traveling with me.

I haven’t been back to Australia in three and a half years and I haven’t been there in the summer months since 2014. I’m not teaching on this trip because I have no room for any workshop equipment but I will meet up with a weaving friend or two just to have some fun weaving together. I wonder if I’ll be able to attend the guild meeting in Sydney.

I’ll be back in March. There’ll be lots of thinking time on flights to plan my next project. I’m not going to bring back any yarn (Ha! Lets see if I stick to that plan). Working with dwindling yarn stash throughout the pandemic and these last years has been a really good experience and I’d like to keep that going. I will however, bring back some acid dyes.

I guess I’ll see you when I get back to Bolivia. I’ll be posting Aussie things that catch my eye on my personal Facebook account.