Category: Bolivia

Backstrap Weaving- A Word or Two and a Video on Warping.

I love how easy it is to warp for backstrap weaving especially after reading and hearing about what is involved with warping those bigger table and floor looms-all that threading! However, finding the place and equipment for warping for the backstrap loom is often the problem. Finding the sticks  to put a loom together seems to be relatively easy, making a nice beater takes a little time and thought but where and how to wind that warp-now that can be tricky.

As you can see above, my first weaving teachers in Peru taught me to make tiny bands using a tiny warping board. I learned two techniques with them and was eager when I got back to my home in Chile to incorporate both into one large piece.

Perhaps a  little over ambitious but you can see the results of my attempts to wind a longer wider warp. My warping stakes leaned horribly and I ended up with this wonky thing-look at the far loom bar and the tilt on it! Firmly grounded warping stakes are a must.

Well,  I persevered and put a lot of work into that piece but it was never quite right. At least I was satisfied that I could weave the techniques without the supervision of  my teachers.The piece itself ended up in a box. Recently I got it out and salvaged what I could and am now using it to cover some small photo albums that I take with me on my travels.

The colors and layout were inspired by woven sashes that I had seen on Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca,  Peru.

Photo album covers made with the two patterning tecnhiques I learned in Huancayo, Peru.

A year later I went to Bolivia and studied with two sisters in Potosi. They weave their large pieces on a staked-out ground loom and only use a backstrap set-up for small bands. I love the way they warp there. Two women seat themselves at each end of the loom and roll the ball of yarn back and forth while winding the figure-of-eight. The only problem–you tend to talk too much and lose count. Neither of us was counting in our native language-Hilda’s being Quechua and mine, of course, English. Between that and the chatting we lost count many times!

We are using respun acrylic yarn in the bright colors that the weavers in Potosi love. With two people, this would be a great way to direct warp for backstrap weaving.

The weaving I worked on in Potosi is almost finished here. It is a four-selvedge piece and there are a couple of inches to go to close the gap. It took all day to weave that last bit!
Warping the Potosi way (almost)

Probably nostalgia for the fun I had had with Hilda and her sister Julia in Potosi led me to try the following way of warping  when I got back home to Chile.

I can tell you right now that it is not as entertaining to do alone and it is pretty slow and difficult trying to manage two colors at once as you need to do for double weave and complimentary warp weaves.

Neverthless I got this warp done, it was well tensioned and even and I wove a big bold design inspired by designs of the Mapuche people of central Chile and Argentina.

One of the Mapuche inspired designs I wove into the above piece.

I traveled a lot more, met many weavers and saw a lot more ways to warp for a variety of looms and techniques, some of which I’d like to share with you here.

Making a dovetail warp for the collar of a poncho in Otavalo, Ecuador. Note the horizontal bar that helps stop the stakes from leaning in towards each other.
In Salasaca, my teacher Felipe wound a mini dovetail warp for me to take home just in case I forgot how to make one for the belt weaving technique he taught me. This was put together hastily. The sticks leaned and the resulting warp was crooked but it was just meant as a reminder and served its purpose..
Look at this beauty from Guatemala at a nice height so you can stroll up and down with your yarn.
Warping for a hammock in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. This would certainly give you a work out.
With my teacher, Trini, looking on I am learning to make a dovetail warp for a mini hammock in Zapote, Ecuador
Probably the set-up I would most like to have–just the 5 stakes that my teacher in Santa Catarina Palopo is using here.
My favorite way—group warping! We are making a straight warp here with stakes and metal rods driven into the ground-Salasaca, Ecuador.

Probably the most interesting system I saw, which, unfortunately, was impossible to photograph, was near Huancayo, Peru where a woman had stakes embedded in the walls of the hall of her home at chest level so she just had to walk up and down the length of the hall to warp. Now if only I had a longer hall……….

So what do you do if you don’t have a warping board? I have seen a Youtube video where a guy wedges stakes between books in his book case and warps around those.

I was lucky to have this chair to use when I first got settled in here in Bolivia.  It was useful for narrow projects- practice bands, small bags and bookmarks.

The way that I showed in my WeaveZine article using clamps  is fine as long as you can clamp those stakes down really well . Don’t use your good table for this. I have heard of people turning chairs and tables upside down and using the legs. I once used a coat rack in a hostel room where I was staying. Whatever way your creativity and circumstances lead you, just make sure that the stakes or posts are very well grounded and will not lean in at all as you wind your warp. Even the smallest amount of lean will make a difference.

If you see yourself continuing in backstrap weaving and making longer and wider pieces, it will be worthwhile buying a warping board or making something sturdy and more permanent. It doesn’t need to be fancy as you can see from my little ”beauty” here.

This allows me to wind a 36”  long warp which I have used to make shoulder bags, sets of three mug rugs, placemats, table runners, pillow covers  and wall hangings. For making longer pieces such as belts and guitar straps, I have had to get creative.

Basic warping involves winding your yarn around two stakes, like those seen above, in a simple figure-of-eight path. Your loom bars will replace the two warping stakes and the cross you have created will allow you to set up your two sheds using a shed rod and continuous string heddles. I often put a second cross in once my warp is on the loom. (More about that in a future post)

Warping with a single color

If you want to weave a  piece with horizontal stripes in two colors or weave simple warp float patterns or any other complementary warp technique you will need to wind two colors together. Again, this can be done on just two stakes. I like to place my balls of yarn in flower pots so they don’t roll about and get tangled. Other hints and tips will come up in future posts or you can find them in the Backstrap Weaving Group forum at Weavolution.

Winding red  and yellow yarns together
Preparing to wind 2 colors together on my smaller warping board.  Note the large loop of yarn around the warping stake which can be easily slipped off the stake and onto your loom bar.
Warping with 2 colors together will result in a cross like this.
The colors on this tiny band can then be rearranged so that the original cross can be replaced by a new one where each color along with the green borders is in its own shed.
Many Andean weaves are complementary warp weaves and require an arrangement of warps into sheds of two colors as shown above right. This arrangement of warps will allow you to weave something as simple as horizontal stripes or more complex warp float patterned weaves.

FOR THE ADVENTUROUS!!

The following is a video from my Flickr page which shows how I was taught in Peru to warp with two colors using four stakes. The colors are separated– each color into its own shed on the warping board itself as you warp–fast and efficient and especially recommended for wide warps. (The two additional stakes that you see in the video are temporarily fixed to the warping board with ”blu-tack”).

Just to finish off, here is what I am working on at the moment……

Two-weft double weave piece in progress

I fell in love with this design the moment I saw it posted at Weavolution. A member had woven a reproduction of a tablet woven curtain that hangs in a cave church in Abba Yohanni, Ethoipia. These curtains were produced and hung in many such churches in Ethiopia in the 17th Century. Rob S, who wove the reproduction, used over 300 tablets. This is just a small part of the overall curtain design. I am weaving it  in two-weft double weave. I have a strip of double weave bordered by plain weave. One weft weaves the plain weave and upper layer of the double weave. The second weft weaves the lower layer of the double weave.

This is quite a change after making all those colorful key fobs but now I have to deal with the black picking up every single speck of dust in the house! I hope to now reverse the pattern and weave a white motif on a black base. I am not sure what I will make of this piece. I’ll decide when it is done. 🙂

Backstrap Weaving-Backstrapped Bookmarks and the Lovely Llama

A bevy of backstrapped bookmarks

My favorite ”on the road”  project is weaving bookmarks. Many times I find myself at night in a deserted hostel in some small town with no internet access and nothing to do so I entertain myself by weaving bookmarks. There always seems to be a bed rail or something to tie my loom up to.  I make bookmarks, key fobs and sometimes small coin purses to give away to fellow travelers and weavers that I meet along the way. Often I swap coin purses with weavers and spinners for interesting spindle whorls, small tools or other bits and pieces. I take all my loom rods with me in my backpack as well as a nifty little warping board that I made which was inspired by my very first weaving teacher in  Huancayo, Peru. My teacher, Margarita and her daughter used to come into town everyday with their little warping board to teach me.

Warping with a board and nails in Huancayo

My warping board is even smaller than this one. It is basically a flat narrow stick about the thickness of a ruler and I use long screws in place of nails as I can secure them to the board with the nut-no leaning warping stakes. It gives me a warp just long enough to make one bookmark or two key fobs. I use two or three widths of warp from this board to make a coin purse.

I like to start my woven pieces with a smooth edge-that means one less hem, braid or fringe to worry about- and I achieve this by threading a steel needle through the warp ends and lashing that to the loom bar. You need to lash it firmly so it won’t bend when you put tension on the warp. Once off the loom, the needle is removed and I pass the first weft tail through the end loops back and forth two or three times on a large sewing needle.  Then I braid the other end or sew over the end and leave a fringe. The book mark sits within the pages of the book with fringe or braids protruding.

Part of my mini warping board. I wrap the screws with paper to stop the warps from catching in the screw threads.
Steel knitting pins and lengths of piano wire that I use to create a smooth start for my weavings.
Finishing the smooth start by passing the weft tail on a large sewing needle.
Finishes for bookmark ends-one has a sewn over edge with fringe and the other has 4-strand braids.
Two weavers from Yanque in Peru chose my bookmarks over the coin purses. Even the little guy got one!

For a nice thin bookmark that is not too bulky within a book, I use a 35wpi crochet cotton and recently used it to make a double woven bookmark with a cute llama motif.

The llama is a much loved symbol of Bolivia and Peru but you certainly don’t need to be trekking down to South America to see this lovely animal anymore. There seem to be more than enough of them being successfully raised in many other countries around the world. I saw many on the outskirts of the city on my last visit to Sydney. There was even a llama festival on at the time.

Here in Bolivia and Peru the llamas have many uses. They are used as  pack animals for transporting grains in sacks, often woven from their own fiber, from villages to markets. Their fiber is woven into blankets, coca bags , belts and other accessories as well as braided into slings and ropes.

Their dung is used as a fuel for cooking fires and their meat is often enjoyed as charque-dried meat similar to jerky. The bone from a llama’s lower leg is shaped into a pick up tool and beater-the wichuna-part of a weaver’s basic tool kit. Enterprising locals pose with their beautiful animals for tourists and they are irresistible!

Dried llama fetuses are sold at the market stalls that sell homemade remedies. The llama fetus is buried at the cornerstone of a new house as an offering to PachaMama in the hope that she will bring prosperity to the home owners.

Ladies posing with their llamas near Cusco, Peru
Llamas carrying produce on the road near Yanque, Peru
Produce at an agricultural festival is displayed in sacks made from llama fiber and wool.
You can see the dried llama fetuses hanging up high in this market stall. On the table are drop spindles, llama fiber and wichunas.
A closer look at llama ”charque”, llama fiber and two ”wichunas”.
Slings, which are beautifully braided from llama fiber, are used, among other things, to hurl stones to help control animals wandering from the herd.

As there are no llamas here in lowland Bolivia where I live, I bought bags and bags of their fiber many years ago when I was in the highlands-enough to keep me occupied spinning and weaving for many years to come. I am no spinning expert and just do as I was taught here. The fiber needs to be spun very firmly to stand up to the weaving of warp faced textiles on the backstrap loom. All the weavers that I have studied with weave with a two-ply yarn and all spinning and plying is done on drop spindles.

From left to right-two shoulder bags, a tool bag and a band that I used for a journal cover-these are all made from my handspun llama fiber. The yarn for the band was dyed after plying with cochineal, coca leaves and spearmint leaves. The designs are inspired by designs of, from left to right, lowland Bolivia, highland Peru, and highland Bolivia.
On the road near Tarabuco, Bolivia grazing alongside sheep, goats and cattle.

 

A full-page drawing by Guaman Poma de Ayala depicting part of a llama festival where a man is singing to a llama and, apparently the llama is singing back!

Finally, I would like to share with you all a spectacular web site with hundreds of beautiful drawings like the one above.. This is the offiicial site of the chronicles of Guaman Poma de Ayala, an indigenous Peruvian of a noble family who became disillusioned with the treatment of the native peoples of the Andes by the Spanish after the Conquest.

His  nearly 1200-page chronicle, written between 1600 and 1615,  is addressed to King Philip III of Spain and outlines the injustices of colonial rule. The 398 pages of drawings capture many aspects of daily life in pre and post Conquest Peru-festivals, costume, weaving, spinning, agricultural cycles,  Inca royalty, government……..

You can view digital facsimiles of all the pictures in this chronicle here.

 

Backstrap Weaving-Supplementary weft patterning and learning to weave in Guatemala

SUPPLEMENTARY WEFT PATTERNING

Lately I have been playing with supplementary weft patterning and, once again, have been inspired by Weavolution members. One member joined my Backstrap Group as she is interested, amongst other things, in reproducing a Central Asian yurt band. She has introduced me to many beautiful Central Asian designs and often sends me photos of pieces she has seen at reenactmant events that she attends.

Together we figured out the technique on a yurt band she had bought and even wove it simultaneously- all coordinated by email!

When she sent me this photo (at left) of a Central Asian piece she had photographed at one of the historical events, I couldn’t wait to weave the design into something. The technique wasn’t clear in the photo and, as I wasn’t concerned with reproducing the original technique,  I decided to weave it in either double weave or supplementary weft patterning. I chose the latter as, since studying this technique in Guatemala in 2008, I hadn’t put it to much use.

In this technique, it is really important to get the right balance between the weight of the warp yarn and that used for the supplementary weft and so I quickly wove a sample and then went ahead and made the table runner below in 4/2 cotton (24wpi) warp with 6 strands of the patterning thread that I had brought back from Guatemala as the supplementary weft. You can see that I added a little embellishment of my own to the pattern.

My colors are rather bland compared with the original. I love that orange zigzag next to the main design. Perhaps I will be more adventurous with color next time!

My table runner with a Central Asian inspired design

My other source of inspiration has been a Brazilian member of Weavolution who has generously shared what she knows about the weavings of the Huni Kuin people who live in the tropical forest of Brazil and Peru. They weave with backstrap looms using cotton that they spin and dye themselves. You can see a video of their work here and a photo of a Huni Kuin weaver here. Although they do not use  the supplementary weft technique, I chose to use this method to weave one of their designs into a bag.

A small bag with supplementary weft patterning inspired by a traditional Huni Kuin design.

Here in Bolivia, the supplementary weft technique is used by women to weave bands to decorate their hats. It is in these hatbands that I have seen the widest variety of woven designs. Except for in Calcha, where it seemed that the women had decided on one hatband design to represent their village, I have never seen two hatbands alike.

This Potolo woman is using three hatbands at once.
Hatbands from Bolivia

Sometimes the supplementary weft is used to form the motif as in the small condors on the upper half of the center band above. At other times, it is used to fill the negative space to outline the motif on the ground weave.

From having purchased some hatbands here, I was able to see how they were woven. I made a few sample bands but, as I didn’t get the right warp to weft ratio, I wasn’t too pleased with the results and never really went on to explore this technique further- that is, until I went to Guatemala in 2008 and studied weft patterning with three teachers there. It was my first time in Guatemala and an absolute explosion of color and inspiration was awaiting!

The traditional hair sash of the women of Aguacatan, Guatemala

So I would like to spend the rest of this post introducing you to my first teacher in Guatemala and showing you how I learned supplementary weft patterning with her.

Lidia lives in the very small town of Santa Catarina Barahona near San Antonio Aguas Calientes in Guatemala. The typical blouse, or huipil of the area has designs woven in single and double faced supplementary weft patterning. The large areas of double faced patterning are those that most distinguish the huipiles of this area.

Typical huilpil of San Antonio Aguas Calientes.
Single faced weft patterning. The patterns can’t be seen on the back of the textile.
This double faced patterning looks very much like embroidery. The national bird, the quetzal, is a very popular motif.
Day 1-Lesson 1. I have chosen my colors for my piece and am winding the thread into balls prior to warping
Making a small warp for my lessons
Once the loom was tensioned, the heddles were made.
Lidia’s sister Carmelita showed me how the warps, under which the patterning wefts would be placed, are picked and stored on two additional sticks. The resulting designs are called ”pepenado”.
The first design lesson-Lidia is weaving the ”tijera” (scissors) pattern. She uses a pointed stick to hook theweft tails and pass them under the raised patterning warps.
The finished tijera pattern
Double faced ”abeja”-bee
Three ”abejas” that I wove when I got home

The ”abeja” was topped off with another section of ”tijera” and that completed my second day of classes. Finally, on day three, I learned the ”arcos” (arches) pattern. This is a combination of weft inlay and warp wrapping.

Weaving the ”arcos” designs
The finished ”arcos” design

It looks like my teachers did all the weaving and I just stood around and snapped pictures! Well, I can tell you  that it wasn’t so. Lidia was a very ”hands-on” teacher and she would take over only when I got up to stretch and take photos.

But it wasn’t all hard work. Other family members and neighbors came to visit, we paused to make and eat tortillas, chatted and played with the nieces and nephews in Lidia’s shady yard and walked to town to go yarn shopping.

Snack time. While making my way around Guatemala I learned to recognize the ”slap slap slapping” sound of tortillas being prepared.
Small rectangular pieces are covered with double faced designs and closed with a drawstrig to make a baby’s hat.
Whne I got back to Bolivia I finished off the piece that I had been making with lidia and then wove another sampler to consolidate the weft patterning techniques I had learned.
And I used my lesson piece in the lid of my weaving toolbox.

I went on from Lidia’s home to study with two other weavers in Guatemala but, more about that in another post!

Lidia’s daugther Sara and her cousins

I will be doing a tutorial on suplementary weft patterning with lots of step-by-step photos here on my blog in the following weeks so that you can add designs like the Central Asian and Huni Kuin ones, that I showed you above, to your projects.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip from Central Asia, to Brazil, to Bolivia and onward to my teacher’s home in Guatemala. If you did, I would love to hear from you 🙂

Backstrap Weaving-The Backstrap Loom-all those sticks!!

Loom seller at Chichcastenango market, Guatemala

ALL THOSE STICKS!!!

Recently I found myself in the unusual position of having run out of loom rods.

This is because since joining Weavolution in June, I have been completely soaked in new ideas and inspiration for projects that I can adapt to my backstrap loom. Rather than adding them to my woefully long ”to-do” list, I prefer to at least warp up the project, get it started by weaving a few rows and then put it aside so that at any time when the urge hits me, I can just throw on the backstrap and continue weaving. This has resulted in a closet shelf full of loom rods with brightly colored warps attached. The days of one-project-at-a-time are long gone. Fortunately, this is one of the many wonderful things about backstrap weaving-you can warp up a project, roll it up and put it away.

So when I found myself needing to make up several warps for some tutorial pictures, there were no more loom rods to be had. I don’t like borrowing loom rods from unfinished projects so a new set had to be ”found”.

A quick scan of the halls and terraces of my apartment block did not turn up any abandoned brooms or mops whose handles make marvellous loom rods. So I actually had to go out, for the first time, and buy dowels. While doing so, I was reminded of my students and the new weavers in my Backstrap Group who go looking around the house, garden shed or hardware store for bits and pieces to make their first looms and was prompted to write a little piece about putting together a backstrap loom.

I showed the parts for the backstrap loom in my WeaveZine article but space did not allow me to cover the topic in detail and there are a few refinements and tips that I have always wanted to add and a lot more photos that I would love to share. So now that I have woven up some of those closet projects and have loom rods to spare, I have been able to put together a short photo tutorial on the backstrap loom.

First the loom rods……..

loom rods

From right to left….

A pair of my recently purchased 1” dowels;

A pair of 3/4”  broom handles;

The next three sets are from Guatemala. The middle set was bought at the stall at the Chichicastenango market pictured above. The other two are the loom rods from the weavings I worked on with my teachers in Guatemala. I brought these back to Bolivia with the unfinished weavings attached.

I weave happily with my broom sticks and mop handles. I simply cut them down to 19” length and I use these as my standard loom rods-even for the tiniest of bands. The shortest of the Guatemalan rods are 14” and these work well for me too although I prefer the longer length. The main feature of the Guatemalan rods is that they have grooves cut into their ends.

grooved loom rods

Personally, I don’t find these grooves particularly useful but my Guatemalan teachers do as they tie up their looms like this……………

tying up the loom in Guatemala

The grooves on the far end loom rod will stop the cords from which the loom is suspended  from slipping in to the center of the rod.

So, you can experiment with the ideal length of your loom rods and decide if you like them with or without grooves. In any case, you will need two loom rods.

Cross sticks, heddle rods and shed rods………….

It’s nice to have a good collection of thin dowels and sticks of varying lengths depending on the width of your project. Pencils work well as do chopsticks and kebab skewers and then you can always go out and buy dowel rods. Packages of thin, round craft sticks are ususlly available at the dollar stores and are probably the most useful things I have. These sticks have all sorts of uses-as cross sticks when you are warping, heddle rods, shed rods, their ends can be sharpened so they can be used as pick up sticks and they can be slipped under pesky warps that have gone slack to take up tension.

Those used as shed rods need to be thicker depending on the size of your project. I don’t use anything thicker than 3/4″ for the very biggest projects. I even have a set of cheap touristy pan pipes which are abundant here. This I have dismantled and the hollow bamboo pipes in their different lengths are lightweight and handy for all kinds of things-my apologies to the music lovers!

Above is a random selection of my thin sticks-one, as you can see, even gets used to stir the dyepot. It is very handy to cut grooves in these sticks eventhough my grooves are not exactly pretty.

grooved thin sticks

The grooves will help you tie your sticks togethers securely in the cross on your warping board and loom. They will allow you to secure your shed rod in the shed.  Anyone who has had sticks drop out of their loom will know just how important this is!

So, where are we now in our loom construction?

Let’s see our rods and sticks in action!

At left you can see the warp on its loom rods with cross sticks in place. These cross sticks are just that little bit too thin for grooves-I have snapped too many already trying to put in grooves-or maybe I am just not that good with the tools! Anyway, these are simply secured with adhesive tape.

The loom rod on the left with the knotted “start” and “finish” warp ends will be attached to a fixed point-a heavy piece of furniture or a tree (more about these options in a future blog post), while the loom rod on the right will be attached to you by means of your trusty backstrap – speaking of which……..

The backstrap…………….

a selection of backstraps

This  is all a matter of personal preference, but for me, the broader the backstrap the better. Those of you who have read my article on WeaveZine will remember the simple homemade backstrap shown there made from a pillow slip and will also recognize the red strap above. The straw one next to it is my all time fave-made for me in Peru and much chewed by my cat. Moving left, you see another one that I wove and, finally, a leather beauty that I bought in Guatemala. Weave your own backstrap-a wonderful first project to go with your homemade loom. Check out my instructions on WeaveZine.

Swords and beaters………..

I collect swords and beaters in my travels and have a ridiculously large collection of them but here are just a few……

The sword acts to prop open your shed so that you can pass your weft. It can also double as a beater to beat the weft into place once you have changed sheds. The bottom sword is my favourite for wide projects-a homemade job, can you tell?! Above it you can see an adapted ruler and, above that, my favorite small beater for bands-this one was made for me in Peru.

Bevel one of the long edges of your flat sticks as well as the ends and round them off as shown so that they will enter the shed easily. The upper stick at left was once a long shuttle for my Navajo loom, hence the “v” cut into its end-this is not necesary for your sword/beater.

I generally prefer to put a lot of tension on my warp and push the weft into place with a pointed stick in addition to some moderate beating and so I have never felt the need for a big heavy beater like those shown in the above photo. Everyone has their method. There is no one ”right” way to do it.

Let’s see another “”sticks-in-action”” shot……

almost ready to weave

“Almost” ready to weave?………What’s missing?

a shuttle and a weft "butterfly"

Shuttles………..

These carry the weft through the open sheds. I have the above  home made wooden job made with the help of someone who is handy with tools and a simple “butterfly” of weft. I would love to have a small wooden shuttle too but have been making do with a cardboard cut-out version these last fourteen years! My indigenous teachers simply wrap the weft around and around  and up and down a long stick.

Now we are on our way-the string heddles have been made, the shed rod is in place. I have added an extra stabilizing rod from my collection of small dowels. This will stop my shed rod  from rolling about in the warp and is placed in a second cross behind the shed rod.  I have even managed to weave a few inches. This is where the final part of the loom comes into play-the roll up stick. This should be, preferably, the same size as your loom rod and will enable you to roll up your weaving as you progress so that you are always in easy reach of your heddles, shed rod and weaving line.

By the way, if you have been looking for pick up sticks in these photos, you won’t see any. Pick up sticks are used to lift and hold the warps when you are weaving  design motifs in your cloth. My fingers are my nifty pick up sticks although I have a lot of bone and wooden tools for this purpose in my collection.

And now, a  few final words from someone who has been watching this whole photo taking process with much interest and who insisted on being in the final picture………..

The Backstrap Loom

Just remember that, although the basic elements are the same, backstrap looms take many different forms in different cultures around the world. There is no one ”correct” way to set up your loom and I have based these descriptions on the looms that I have seen and used with my indigenous teachers here in South America and Guatemala.

Now to finish this green band, make it into something useful and free up another pair of loom rods for the next project!

I hope you have enjoyed this little article and have found it helpful. If you have,  let me know-I love to receive your comments.:-)

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING………….

The red woven piece on which I posed the loom parts for many of the above photos is a weaving of the Jalq’a people of Potolo in Bolivia. Their weavings are almost exclusively done in red and black and have a chaotic display of figures called khurus, a word which means ”wild” or ”untamable”. Every space on the cloth is filled with strange figures. There are even creatures within creatures and I watched weavers forming the myriad of figures without reference to other weavings or swatches for help or inspiration. Incredible!

A weaving from Potolo, Bolivia

The weavers use a simple oblique frame loom and a long wire to pick up the hundreds of warps which form the patterns in each row.  Rather than using a beater, a wichuna-a bone tool fashioned from the leg of the llama- is used to push the wefts into place. The designs are woven into the woman’s axsu-a tunic cinched at the waist with a woven belt.

The typical loom of Potolo

I learned this warp-faced complementary warp technique with my teacher in Potosi, where it is used for a completely different design layout. I have never used the technique to create anything anywhere near this level of  complexity!

A weaver working at the ASUR Museum in Sucre, Bolivia

This Jalq’a woman is weaving a piece that will be sold at the ASUR (Antropologos del Surandino) Museum in Sucre.

© Laverne Waddington and backstrapweaving.wordpress.com, 2009-2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Laverne Waddington and backstrapweaving.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Backstrap Weaving-seasons greetings from Bolivia

A little ”taste” of Bolivian Christmas fare……….

Paneton and cola de mono

Instead of Christmas cake or pudding we have paneton, or Christmas bread. This is a mini paneton-they usually come much larger than this!

The drink is cola de mono-literally ”monkey’s tail” and is a traditional Christmas drink in Chile. During my five years in Chile we had this every Christmas but it was always home made and, therefore, always slightly different as everyone seemed to have their own recipe. The typical ingredients are coffee, milk, vanilla, cinnamon or nutmeg and cloves and a white alcohol, like white rum, pisco or aguardiente. I managed to find a bottle of it made here in Bolivia for this Christmas.

Those festive little llamas are bread dough figures that I bought in Ecuador. The town of Calderon, near Quito, is famous for these handmade figures. Bread dough baby figures were originally made and the practice has pre- Columbian origins when the figures were associated with death and burial rituals. The rituals were modified with the arrival of the Spanish and mixed with Christian traditions and are now made for All Souls’ Day ceremonies in November each year. Originally fashioned from corn, pumpkin, honey and beeswax, the figures are now made from wheat flour and heavily varnished for durability. All kinds of figures are now  made  and sold all year round.

Bread dough figures from Ecuador

Finally, they are all seated on a little pinwheel cloth that I have been making with a rigid heddle on my backstrap loom.

Salud! and happy holidays to all!!

Laverne