Category: double weave

Backstrap Weaving – One Step at a Time

Stage One of the eventual move back to Australia is complete. I got back last week and have been struggling with the usual jet lag ever since. There are so many time zones to cross between Australia and Bolivia. Going forward in time on the way over there is really not that bad. It’s the return journey when you gain back the time you lost that really knocks me about.

I took a whole bunch of my weaving books over to Australia as this first part of my move. I can’t sell them here and don’t know anyone who would be interested in them. I know that once I am resettled in Australia I will be so grateful for the effort I made to carry them all that way. I also did some business and laid the ground work for the eventual move but I still don’t see it happening until well into 2024.

I spent most of the time with my brother and sister-in-law on the mid north coast of NSW. It was novel being there in the summer, something that I hadn’t done since 2014. There was a lot of pool and beach time, barbecues and picnics. I brought back a tan and a stronger Australian accent according to an English-speaking friend of mine here.

While breakfasting by the pool, I did a repair job on this bag that I wove for my sister-in-law back in 2006. It’s been around the world with her and is still in pretty good shape.

While I was over there, the latest issue of Tiny Studio Creative Life digital magazine was published with my article on ikat. The theme of the issue is Timey Wimey (it sounded odd to me at first but then I discovered that this is a quote from Doctor Who). The invitation was to consider topics on how tools and techniques have evolved over time, or perhaps something about putting a new spin on ancient practices. I described my various experiments with the ancient technique of ikat on my backstrap loom and the way I have given it my own unique twist in some of my more recent projects. Suzy always does such a nice job of laying out the text and images. I give her a lot of images to work with which I am sure makes it very challenging.

I took my new cotton spinning tool bag and enjoyed a lot of laid back family time spinning my stash of upland cotton and catching up.We hadn’t seen each other since September 2019.

Spinning kept me sane while on the road…I had a 22-hour layover in Los Angeles on the way home and was grateful for something to do while sitting in the airport. The ball of thread grew and grew!

My brother’s cars were in the workshop and so we had outings on the motorcycle and sidecar. That’s a unique way to see the countryside…watch out for crossing koalas.

I got to see at last some things that I’d had sent to my brother’s place in Australia for safe-keeping until I could come and claim them.

A book sent to me by Yingyu Hung in Taiwan on the style of backstrap loom used by one of the ethnic groups in her country. On the left is material used by some groups in Indonesia to wrap their ikat warps. I was curious about it and Sue Richardson kindly organized to have that sent to me so that I could try it.

My spinning tool bag doubled as a handbag when I was out and about. It went exploring with me when I was with my weaving friend Emerald in Sydney at the tail end of the visit.

Weaving with Emerald in Sydney many years ago. We met via his blog and have woven together on almost every one of my visits to Australia since then.

She lives just a stone’s throw away from the harbor and we walked our legs off one day touring the harbor and surrounds. It’s weird feeling like a tourist in the city in which you grew up. So much has changed!

Some things never change, though….the Sydney Opera House and the majestic Moreton Bay Figs atop Observatory Hill.

Airport-sitting time also leads to lots of screen scrolling. I watched a video of weavers from the Apurimac region of Peru and was astonished to see sash weavers using reeds on backstrap looms. I have never seen reeds in use like this here before and I hope that I can track down more information about that…..why have they chosen to use them, who makes them and what are they made from? Does their use pre-date the Conquest? Here is a screen shot that I took from the video which was posted to the Cconchaccota Progreso Grau Apurimac Facebook page.

I spent a week doing goodness-knows-what when I returned between bouts of nodding off due to the jet lag. Finally I was able to get my head together and plan a new project for Stage Two of the repatriation which is happening, believe it or not, next Monday. Aargh, I think I may be getting too old for this kind of thing. I’ll be back on flights to Sydney…on standby this time…trying to squeeze in just one more trip before high season prices kick in.

I decided to make a case for my passport…actually passports, in plural, because my residency sticker is in an old one and has to be carried on every trip…alongside vaccine and yellow fever certificates and ESTA document. I wanted a decent pouch to put all those bits and pieces in and hey, I am always happy for an excuse to weave.

I decided to use the mill-spun wool singles that I had bought a few years ago on a farm in California. The farmer had allowed my weaving friends and me to gather in his barn for a weekend of backstrap weaving and I was grateful.

Fond memories of gathering with my Petaluma friends in the farm co-op barn.

I really had no idea of what I would do with wool singles but it was nice to know that the wool had come from this farmer’s very own sheep. It’s a pretty blend of black and white.

I had taken the plunge and woven with it as singles some time ago when I created a slip case for my phone and was surprised at how well it performed in warp-faced weaving which can be quite hard on yarn.

I had used my handspun plied wool as the supplementary weft to create the pattern.

I was able to take the measurements from this project and use them to plan and create a wider and shorter piece of fabric for my passport pouch.

The warp for the passport pouch ready to receive its heddles. I fell asleep several times while making the heddles…jet lag is terrible! On the left is the felt airline freebie that I had been using which really isn’t big enough to hold everything I need any more.

I liked the pattern on the phone case so much that I re-designed it sideways to span the width of the warp. I again used my own handspun plied wool as the supplementary weft. So, that part of the Stage Two journey is done. Now I need to decide which treasured possessions will get taken over this time, the ones that I can live without here for the next year or so. There are actually still a lot more books but I just don’t feel like dealing with those right now.

While out and about wearing jeans in Australia, I suddenly became aware of just how worn and tired-looking my handwoven belt had become. I have been using this one belt exclusively since I wove it back in 2010. I wove a bunch of other belts at that time but this particular black-and-white became a favorite. I am actually pretty amazed at how well the rather soft cotton from which it is made has stood up all these years.

Belts that I wove years ago. The upper rolled up one became the favorite. The double weave one in the center will now take its place.

It has only taken me twelve years or so, but I finally walked the three blocks down to the sewing and fabric section of the market and got the holes punched in the double weave belt that I had woven but never completed all those years ago. The fact that I can walk a handful of blocks in either direction and find pretty much everything I need is something that I will certainly miss when I move back to Australia.

There you can see the double weave belt with its freshly punched holes, ready to use. The motifs were taken from Bedouin textiles that I had come across in my studies. I would check my understanding of the structures by weaving replicas of the motifs.. Even though the belt is in sturdy double weave, I still prefer to mount it on webbing for extra strength. I used a finer and “harder” thread for this belt than the thread I used for the old worn out one. I guess it will be with me for at least the next ten years or so. Somehow, I can’t see myself still wearing jeans ten years down the track, though!

The collection of metal “corners” in the photo are used I guess to protect the bottoms of handbags or perhaps the corners of leather wallets? I had seen them being used by a weaver who had covered books with hand woven cloth. The corners on the books that I’ve covered with cloth don’t need that kind of protection but I think that these metal corners nevertheless make a really interesting decorative finish on certain kinds of book covers. I spotted them in the stall while I was having the holes punched in the belt. Now that I have them, I have the urge to make more book covers. As if I need more books to lug to the other side of the world! Maybe that will be my first project when I get settled over there in Australia.

Oh my gosh, my head spins with all that needs doing before I can declare myself truly re-settled! High anxiety. One step at a time….

Backstrap Weaving – An Artist’s Residency

I joined a team for this year’s Tour de Fleece event. This is a spinning event that always runs at the same time as the Tour de France. It’s a chance to set yourself a goal and spin along with others, watching their progress, celebrating the completion of their goals, proudly showing off your own work, and learning a heck of a lot about the spinning of all kinds of fiber along the way. There are prizes but I would say that not all that many people are interested in or motivated by that particular aspect. I have made two attempts to play along in a team in the past and have never lasted more than a week, I am embarrassed to say. I got bored!

I enjoy the quietness of spinning in this re-purposed wooden mortar compared to on the pretty plate that a friend gave me. The sound of the metal shaft of the takli against the plate got on my nerves after a while! Still, I treasure the lovely plate and am sure I will find another use for it.

This year, I am trying to spin all the Sea Island cotton that I was given by my friend Betty. I spin a little on my takli spindle after breakfast every day. I feel very motivated and I think it’s because I have specific uses in mind for this cotton thread. That, and the fact that I am pretty new to spinning cotton and am constantly learning, make it more interesting. I also don’t have that nagging need to get as much weaving done as I possibly can, as I used to do, when I would have to drop everything to prepare workshop materials and pack to leave for an extended trip away. Don’t get me wrong…I LOVED those trips away.

This is all pre Tour de Fleece product.

Life has slowed down. I pretend that I am one of those lucky people that go away to escape distractions so that they can spend an extended amount of time focusing on their art. They choose a peaceful or exotic place and do an artist’s residency, drawing inspiration from their new natural and cultural surroundings. That’s me, except that I get to do it in the comfort of my own home and draw inspiration from the internet, lol. I followed along during the several weeks that a Facebook acquaintance recently spent painting in the Shetland Islands on such a residency.

The projects that I have in mind for the spun cotton thread are also “firsts” which I think is another motivating factor. While I spin, my mind runs through the steps that I will take to get those projects off the ground. I try to imagine all the things that could possibly go wrong in the hope that I can avoid them. I am pretty sure that all this will have me sticking with the Tour de Fleece for its entire duration this time. I write down the steps for the new projects in my Weaver’s Journal only to erase or amend them the following day when I figure out a better way.

I had come to the conclusion that I cared very little for the process of spinning and that I am one hundred percent motivated by the product. Now I am not so sure. I have a dismantled Ashford Traditional wheel in my closet that would enable me to spin a whole lot faster, yet I ignore it and stick with my takli for cotton and my good ol’ Cusco drop spindle for wool and alpaca. They somehow just seem to be more “me”. I guess that there are some aspects of the process that I really love after all. I am certainly not purely after finished product as I had once thought.

I had the experience of buying raw cotton, de-seeding it, fluffing it by hand, and then beating it on a sack of grain to prepare it for spinning when I stayed with a family of spinners and weavers in coastal Ecuador. I do understand that all of that is really the most essential part of the process. Being given a large coil of beautifully prepared Sea island sliver to spin is not quite the same, is it?

A photo of one of my prints from Ecuador, 2007. De-seeding the cotton was a typical evening activity in which all family members participated.
Beating the natural brown cotton that the locals call “mico” on a sack of grain.
The method for spinning cotton in this part of coastal Ecuador involves a horizontally held spindle and a distaff. In this picture Luz (R.I.P) uses two fingers to draft while the others regulate the movement of the twist into the drafted area.
As a clumsy beginner, I found it very difficult to get a good rate of spin from the horizontally-held spindle and the positioning and action of the drafting fingers was tough too! I have since been spoiled by the takli.

Afternoons and evenings are for weaving and this is what has been keeping me occupied in my “artist’s residency”. The weaving part of the Finnweave piece with its foliage pattern is finished . I have yet to wet-finish it. If this works as something that I can use to keep my neck covered, I will be pleased. As I mentioned in a past post, I don’t really enjoy wearing the scarves that I have woven. The length and ends and fringe annoy me. I just want something that I can button around my neck (I love the pieces that I knitted that I can just stretch and pull over my head but that doesn’t work so well for woven cloth).

This is the view as I peek over the edge of my bed in the morning. As soon as my feet hit the floor, I am in my weaving studio.

My sampling paid off (it always does). It enabled me to maintain the eight-inch width effortlessly the whole way. This is something that I find challenging when doing a balanced structure without a reed. The sett varies, though! The warp threads between the motifs get a bit a crowded sometimes but then open up again as the positions of the motifs change. I learned from a previous project not to weave motifs in columns because of that crowding problem. I am interested to see how things change after wet-finishing.

I find the pick-up super easy in this technique. Once the first row of a motif has been woven, there’s no more counting to do . It’s very easy to see exactly which threads need to be selected for subsequent rows.

I got the basic idea for the irregular leaf shapes from one of Svetlana Rogatykh’s crochet patterns. The lines in her designs are particularly suitable for Finnweave. The proportions, however, will be quite different and need adjustment. I just took her idea of irregular leaf shapes and went on my own from there. I think that any shape pretty much works. I don’t think that there’s a single “leaf” shape there that actually looks like a leaf on its own. I added butterflies along the way to connect the two layers of the double weave and chose to make them solid rather than outlined shapes. The poor butterflies are flitting about looking for something colorful in that flower-less garden.

Finished and still on the loom. I wove a length that I thought would work well wrapped around my neck, and then some. One thing I didn’t do in my sampling was take before and after wet-finishing measurements. Hopefully not too much of it will be wasted.

And so, while I continue spinning cotton, another project has come to mind. I am really enjoying this exercise of picking through my stash and coming up with projects as opposed to coming up with projects and then shopping for yarn. Years ago, I bought a cone of 20/2 white UKI cotton. I have just finished scouring a good amount of it (I learned the hard way some years ago, that this needed to be done before attempting to dye it) and am planning a warp-ikat project. I want to use the finished fabric to construct something this time…so, no wall hangings, scarves or neck wraps…there will be cutting and hand-sewing involved. Maybe I have become cocky after my successful bag project! It’s been many years since I created an ikat piece with cotton.

The last ikat I did in this same 20/2 cotton became a drawstring bag for my Kindle.

My goodness, the water was soupy after scouring the UKI cotton. Any of you that have UKI in your stash will know about the spinning oil that it carries. I suppose all thread has it but I seem to be more aware of its presence in this particular brand.

Now I have to come up with the motif that I want to create in ikat. I am hoping to use two colors.

In my last post, I said that I was gong to talk more about the backstrap loom in this one. I got carried away talking about other stuff. Let’s see if I can manage it next time 🙂

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Backstrap Weaving – Making the Most of It

Back when I was doing my training to be a teacher of English as a foreign language, I remember being told over and over to make sure that any original materials that we created were designed to be multi-functional. Why go to all the time and trouble to create something that would be used once in only one context?

I loved creating my own materials for English-teaching. Back then when I didn’t have much time for weaving, it seems that I poured all my creative juices into doing that. It was multi-functional in that I got to be creative while at the same time providing some welcome fun time for my students away from the text books. And I got better and better with using the same material in different ways with a variety of groups in a variety of contexts at different levels in their learning. And, as a bonus, it gave me a reason to buy stationery. I discovered that I have a thing for stationery.

Give me a chance to draw and paste and sticky-tape and color and I am happy as a baby.

When it comes to weaving, I have folders and closet shelves piled high with charts that I have created for projects. They got used once and then filed away, like the mega chart that I created for my Shipibo-inspired project that you can see above. Sometimes I wonder why I keep them. But then you know how that goes….about a week after you throw something away, you find that you need it, right?

My cat always enjoyed my get-down-on-the-floor-to-chart time.

So, with all that in mind, I am pleased that I have been taking the hummingbird charts, over which I have long labored, and using them in a variety of ways…making the most of all that time and effort. And, I am not done yet. I have a theme in my head for a future project…something that I wish to express, and all this sampling is hopefully leading me there. It’s all just a vague idea at the moment and I am still waiting for the light bulb to come on. In the meantime, I’ll just keep weaving hummingbirds.

I wanted to see what my hummingbird motifs looked like in a large format. I had completed my piece in 60/2 silk. In that fine thread, the stepped nature of the lines that form the various diagonals and curves is not all that noticeable. But what about in something much heavier? Would those lines then become clumsy and ugly? I combed through my stash and found that the only thing I had that would work in terms of having two high contrast colors was 8/2 Tencel and so I created a short warp for sampling. Some particularly high-twist crochet cotton made pretty heddles for warp-faced double weave.

What a dream it has been to weave with this heavier thread! Firstly, the Tencel is gorgeous to handle. It plays well with the crochet cotton heddles and is so easy to see when doing pick-up compared to to the 60/2 silk…no surprises there. I do think it is a shame to use Tencel, which is so much appreciated for its draping qualities, in a dense structure like warp-faced double weave but it was the only option in my available stash for this experiment. I promise that I won’t do it again!

Because the theme that I have in my head concerns embellishment and also the lack thereof, I decided to embellish my king-sized hummingbird to the max. I really enjoyed planning those “hippy bandanna” curls and swirls and I think they add to the playfulness, the love of life and joy of flight that hummingbirds always suggest to me. The hummingbird will be my new signature pattern.

I felt that the curve-like lines and stepped diagonals looked fine. I certainly did not feel distracted by the fact that the steps in these lines are more obvious than they are in finer thread. In fact, I would have to say that I was pretty thrilled with the whole thing.

So, what was next? I could see that 8/2 in warp-faced double weave in something of this width (3″) would simply not be useful for much…too wide for a sturdy belt or bag strap and much too thick and heavy for anything else. So I turned once again to my stash for something a little finer. I happen have, courtesy of my friend Deanna, a good supply of natural-colored 30/2 silk along with a small quantity of it that I had dyed in a color called “rye” for an ikat project I wove last year. The problem was that I did not have any other color that would allow me to weave pick-up patterns in double weave. Yes, I could dye some but…sigh…I wasn’t in the mood!

Solution….use supplementary weft to create the patterns. Bonus: for the supplementary weft structure, I can use the same chart as I do for double weave. I like to use several strands of a finer thread for the supplementary weft which gave me a nice selection from which to choose in my stash of 60/2 silk. I went with rye warp and teal supplementary weft.

The pattern color that you see in the double weave version on the right comes from warp threads that do not float as opposed to the silk piece in which the pattern is formed by floating weft threads. I love the added dimension that the supplemental weft threads give to the cloth. Bonus: I only made one set of heddles for this structure as opposed to four for the double weave piece. The double weave bonus: I can create horizontal lines of any length I please which I can’t do in the supplemental weft structure as the weft floats need to be limited to a certain practical length. That meant that some parts of my original charts needed to be modified. Long horizontal lines for wings needed to be transformed into sweeping curves. It took some time but wasn’t difficult to do and I am really pleased with the way they turned out.

While I wait for that light bulb to come on which will enable me to figure out how exactly to compose the themed piece that I have in mind, I will weave these embellished hummingbirds into something useful. I think I will use my embellished hummers with some indigo-dyed cotton from Guatemala that I have and use it to make journal covers as I have in the past. That will involve an outing to the stationery store to find a nice sized journal. I want something quite big so that I can squeeze in a lot of hummingbirds. I am hoping to get something that has paper that is nice for sketching.

The indigo and champagne colored Guatemalan thread along with the initial width sample that I wove for the first journal.

I used this 30/2 cotton in the past for mini-journal covers which I have given away as gifts. I wove my friends’ initials into the spines of the books…no re-gifting allowed!

For these, I used embroidery floss for the supplementary weft but I can tell you that removing strands from the slightly twisted six strands of floss is a royal pain if you are wanting to use very long lengths. I like to split all six strands and then lay them back together again so that all twist is removed. That way they lie flat and ribbon-like on the cloth just the way I like it. Yes, it’s a pain and so I might use silk instead. Combining threads to create multi-stranded weft is so much easier than pulling stands apart.

In the meantime, Zoom time is still spinning-and-plying time and progress is ever so slow. It gives me lots of time to think about how I would like to over-dye some of these colors and what I would like to weave with them. The planning is all the more important when using one’s own handspun and I already blew it by over-dyeing a really nice green with black the last time I used this handspun to weave some cuffs.

I also have another idea for an ikat project developing in which I combine it with three-color reversible pebble weave. I am sure that it will happen long before this handspun is ready for use.

And so I keep myself busy and out of trouble and keep my spirits lifted. Book sales at Taproot Video are keeping me afloat and I am hoping that the cooler temperatures in the northern hemisphere mean more cozy time at home weaving for those who live up there and maybe time to try some of the patterning techniques that I teach in my books. As always, thank you all for your support!

Backstrap Weaving – It isn’t all in the Wrist

The Garden Bands are finished and now the question is whether to use them in a project and, if the answer is yes, how?

In my last blog post, I showed you the first of the two bands sitting alongside my hummingbird band.

When I had finished the hummingbird band, I had been thinking about cutting it into two or three pieces, placing them side by side and making “something”. Friends in one of my Zoom groups were not enthusiastic and suggested I weave two bands to flank the hummers and use the whole thing as a wall hanging. I liked the idea of not having to cut (and possibly regret having done so). On top of that, weaving accompanying narrow bands meant that I could once again try out the little flower motifs and the subtle color transitions that I had been sampling in 20/2 cotton.

Now both bands are finished and here they are together…..

I am really pleased with them and may never use them for anything at all. I just really enjoyed creating them. I will play around with placing them next to the hummingbirds in various ways to create symmetry or even asymmetry as some of my weaving friends have suggested. I might keep the borders or perhaps fold them back so that they are hidden. I might hang them together so that they look like one complete piece or leave space between them.

Right now, I think I just need to leave them be and think about all that. Put it this way, there won’t be any cutting or sewing happening just yet.

What I would like to do next is sample these motifs in heavier thread. I have some 8/2 tencel that I would like to try. It will be interesting to see how wide the piece will be in this tencel. I have quite a few people asking me if I plan to publish these patterns and I am not really sure how they will look on a larger scale. They are fine and delicate in 60/2 silk. How will they look in 8/2 tencel?

At the same time I am not even sure if I would like to publish the hummingbirds. The hummingbirds have become part of my pandemic experience…they represent my yearning to be out of all this and zipping about freely. My friends in the States tell me that it is time to take in their feeders as the hummingbirds start their migration south. It must be so nice spotting the first ones arriving at the start of the season the following year. I have often thought about doing a similar seasonal change by spending the mild winters here in Bolivia and the summers in Australia but that was a pre-pandemic dream. I am not sure if I can pull that off any more. I, like many of you I am sure, have had to modify plans with the times.

This is the warp I created for the second band…

In this photo, I have finished creating the heddles for one half of the warp in this warp-faced double weave structure (one heddle set for all the light threads, and one for the darks), and have just started creating a third set for the light threads on the other side of the cross. A fourth will hold all the dark threads on that side of the cross. Those of you who have used my book Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms will have learned a two-shed set-up for this same structure that is perfect for the inkle loom. I only use four sets of heddles when I am weaving with a lot of ends and especially if the thread is fine. The inkle loom is perfect for the more basic two-shed set-up with heavier thread and fewer ends. Bolivian weavers who use this structure will use the method that is traditionally used in their community. Some of them use the two-shed method even when the threads are fine and numerous. This was the way that I was initially taught. Others use a four-shed set-up.

Working with multiple sets of heddles for a warp-faced structure on a fixed-tension loom, like the horizontal ground looms that are used in certain areas of Bolivia and Peru, is challenging.

Bunches of string heddles control the colored layers of warps on the horizontal loom of Taquile Island, Peru

In my experience, using a loom where the weaver can modify tension at will with his or her body makes the process of using multiple heddles much easier. Of course, I am talking about the backstrap loom. The weaver can control just how much the warp threads are able to rise and bend to form as large a shed as necessary without dragging up any sticky neighboring threads that don’t belong, and without causing abrasion.

A two-heddle set-up for Andean Pebble Weave for one of my Within These Walls panels.

When I was first taught Andean Pebble Weave way back in 1996 using narrow warps with quite fine thread, I was shown how to manage two sets of heddles. It took quite some time to figure out what was going on. I would just watch my teachers hands deftly manipulating the heddles, magically and effortlessly creating clean sheds, but at first was not able to replicate the moves. What I wasn’t noticing was how the rest of the body was also involved in the process. It wasn’t only about what their hands were doing. My teachers had to move to slightly relax tension on the warp while working with their hands. I broke a few warp threads in my rough handling before that key piece of information clicked. Those broken threads did not make me popular! You might understand what the title of this blog post is about now.

On narrow warps, I was able to wrap one set of heddles over one hand and roll it away while pulling up on the other heddle with the other hand. The wrapping and rolling tightens all the threads in those heddles. It holds them taut and in place so that they simply cannot grab on to neighboring threads and become part of a shed in which they don’t belong.

Here’s 7-year old Lily doing just that:

This and some of the following images are screen shots from videos that I took and will be blurry as a result. I think they still allow you to see what is going on. You can see how slack Lily’s warp is because she has relaxed tension (more than is really necessary as you can get away with very slight movements when the warp is this narrow). One hand is pulling up the second group of heddles while the other wraps and rolls the first set away.

Here’s my student Berna doing the same: (Hi Berna! I know you read this blog from time to time). She is raising the first heddle while rolling the other away. You can see how her left pinky rests on the warp and acts as the pivot point for the roll. Having placed her other pinky within the shed to save it, her body is on its way to returning to the “neutral” position in which the tension on the warp is no longer relaxed. She had relaxed tension just enough to enable her to save the shed on her finger. She can later replace her finger within the shed with a sword to beat.

Susan learned all this about operating a loom with two sets of heddles on narrow warps from me during my visits in the States. She needed to contact me recently after having set up the beautiful Andean Pebble Weave warp (below) with its two sets of pretty heddles as it’s her first time attempting something this wide. She works with wood and has had to prepare swords that will suit the width of this new project. I hope that she sends pictures of them.

The heddles on their rods fill a narrower space than the width of the warp as some of the heddles hold two threads. This difference in width is expected as the woven cloth will be a fair bit narrower than the width of the warp as you see it here. The fact that this structure uses warp floats on both faces of the fabric means that the fabric will be narrower and thicker than one with the same number of ends in plain weave.

Isn’t this warp gorgeous? I can’t wait to see what she does with this asymmetric layout.

This is Susan’s first attempt at this kind of width having woven several beautiful Andean Pebble Weave guitar straps for friends and family which have given her plenty of practice in winding nicely-tensioned warps and making string heddles. Of course, now her question is how to manage these two sets of much wider heddles. A hand is simply not large enough to wrap and roll these.

For wide warps, I was taught to substitute a sword for the hand….

Here I am demonstrating doing this for a group of friends and exaggerating somewhat to show the effect of moving my body forward to relax tension on the warp. The more I move forward, the larger the shed. The edge of the sword rests on the warp and is the pivot point. Once the shed is open, I can let go of the sword in the wrapped-and-rolled heddle, maintain the forward position, keep pulling up on the heddle rod, and save the open shed on a sword. You can see how my sword is completely wrapped within the heddles and rolled. So, an important tip is to take account of the width of your sword when you are making the heddles. If they are shorter than the width of the sword, this move will not work so well. If they are a lot longer, they will be clumsy.

This still-shot which I grabbed from one of my videos, shows a backstrap weaver in Peru positioning herself to wrap and roll her sword away while her other hand lifts the heddle nearest to her. She chooses to use a sword rather than her hand even on this relatively narrow warp. Her sword sits just below the heddle stick which shows that her heddles are the perfect length for this. That is what I always aim for. No doubt she has been doing this for most of her life and doesn’t even need to think about it.

Now you can see her raised heddle a lot more clearly and her forward position is evident.

So, this was precisely what I was doing on my double-weave Garden warp. I would roll Heddle One away with my hand while lifting Heddle Two. And I worked Heddles Three and Four in the same way. It enabled me to work with this fine 60/2 silk without breaking any threads from abrasion and achieve nice clean sheds every time.

When working with just one heddle together with a shed rod, I like to use what I call the “twisty stick” method. You can see this in action in this video clip. Twisting the two sticks tightens that layer of threads so that the threads remain taut and in place while I bend and raise the threads in the other layer. I go into this in more detail (how to set it up etc) in my video class Operating a Backstrap Loom.

You can see me using the twisty sticks a few times in this next video where I am nearing the end of a warp of 60/2 silk…

Of course, it is important to point out that there are many many different methods used by backstrap weavers to operate their looms. I share with you some of my current favorite methods that work well for me with a variety of warp materials. There is no single correct way to do any of this. Some materials, for example, are just friendlier in terms of stickiness and work well with simpler methods. Some materials are so sturdy that the weaver can get away with simply grabbing and pulling up on the heddle while sawing it back and forth along the warp to clear the shed and remove any stray threads that don’t belong.

How I would love to be there with all of you who are venturing into weaving on backstrap looms. Who knows when that will be possible? In the meantime, I hope that some of what you have seen here today is helpful and perhaps interesting even to those who don’t use a backstrap loom.

It’s time to wet finish the Garden and Hummingbird bands and give them a good hard press in order to better enjoy the loveliness of the silk. Right now they could easily be mistaken for cotton. I am looking forward to bringing out their sheen.

Until next time….

Backstrap Weaving – Thinking Outside the Walls

Is there anybody out there?! This was taken on a visit many years ago to the fabulous Salar de Uyuni here in Bolivia.

Fully vaccinated (albeit with the Sinopharm one in which I have little faith), I decided it was time to think outside the walls and venture out for my first outing, since the arrival of Covid-19 in Bolivia, that didn’t involve the supermarket or the dentist.

What would I find out there? Would I find that I have been behaving in an overly cautious way all this time and perhaps one of the few still hiding away within walls?

Would everything be completely normal? After all, we are not under any kind of restrictions now. Case, hospitalization and death numbers rise and fall from day to day as the third-wave curve wends its way downward. The fourth wave has already been predicted to arrive in October. Have we all just learned to live with this?

I have always been good at physical distancing! This was taken on a visit to a large expanse of sand dunes that inexplicably emerge from the surrounding jungle right here in Santa Cruz where I live.

This outing wasn’t about visiting spectacular salt lakes or mysterious sand dunes. It was simply about eating a burger with a friend in one of my old favorite hang-outs…the main Plaza here in the center of Santa Cruz. I used to live one and a half blocks away from it and would pass through it every day on my way to and from work. After finishing work at 10pm, I used to love stopping to sit there on balmy summer nights. The place would be full of activity as others gathered to enjoy the relative coolness of the evening before reluctantly heading home to face a restless night within heated walls.

My companion suggested the Plaza. The thought of being amongst all those people doing something that required the removal of masks made me nervous, even though it was an outdoor setting.

A typical sunny weekend afternoon would see the Plaza completely full…standing room only… as families gathered to eat ice cream and watch the world go by. There would be wandering coffee cart vendors in their crisp white uniforms, others selling cotton candy, balloon animals and toys and trinkets, people feeding the pigeons, kids chasing the pigeons, teenagers gathered in their little groups in every corner, the shoe shine guys poised ready for the next customer, elderly men playing chess surrounded by youngsters studying their moves, wanna-be models having their photos taken outside the cathedral. The Municipal Police would be strolling around although it is hard to imagine anything “bad” happening in that place of good clean fun. In a city in which it is often impossible to escape the blast of salsa and cumbia music, the Plaza is blissfully music-free.

And so it was with a mixture of relief and sadness that we found the Plaza almost deserted. There was no need to make circuits while looking for a place in the shade. Clearly people are being careful and largely staying home which is a big ask when home can often be a simple adobe or single brick dwelling, the interior of which resembles a pizza oven on hot days. It was sad to see this popular cooling refuge abandoned in this way.

Yes, I admit that it is strange to be writing several paragraphs about an outing to get a burger! So I’ll get back to the weaving now. In my last post I showed you the start of my hummingbird piece. This is another effort to think outside the walls and capture a feeling of uninhibited movement and joy.

I am weaving this in warp-faced double weave. It is certainly not the fastest patterning technique that I know. However, you might remember that I have just spent seven months picking up threads one by one to form intricate patterns on four panels. As a result, nothing feels slow any more and I just simply enjoy watching each and every one of the little figures I have created emerge. I loved designing the plants and piecing all the figures together. Weaving this lifts my spirits!

This is the final third of the band which I photographed so that you can see what the two faces look like. The plant at the very top is the one which is showering the scene with its parachuting seeds.

There was never meant to be an end product but I did find myself thinking about cutting this strip into three and sewing the pieces side by side to make something useful. But then a couple of people in a recent band-weaving Zoom gathering suggested weaving two more strips to flank this one. They could reveal more of the garden that surrounds this happy scene. I like that idea. It spares me the agony of having to do any cutting. All of you who produce hand woven cloth will know exactly what I mean. Plus it gives me a chance to do some more designing in this fun double- weave structure. It amazes me how far removed this is from the kind of pieces that I generally choose to weave.

And so I get to sprawl on the floor and do some more double-weave doodling. The chart for the hummingbird piece ended up being 130 inches long! I suppose I could photograph it in sections, erase the drawings and re-use the paper.

I was very pleased to see that Vicky Erker has been designing her own double-weave motifs after having learned the technique from my book Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms. My book includes a section on designing in which I use a leaf motif as the example. Some people take to designing more easily and quickly than others while some have no desire to design at all and are happy weaving from charts that have been provided in books.

This striking hand petroglyph is the first pattern that Vicki showed me…..

And then she blew me away with this pattern that she based on a Quetzal motif that is often used in textiles of Guatemala. In Guatemala it is woven using completely different patterning structures.. Isn’t that awesome!

If you are wondering about the H and O lettering on Vicki’s swords. it is something I suggest doing to help you keep track of the shed in which you are working when weaving double weave. You can always mark tape and apply that to the sword if you don’t want to mark your sword. The H stands for Heddle Shed and the O for Open Shed. It is one of the tips I give weavers for working in double weave which of course will make much more sense when you are using the book. I hope you might consider trying warp-faced double weave. There are plenty of charts in the book and perhaps you will feel motivated to try creating some of your own designs.

When I was going through my old photos and finding the ones I posted earlier of the Uyuni Salt Lake and the sand dunes, one of my first thoughts on seeing those pictures, was…wow, not a single tree to which I could attach a backstrap loom! Of course, a tree would not be entirely necessary as backstrap weavers can turn themselves into completely self-contained looms using our feet or toes to hold the end of the warp.

Carolin shows here that if you happen to find yourself at the Uyuni salt lake while cycling from Alaska to Ushuaia, one’s bicycle can always provide a handy anchor point for the end of the warp….

Carolin with tiny loom tied to her bike and weaving on the salt lake.

Others have chosen to create something a little more comfortable that can be picked up, carried around and enjoyed both indoors and out. I don’t quite remember who started the frame-making thing in the Facebook group but several members have found these to be a really nice idea when they got fed up with looking for suitable places in their homes, both indoors and out, to which they can attach the ends of their warps. Here’s the one that Martina in Germany built….

Here’s Jenny’s with a clever pool-noodle hack to stop the beam from sliding….

And here are models by Carlos on the left and Rosemary on the right…

Ritika Mittal allowed me to show this image of a weaver in Nagaland using a study frame to hold the end of her warp and provide a nice place for her to brace her feet.

Nancy’s anchor point isn’t exactly a portable one, but I always enjoy seeing a simple backstrap warp being attached to the more complex floor loom…this is Nancy’s first ever backstrap loom project and its a beauty.

When I was having my Operating a Backstrap Loom class filmed, we had some trouble finding an anchor spot in the studio that was close enough to the set because I insisted on sitting on the floor. Eventually we managed to pile a lot of heavy stuff into a portable storage bin and use that.

While on the topic of that video class, Operating a Backstrap Loom, I’ll take this opportunity to let you know that the stock of DVDs is really low now and that I won’t be replacing them when Taproot Video runs out. The purchase of the Lifetime Streaming option caught up with, and now far outnumbers, the purchases of DVDs. So, if DVDs are your preference (they still are mine), you might want to make sure you get one while they are still around.

I showed Nancy’s first-ever weaving on a backstrap loom. I neglected to ask her if this piece is destined to become a backstrap. The dimensions are right. The backstrap itself is often a new backstrap-loom user’s first project and I am happy to see that the article I wrote about weaving your own backstrap way back in 2009 is still being used and enjoyed.

Here are a couple of backstraps that have been woven recently by Lieve on the left and Louise on the right….

My birthday is on Friday (lucky Friday the 13th) and I’ll hopefully be venturing outside the walls again for a little celebration.

Until next time.