Category: Ecuador

Backstrap Weaving- Where it all started

Syne Mitchell, publisher of WeaveZine teaching the “Rigid Heddle- Beyond Basics” class at CNCH this weekend.

WHERE IT ALL STARTED…

I am a teacher of English as a Foreign Language by profession and I love to teach. I knocked around doing a variety of jobs all over the place for a few years -travel agent, ski shop manager, to name a couple- until I was finally drawn to teaching. I also love taking classes, not just for the opportunity to learn something new, but also for the chance to observe another teacher at work. I am especially interested in seeing how weaving teachers manage those one-day workshops, imparting skills and sharing knowledge, while connecting and building a rapport with students over such a short period of time.  Being at CNCH (Conference of Northern California Handweavers) was a golden opportunity to learn from and observe some of the great teachers at work. I was lucky to have been able to take classes with Robyn Spady and Syne Mitchell at the conference last weekend. I finally got to “drive” an inkle loom and have bought an inklette. No thoughts on abandoning my beloved backstrap loom, though!

Robyn Spady teaching passementrie techniques that can be done on plain weave bands made on inkle looms. She has recently put out a book on the topic.
Since the conference I have been experimenting with weaving Andean Pebble Weave on an inkle loom.
I was staying in Grand Junction , Colorado with plans to do three multi-day hikes and climbs in the Utah canyon lands. A mountain bike accident put an end to all that and I ended up trading hiking boots, rope and backpack for shuttles, yarn and loom.

So, here I am in the US. I haven’t done any lengthy travel here since 1995 when I spent some time in Grand Junction, Colorado and I am reminded of  that trip so many years ago when I was fortunate to meet another great teacher – the one who set me on the weaving path along which I travel today.

This was my first real weaving experience and it was with a North American indigenous weave – Navajo style tapestry weaving. I came across Gladys Miller of Grand Junction Colorado quite literally by accident. She welcomed me into her home and taught me Navajo style weaving. Gladys was already well established and respected as a Navajo weaving teacher and had taught on several occasions at the Ghost Ranch educational retreat in Abiquiu.

I still can’t believe my luck in meeting up with her. What had started as a disastrous and disappointing vacation became a major turning point for me.

Under Gladys’s guidance and using Noel Bennett and Tiana Bighorn’s “Working With the Wool” I made these two samplers on one of Gladys’s looms practicing hooked and turned joints, raised outline and other techniques.
A Navajo weaver at the Hubble Trading Post taking her finished rug off the loom.

But  Navajo-style weaving techniques is not all that Gladys shared with me.

She completely immersed me in everything she knew about the Navajo people and their weaving.

Gladys had been taught by a Navajo woman, Mae Jim and has two of her rugs. Since Mae Jim’s death she has kept in close contact with her children. We did an amazing road trip through Navajo country, visiting trading posts and other historic sites as well as Mae Jim’s family on the Navajo reservation. We bought yarn, books and tools and covered so much ground – there was so much to take in – it was overwhelming and inspiring.

When I finally went back to Chile armed with warp and weft yarn, books, swords, battens and forks as well as my new weaving skills, my head was swimming with the designs of the rugs and the colors and shapes of the canyons and deserts. I had a loom made and got to work making larger samplers with finer yarns.

I worked through all my yarn, ordered more and some larger rugs followed in quick succession…

The rugs I made based on Storm Pattern, Two Grey Hills and Wide Ruins styles.

I eventually got to the bottom of my stash and just managed to piece a couple more rugs together from scraps…

A saddle blanket based on a chief blanket design and a Mexican motif made from gathering up scraps and dyeing them all the one color.
Gladys and I traveling through Monument Valley in 1996

 

A church we visited in Los Ojos

I returned to see Gladys in 1996. Another road trip ensued – this time to New Mexico and to visit the descendants of the original Spanish weavers in the region.

Again, Gladys shared her time, knowledge and friends with me and opened up a new world of Rio Grande weaving traditions. However, by this time I had already made my first trip to Peru and learned backstrap weaving and so South American indigenous weaving was very much on my mind. Nevertheless, I wasn’t ready to abandon my beautiful Navajo loom yet and continued to use it to weave wide pieces which I didn’t feel I could yet manage on my backstrap loom.

Two pieces employing South American pick up techniques lashed to my Navajo loom.
These are two warp-faced South American pick up pieces that I wove on the Navajo loom. Now I am spoiled with my backstrap loom and the way it allows to me increase and relax tension at will and I just don’t feel that comfortable weaving them on other looms. Yet I have to remind myself that I was perfectly happy weaving these pieces on my Navajo loom all those years ago – this will please those of you who would like to give these techniques a try but are hesitating about using a backstrap loom…

So, how did this all come about? Well we were chatting one night in the hotel room at CNCH last weekend about what our “gateway drug” into weaving was, that is, the activity that led us into weaving in the first place – were you first a knitter or a quilter or…?. It turns out that mine was mountain biking! I was in the US to do a series of canyon hikes in Utah, destroyed myself on my first day in a mountain bike accident, managed to hobble my way to a Navajo weaving exhibition while recuperating , met Gladys and there it all began – like I said, quite literally by accident.

One of Mae Jim’s granddaughters getting ready for her puberty ceremony

Well the years went by and I lost touch with Gladys but we were lucky to get back together after Gladys read my article on WeaveZine last year.

I was so excited to hear that she is still teaching, giving talks, getting together with Mae Jim’s family, leading tours and now weaving fabulous miniature rugs.

Who knows how many more people she

Gladys with one of Mae Jim’s daughters and her family

has set on the weaving journey with her energy, enthusiasm and generosity.

In fact, she sent me a photo of one of her miniatures on a C.Cactus Flower loom, a loom I had never heard of before and this now has me thinking about getting one and revisiting Navajo weaving in miniatures. You see, Gladys, you’ve done it again! THANK YOU!!

Three of Gladys’s rugs. The center one is on the C.Cactus Flower Loom – won’t take up too much room in my limited living space. I was lucky to be able to get acquainted with one at  CNCH.

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A few of the backstrap woven sashes in Kathe’s collection that are used by the Russian “old believers” in the communities in Oregon.

Speaking of the conference again, I have to tell you about two other teachers that I met there. Now this was just one of those freaky “meant to be” kind of meetings. I wasn’t signed up for their classes but we happened to be seated together at one of the dinners and got to talking.

Kathe Todd-Hooker and Pat Spark, after our initial introductions, suddenly put two and two together and recognized me as that “backstrap blog person”. They had run into my blog while googling backstrap weaving and “Old Believers”.

And that is all that I am going to tell you for this week. Next week’s blog post will be all about what Pat and Kathe shared with me about the Russian “Old Believers”, their community in Oregon  and most of all…their beautiful backstrap woven sashes. They are doing wonderful work documenting it all. The sashes will completely blow you away! Guess what will be my next reproduction project!!

And one of the most interesting and exciting things for me is that I am sure that there is a community of these people in Santa Cruz Bolivia where I live. Once or twice a year I have spotted a few of them in the streets but no one has been able to tell me anything about them. I had to come all the way to California and have this chance meeting to find out! Kathe taught tassel-making in her final class and invited me to see her slide presentation on the ”Old Believers”.

I just can’t believe my luck sometimes! 🙂

And there is a lot of other stuff about cool weavers and spinners I met at the conference which I will share with you next week.

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I have spied a blog with Becky aka Yodaknits  working on the “S” yurt band border design that I showed you all recently (pictured below). Her blog goes by the name of Knitasha Von Stashenskeins. She took weaving along on her Caribbean cruise on a picture frame loom and has since bought an inkle loom on which she wove the “S”. Check it out!

Janet, my roomie at the conference, has been weaving it on her backstrap loom, pictured at left, with fine perle cotton that looks super with its gorgeous sheen.

Becky’s “S” band woven on an inkle loom.

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Finally, seeing as I have been telling you about teachers and learning experiences, I thought I would leave you with a story about a fun and unusual teaching experience I had when I went to Salasaca in Ecuador in 2005.

One of the typical supplementary warp backstrap woven belts of Salasaca and my rough charting of some of the motifs.
We gathered to learn in a store rather than at a weaver’s house and so had to improvise a few things. We warped in the yard using metal and wooden stakes and whatever else we could find lying about.

I had gone to Salasaca,  a small town in the  central highlands of Ecuador, to learn how to weave their traditional supplementary warp patterned belts on a backstrap loom. I showed them my weavings as I always do when I approach potential teachers as well as photos of my home and other weavers in Bolivia. They were pleased to have this Bolivian contact as they believe that their ancestors were originally from Bolivia and are people who were forced to come over to settle in Ecuador as part of a Spanish plan to divide and weaken communities.

Juan had never woven before while Natalia had some experience. Here they are trying warping as I had shown them on their own.

They were very interested, therefore, in learning a Bolivian weaving technique – something that their ancestors had very likely known how to do –  and so I was persuaded to teach them rather than have them teach me. They looked through my woven samples and chose pebble weave.

First, a day or so was spent respinning their chosen yarns so they would be firm enough for the backstrap loom. Then we warped up in the yard and looked for a place to tie onto in the shop. My students were 19-year old Juan, Anita’s youngest son, who for some reason had never learned to weave the tapestries on the floor looms as his older brothers had, and Natalia who had learned to weave as a teenager but who had not had much opportunity to put it into practice.

Natalia didn’t need to be taught about heddle making. She got to work making her heddles before I could stop her and tell her that we had to make new crosses on which to make them. So here she is having a good chuckle as she undoes them.

Natalia’s classes were being constantly interrupted as she had a market stall across the street. She seated herself by the  door so she could dump her loom and take off every time she saw a customer approaching. So it was Juan who made the most progress.

Juan was such a great student! I showed him how to weave a triangle, he copied that a few times and, despite my recommendations to advance more slowly, wanted to go straight on to a more diffcult hummingbird motif. Here he is sitting on sacks on the concrete floor and using, at first a piece of cloth,and then some kind of tool belt as his backstrap. There weren’t any beaters or swords about so he used sticks from the yard which he cut and shaped for his heddle sticks and swords.
Juan with his mother Anita and Natalia. You can see the looms we were using on the floor tied to the wooden post.

I told Juan which warps to pick up for his first hummingbird and then away he went! Although it wasn’t perfect, he did an amazing job of copying it. His mother, who is not a weaver, was thrilled.

And then it was time for me to leave. I wanted to leave Juan with more designs that he could continue working on so that he wouldn’t just have the hummingbird to copy. Unfortunately I didn’t have any textiles that I could leave so I bought paper and colored pencils and drew pattern charts and tried to explain how to read them and relate the pictures to what he had just woven.

He was not one bit interested in learning about my crazy charts and,  no matter how much I tried to persuade him, he just wouldn’t have anything to do with them. Well, I left them there anyway as I had a feeling that when I wasn’t around, he might just pick them up and have a look.

I am happy to say that I was able to return to Salasaca eighteen months later to find that Juan had picked up the pattern charts and woven some of the motifs, invented a few of his own and even adapted a design from one of the traditional Salasaca belts to weave in pebble weave. I was thrilled! I then had his brothers asking me to teach them. Apparently Juan wouldn’t teach them – this was “his” thing and they had their own thing – the tapestry weaving. I didn’t get to catch up with Natalia on this trip as she had taken work in the city. I am amused to think that maybe some time in the future some anthropologist will be scratching his or her head and wondering how pebble weave found its way into Salasacan weaving!

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One more thing before I leave you all for this week…

Helena from Brazil, who first introduced me to the weavings of the Huni Kuin people of tropical Brazil and Peru, (you may remember that I wove a bag patterned in supplementary weft based on their motifs – at left) has sent me a link to an amazing YouTube video on these people and their weavings and it has English subtitles.

Do check it out – it’s wonderful. Thank you so much Helena for always keeping me in mind 🙂

PS…I have made a new page with links to all the videos on this blog.  A lady I met here in the US said it took her ages to find the one-weft double weave videos so now they are indexed and linked on a new page.


Backstrap Weaving- Warp floats galore! – a tutorial

I am seeing squares! I feel like I have spent the whole week charting. The yurt band design that I charted and wove into a cell phone pouch last week was pretty easy to pick out from a photograph. So I launched myself into a bigger yurt band design this week. A lot of the elements are similar so I figured it would be a piece of cake but, as it turns out – not so much.

Getting the main motif down was easy but filling in all the background floats was the hard part. Where exactly to place the five-span floats around the curves in the motif was the dilemma and the photo I was working with was no help at all. I really wish I could put the photo here but it is not mine to show. The original band has the main motif in orange on a slatey blue – it is gorgeous – but I have stuck with some old faithful colors for this first attempt.

The first few rows woven of a new yurt band design

The outer bands have a brown motif on beige and the main section beige on red. Anyway, I think I have finally got it down. I do have a drawing program for this kind of thing but I prefer the old fashioned way –  sprawled on the floor with marker pens, corrector, pencil, eraser and scotch tape.

I have been trying to come up with a good name for this technique as a title for this post but all I have so far is warp floats galore – that doesn’t even come close to covering it – but try getting your mouth around this “offiicial” classification:

“simple alternating float weave with two color patterning with all the warp-floats on one face, colors exchanging function to create pattern” (Warp Patterned Weaves of the Andes – Rowe)

Thank goodness someone came up with the simple name “pebble” to describe my favorite pick-up weave as the description for that is even longer. I have been trying to find the origin of the name “pebble” but haven’t had luck with that. It is a name that seems to be applied quite loosely to a variety of weaves and I am wondering who first coined it and to which structure in particular they were referring. Imagine my surprise when a young weaver in the main plaza in Cusco used the term “pebble weave” to describe the band she was trying to sell.

The border design from Lisa's yurt band that I charted

But, back to my “warp floats galore”. I also charted the border design of Lisa’s yurt band so that I could do a tutorial based on that here this week and, fortunately, I can show you a photo of that, thanks to Lisa.

I wove it in a variety of yarns and color combinations to see which I liked best. The example on the yurt band uses three colors one of which is also used as a border.

So this is what I came up with…

Four versions of the yurt band border design. The one on the right is the most authentic as I used the same color to weave the O's and the borders.

So I decided to go with the one on the right as it most closely resembles the original and looks nicer in the finer yarn

Fabric for the cell phone pouch

and made another cell phone pouch. I have to tell you that I don’t even own a cell phone but I think these make great gifts. I usually take woven coin purses along on my travels as gifts for my indigenous weaving teachers. On a trip to Ecuador I was looking for a typical spindle whorl and asked a group of ladies who were embroidering skirts in the marketplace . No one showed much interest or enthusiasm for my request. I then offered one of my little coin purses to anyone who could get me a whorl. In the blink of an eye out came all the cell phones from deep inside the folds of their blouses! So I think that these little pouches may be appreciated and may make better gifts than the coin purses from now on.

The cell phone pouch edged with a four-strand braid
Simple X design warp floats on a hat band

The border design from the yurt band comprises a series of what I call X’s and O’s. These are about the most basic designs you can weave in this simple float technique.

I used a series of X’s separated by a single stripe to make the hat band at left.

Starting off with black and white horizontal stripes, the black warps float over the surface to form the X motifs.

LEFT: X motifs... RIGHT: O motifs
X's and O's woven in succession

In the above examples, the X’s and O’s are separated by a single stripe. If you put the X’s and O’s together on the one band and weave them in succession so that they overlap, they will look like what you see at left.

The example on the left has red X’s and yellow O’s. This is reversed in the example on the right.

Now it is just a matter of putting three columns of X’s and O’s together and, voila! you have the yurt band border.

Here are the pattern charts for the X’s and O’s…

LEFT: X and O motifs; CENTER: X and O motifs overlapped in succesion; RIGHT: Three columns of X's and O's - the yurt band border.

I am going to give a step-by-step tutorial here now for the yurt band border.

For those of you who have never woven this simple warp float technique, there are step-by-step instructions here. The tutorial there guides you through warping, arranging the cross and weaving some simple patterns.

Once you have the hang of weaving this border design, especially the parts where the two motifs overlap, you will have the skills necessary to weave the yurt band design that I wove on the cell phone pouch last week – at left.  But, I recommend starting small! Practice the small design in this tutorial and make something useful. Next week I will give the chart and instructions for weaving the  border of the red cell pouch, pictured below.

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WARP FLOATS GALORE-THE TUTORIAL

This is a warp-faced weave.

You need to wind a warp and rearrange the cross so that it looks like the picture at left. The warps in shed 1 will go in heddles and shed 2 will be controlled by a shed stick. I have 4 ends in each of my borders. I am working with 18 warps, or 9 pairs of warps in each shed. This tutorial gives instructions for weaving the first 10 weft passes. Start by simply passing the weft through sheds 1 and 2 and weaving a few rows of horizontal stripes. I recommend passing your weft from left to right in shed 1 to be in sync with these insructions.
FIRST WEFT PASS: Start the design by passing your weft through shed 1. My weft is passing here from left to right through shed 1.
SECOND WEFT PASS: Select the warps from shed 1 that will float. These are indicated on the chart as pairs numbered 2, 4, 6 and 8. Add these to all the warps in shed 2. Pass the weft from right to left.
THIRD WEFT PASS: Pass the weft from left to right through shed 1.
FOURTH WEFT PASS: Select the warps from shed 1 that will float and add them to all the warps in shed 2. Pass the weft through this shed from right to left.
This is where the designs overlap so we need to float warps again for this weft pass and will be selecting them this time from shed 2. FIFTH WEFT PASS: Select the warps from SHED 2 that will float and add them to all the warps in shed 1. Pass the weft from left to right.
SIXTH WEFT PASS: Pass the weft from right to left through shed 2.
SEVENTH WEFT PASS: Select the warps from shed 2 that will float and add them all to the warps in shed 1. Pass the weft through this shed from left to right.
EIGHTH WEFT PASS: Pass the weft from right to left through shed 2.
NINTH WEFT PASS: Select the warps from shed 2 that will float and add them to all the warps in shed 1. Pass the weft through this shed from left to right.
This is where, once again, the motifs overlap so we need to select warps to float again but this time from shed 1. TENTH WEFT PASS: Select the warps that will float from shed 1 and add them to all the warps in shed 2. Pass the weft from right to left through this shed.

And there it finishes. We are back to step 1 – the first weft pass.

The yurt band designs on my red cell phone pouch reqiure that you select warps to float for every single weft pass.

Some project ideas for using this technique and design: weave four or five columns of X's and O's together and make a bookmark; weave the design next to plain weave and make a cell phone pouch, coin purse or sewing kit purse. Even the smallest sample can be made into something useful. I sewed a zip into the little shadow weave sample I showed you last week and made a sewing kit purse.

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BACK TO ECUADOR

A typical house in the rural settlements of coastal Ecuador and the home of my weaving teachers there


Removing the seeds from natural brown "mico" cotton

I thought I would finish this post by revisiting coastal Ecuador and the weavers there who taught me this simple warp float technique in the first place. I showed you all a little about their weaving here in another post so this time I will show a bit about their spinning. The weavers I stayed with are amongst the few in the area that still weave with their own homespun cotton.

Although there are still a few wild cotton plants scattered about the settlement where these weavers live, they usually have to buy their cotton in the market. It needs to be deseeded, teased and beaten into a smooth even sheet before it can be spun.

While natural brown cotton is highy prized and expensive in Guatemala, it doesn’t seem to be considered anything special in Ecuador.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cotton is draped on a wooden stand called the "rueca" for spinning. The "rueca" has a notch cut into its top which grabs the cotton and allows the spinner to draw out the fibers under tension. A small basket is woven from plantain fiber underneath on which the spindle sits when not in use. This is a miniature version of the "rueca' which I made with my teachers' help so that I could take an example back with me to Bolivia. The typical spindle can be seen at right with its wooden whorl. More often now you will see people using yo-yo halves and metal wheels as whorls.
Here my teachers are spinning with their large ruecas-one hand twirling like mad while the other draws out the fibers. I am having a go. I found this a lot harder than spinning with a drop spindle. I taught Trini to spin with my drop spindle and she picked it up in seconds.
The people in these settlements are basically farmers - up at 5am with the roosters and the donkeys to go out and work the fields so they can be indoors during the hottest part of the day. Then off to bed at 9pm. Here are some bead spindle whorls that they have unearthed while digging and turning the soil for planting. Mind blowing!!
Some simple warp float designs from coastal Ecuador that I wove and have used as covers for my journal.
And the spinning tradition lives on...the anthroplogist whom I accompanied on this trip has just gotten back from Ecuador and tells me that this little one is now up and spinning!

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Backstrap Weaving-MORE mysterious sticks and beautiful braids

MORE MYSTERIOUS STICKS!

I set up  my loom yesterday to weave a narrow band – just 28 ends. Once I had made my simple heddles, tied them in a bunch and added the shed loop I realized that my entire loom consisted of just two simple sticks – the two loom bars and that’s all – one attached to a bed and the other to me. My weft was tied in a butterfly – no sticks there. The only other stick involved was a wooden beater to prop open my sheds and beat in the weft. How much simpler can it get?

I filmed the entire process from warping stakes to ready-to-weave if you would like to take a look. (Donna, I made this especially for you!)

So, again I ask you, how much simpler can it get?

Actually it can get simpler! I was in Tarabuco recently and watched a weaver sitting on the ground deftly wind a warp around her hand and foot. She tied one end of the warp around her foot, passed a length of yarn through the end loops at the other end and secured it to her waist. Then she made simple heddles around her hand, added a shed loop and started to weave. Briiliant! All in a matter of minutes.

A weaver in Tarabuco using a “toe” loom

You are probably thinking: okay, a simple loom for a simple weave– but even very complex weaves can be done on a very basic set-up.

A weaver from Tarabuco creating a complex design on a simple loom

You may recognize Felicia above with her sleepy cat from the video in this previous post. She has a shed rod, a heddle stick and some bars between which to stretch her warp. She has just inserted a couple of thin sticks to help with the pick-up but look at the photo at left and see the complex designs that she creates on this simple set up.

Now what about those looms that you see in pictures on the internet and in those Youtube videos? Some of them are loaded up with sticks – all those mysterious sticks – what in the world do they do? Hopefully I can solve the mystery behind at least some of them here. I have to admit that there are Asian looms that I have seen online with a multitude of patterning sticks and that I still haven’t figured out how some of those sticks work.

An extra stick added in a second cross in Guatemala

But at least I can let you know a bit about  the sticks I have seen here in my travels in Central and South America and what they do. In the picture at right, number 1 is the heddle stick and number 2 is the shed rod. We are familiar with these. But what about number 3? This is an extra stick to hold a second cross. A lot of weavers wind a second cross as they warp. I don’t.  I find that the fewer twists and turns I make on the warping board, the easier it is to wind a warp with  good even tension. I only use a second cross  on narrow warps to stabilize my shed rod which tends to slip from side to side and be a thorough nuisance. Making a second cross and putting a stick within will lock the shed rod into position.  It is very easy to create a second cross once your warp is already on the loom. Here are the steps…

LEFT: Your loom is set up with heddles and a shed rod. RIGHT: Open the shed rod shed, place your beater within and draw it down to the weaving line. Remove the shed rod. It is important that the beater not fall out at this stage as it is saving your shed rod shed. Use a back up safety string if necesary.
LEFT:Open the heddle shed and place an additonal stick within. RIGHT: Tilt the beater to open the shed up beyond the heddles and place your original shed rod within. Tie or tape the shed rod and additional stick together.You have created your second cross.
Another Guatemalan loom with a second cross installed. The shed rod is pvc pipe which is often used as it can be thick without being heavy. Notice the orange safety string – if disaster strikes (and it most probably will with those 3 little guys hanging about!) and all this weaver’s sticks fall out, the safety string will save her cross. Even the experts use them! Look at the little future weaver there on the left. She is wearing the typical long “corte” skirt and even has her own woven belt.

Some looms have a mind boggling amount of sticks but the reason can be very simple!!

LEFT: The 11 sticks on this upright loom in Ecuador will become heddle sticks. The 22-row design, which is horizontally symmetrical, will be programmed into these 11 heddles. RIGHT: This is one of my own warps set up on my Navajo loom in Chile. As I am using 4 colors in my pebble weave I have extra sticks to separate and keep the colors in order for the pick up.
Miguel Andrango’s granddaughter poses with one of the looms. You can see the two shed rods above the heddle stick. The space for the extra shed rod is programmed into the warp by using an extra stake during the warping process.

In Ecuador I saw the use of an extra stick which I have not noticed anywhere else. This is especially useful for wide warps or particularly fine yarns but I saw it being used on warps of all widths and yarn sizes in Ecuador. It is an extra shed rod. I know from my own experience that the shed-rod shed on a wide piece with fine yarns is really difficult to open. It was a very slow and tedious process on my Abba Yohanni piece, for example. The extra shed rod in Ecuador holds every second warp that passes over the main shed rod. This means that half the number of warps can be raised using the extra stick. Then it is very easy to use the main shed rod to raise the rest of the warps.

This is one of Miguel Andrango’s looms. He is a very well known weaver from Agato, a small town near Otavalo. You can watch a video of his work here. Fifty-seven seconds into the video you will get a very nice close up of the two shed rods. You will also see the typical white woven alpargatas he is wearing. I spent some time with an alpargata weaver and hope to blog about that some time. Miguel Andrango is not a large man and, although the piece above is not particularly wide,  he weaves some of the widest backstrap woven pieces I have ever seen!

A weaver near Otavalo is preparing to make her string heddles. She is using the extra shed rod on her loom. This rod has a dual purpose as it also serves to stabilize the main shed rod.

Now we come to the patterning sticks that are used by weavers in Guatemala to create designs using supplementary wefts. The supplementary wefts are either laid in to form block patterns or wrapped around warps to form little figures.

It is not my intention here to teach you how to insert and use these sticks. So, don’t worry if you don’t quite get it. No doubt, I will be doing a tutorial on this in a future post. I just want to take a little bit of the mystery out of it so that when you are looking at weavers and looms in books and on the net you may have a better understanding of what all those sticks do. For now, read on and  just enjoy the beautiful textiles!!

Typical designs of Santa Catarina Palopo.LEFT:Supplementary wefts have been laid in to make designs like the X’s in the center or wrapped around warps to form figures, like the stem of the plant below and the arms of the woman above. RIGHT: The upper design has been woven using the technique employed in making the typical huipil of this town.
LEFT: Bands woven using patternig sticks and offered to toursits. RIGHT: The typical huipil of Santa Catarina Palopo. These colors are a relatively recent introduction. Old huipiles in crimson and white can be seen in paintings by Carmen Pettersen. My teacher told me that only the very oldest women in the town may still have the old huipiles.
Carmelita is teaching me on this loom in Santa Catarina Barahona. Number 1 is her heddle stick, number 2 her shed rod, number 3 the stick in the 2nd cross and number 4 is her newly introduced patterning stick.

These patterns are created by adding two extra sticks to the loom – the patterning sticks. In Santa Catarina Barahona, the weavers open the shed-rod shed and pick up every fifth warp. They store these warps on a stick – the patterning stick that sits up behind the shed rod.

The heddle shed is then opened and, once again every fifth warp is picked up but in such a way that each picked up warp sits between two that were picked up on the first patterning stick. The warps are stored on another patterning stick which sits behind the shed rod but, this time, under the warp.

Here is how the loom looks with both patterning sticks installed.

Number 1, heddle stick. Number 2, shed rod. Number 3, stick in 2nd cross. Number 4, 1st patterning stick and number 5 the 2nd patterning stick. The patterning sticks are simply drawn down towards the heddles to create sheds for laying in the supplementary wefts.
This diagram shows a loom in profile with the positions of the patterning sticks
LEFT: Lydia is laying in a supplementary weft in one of the patterning sheds. RIGHT: The patterns at top and bottom were made with the aid of the two patterning sticks.

Sometimes a second pair of  patterning sticks is inserted when the weaver wants to change the design. These are only temporary and will have to be removed when she wants to return to the original design.

Take a look at the photo below…can you name all the sticks?!

Two pairs of patterning sticks are in this loom

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BRAIDS AND FINISHES

A sling braid made from llama fiber from the Colca Canyon area of Peru. It comprises a braid with a finger loop in one end and a cradle in which the stone to be hurled sits.

Now to return to the simplicity with which I started this post…………some braiding and edging techniques with few or no tools required.

After having done the tutorial on cross knit looping last week, I  remembered another interesting edging that I learned with my sling braiding teacher in Yanque, Peru. We used it to edge the cradle section of an Andean sling braid.

I made one sling with him and he taught me to make three different braids. Men in Peru braid their slings holding all the braid strands in their hands – no other equipment is required – and can quite happily stroll along the road while braiding. Two of the braids I learned had twenty-four strands and the other twelve. I was told that the main use of the slings these days is to hurl stones in order to  keep control of animals straying from the herd.

LEFT: The single cross two-color edging that I was taught on my sling. RIGHT: A double cross two-color edging on an Andean sling that I bought.
A few of the braids used for Andean slings. Named from left to right…PALMA, MARGARITA (2nd and 3rd),SALSA and CAJAMARCA (5th and 6th)

When making an Andean sling, first, one half the braid is made. The strands of llama fiber are measured from the tip of the nose to the toes and then doubled. The first section usually includes the finger loop. More strands are added to weave the cradle in tapestry technique and then work the braid for the other half.

The cradle is woven on a backstrap set-up tying the braid to the waist while the strands which serve as warp are tied to a fixed point.  Then the second half is worked in two braids – first a thick one and then a thin one to finish.

Decorative tassels and edgings are the last things to be put in place. Some of the tassels can be quite flamboyant. My teacher didn’t care at all for the more extravagant decorations!

I love these slings as there are several skills involved. Without even realizing it, this was my very first taste of backstrap weaving and with this one teacher I learned so much. He taught me the Palma and Margarita braid styles and a thin version of the Palma which didn’t seem to have a name, a little tapestry weaving by backstrap as well as tassel making and decorative edging.

LEFT; The very start of the Palma braid with the 4 sets of 6 strands used to make it. RIGHT: My hand in the braiding position. Two opposing sets of strands are interchanged. The braid is then rotated  90 degrees so the other two sets can be worked.

Zacarias was a marvelous teacher with a lot of patience. He would get me started on my work and leave me while he harvested the barley crop – plans were afoot to make some alcohol – moved the animals from one field to another and generally took care of things on his property.

LEFT: My sling braiding teacher, Zacarias on his property near Yanque, Peru. RIGHT: A woman by the shores of Lake Titicaca shows me how to hurl a stone with a sling braid.

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WHAT HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN UP TO?

I know that backstrap weaving isn’t for everyone and I am so glad that people are still able to make use of the instructions here and at Weavolution and use the techniques and designs on other looms. Ellen Turner, in Denmark, has woven a double weave band on her inkle loom using my tutorial at Weavolution.




 

She made a celtic design inspired by something she saw on the internet.

I also ran into Jessica’s blog where she has been experimenting with double weave on an inkle loom too. Check it out.

Kristina in Germany  wove a double weave band on her inkle loom using her own handspun llama fiber. She commented that it put a lot of stress on her inkle loom so that is one important thing to take into consideration.

So if you have been enjoying the designs and have found the tutorials interesting and tempting but are still hesitating about getting strapped in, remember that you can adapt these techniques to other looms. I have set up warps on my rigid heddle loom and woven bands with string heddles rather than with the rigid heddle.

I have to tell you, though, that for me the backstrap loom wins hands down for the ease with which I can adjust tension with the slightest of body movements.

And, finally, I mentioned above the paintings of Carmen Pettersen. Check if your library has a copy of “Maya of Guatemala-Life and Dress”. Her paintings of Guatemalan people in traditional dress are stunning.

Backstrap Weaving-Sitting at my loom and Salasaca strawberries.

A firm cushion, a stable place to tie up the loom and a broad well positioned backstrap.

SITTING AT MY LOOM…ergonomics

I have been weaving with my backstrap loom for around 14 years now and feel very comfortable with the set up I have here at home-a stable place to tie up the loom, a good cushion and a broad sturdy backstrap. I try to have everything I need – needles, extra dowels etc –  placed around me within reach before I get strapped into the loom as well as an emergency unstrapping strategy so that my warp and sticks don’t end up in a tangled mess on the floor when I jump up to answer the door. I always grab the loom bar and hold the warp under tension while I slip off the backstrap cords and then gently place the loom on the floor.  Other non-weaving related essentials that need to be on hand include the remote controls for the dvd player and tv, the cd collection on one side and the laptop and snoozing cat on the other. The phone can just ring for all I care! although I do have an answering machine which I sometimes remember to turn on.

I have to say that I have never put much thought into the “correct” way to sit. I feel comfortable sitting with my legs

I am looking and feeling very uncomfortable weaving at Felipe’s loom in Salasaca, Ecuador reaching high and with the backstrap up around my waist. I did like the stake at the bottom of the post for bracing my feet and the baby chickens that would come and sleep on my legs while I wove!

stretched out and my warp angled slightly upward. There are sheets of wood under the bed against which I can brace my feet and I do get up frequently to walk about and stretch. Yet I still don’t know if this is the “healthiest” positon for a backstrap weaver’s body or just something I have gotten used to.

And what about the indigenous backstrap weavers here in South America who have been weaving since childhood? Do they experiment with different positons or does tradition alone dictate the way they sit and weave?

I know that I am usually very uncomfortable at first sitting at other people’s looms when I am learning with my indigenous teachers.

I like to try to do things just as they do but sometimes it’s difficult-either the loom is angled too steeply, the sitting position, sometimes on cold bare concrete,  is almost physically impossible for me or the loom has been set up for someone a lot smaller or larger than me.

Felipe, very much at home at his loom with three of his four sons, his wife and mother-in-law.

Let me show you some pictures of other backstrap weavers including some of my teachers, the way they position themselves at the loom and some of their beautiful work.

Valeria in San Roque near Otavalo sits with legs outstretched and feet braced against a block of wood. The looms in the typical weaver’s home will have several blocks of wood like this which can be added to accommodate different warp lengths and the leg lengths of the various weavers in the household. She has just finished what will become the collar for a poncho and is brushing it with thistles that have been mounted on a frame.
Valeria’s father, Carlos, weaves the ponchos. His backstrap is a thick twisted cord which he is padding with cloth. I don’t imagine that feels too comfortable. He is about to make the last few weft passes in this four-selvedge piece.
For narrower weavings, this piece of hide is the typical backstrap in the San Roque area. It is wonderfully sturdy, broad and comfortable.
Margarita is sitting crossed legged on a cushion and weaving this very narrow band with just a piece of yarn passing through the end loops and tied around her waist.
The tiny pebble weave bands that I made under Margarita’s tuition.
These ladies in Pisac, Peru are obviously a lot more felxible than I am as they kneel while weaving narrow bands which are used as decorative edging for their skirts.
A close up of the bands used in Pisac for skirt trim. I believe this is called “buyto”.
Catarina in Nebaj, Guatemala sits on a low chair. Hopefully she will be my teacher on my next trip to Guatemala. This looks really comfortable and I would like to have a small chair like this made for myself. I love how she has set up the phone on the table next to her. She is weaving a small huipil for her little daughter. She also wove the blue huipil that she is wearing.
Of course it always helps a weaver if there is a visitor to entertain the little guys. This is the little Nebajense who will be wearing the red huipil that is on the loom. The huipiles of Nebaj are amazing and I was fortunate to be there over Easter when everyone was out in the main square in their best outfits. More about that in a future post.
Another of Catarina’s beautiful huipiles.
In Zunil, Guatemala I learned how to make the typical hair sash of the area. The weaver is attached to a 4-shaft pedal-operated loom by backstrap. I sat for 4-5 hours every morning on a small wooden stool and had to take towels and sweaters for padding after a painful first session. Clara teaches a lot of the teenagers in the town so I was learning along with a 15 year-old neighbor.
Clara’s hair sash is on the right with my frst attempt on the left. I also had some of the essential parts for the little loom made by the carpenter in the town, photgraphed and sketched the loom and took measurements so that I can have one built here some day.
Clara also weaves this beautiful fabric on a large floor loom which is made into the typical skirt of Zunil
Most weavers I saw in Guatemala knelt to weave. This position is impossible for me to maintain for more than 5 minutes and so I would sit with legs outstretched for my lessons with Lidia. When Lidia once tried to sit and weave in my position, she just fell about laughing!

When I was in Guatemala in 2008, I met Karen Piegorsch who is President of Synergo Arts. Synergo Arts works to educate backstrap weavers about ergonomics and is currently introducing their ergonomic bench to weavers and carpenters in Guatemala ” to protect their health while producing more textiles of better quality.  As a result, they increase their ability to provide for their families, and also preserve their weaving culture.”.  In fact, their aim is to help all weavers and artisans work more comfortably.

In the words of the organization…

“Synergo Arts is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3), tax exempt organization based in Arizona.  Our purpose is to help artists and artisans around the world use ergonomics to maximize their health, income, performance, productivity, creativity, and art or craft quality.  We do this through a grassroots approach to innovating and delivering resources in ergonomics education, consulting and design.”
Information on the ergonomic bench project and other articles about ergonomics for artisans can be found here and here.
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SALASACA STRAWBERRIES….

 

Salasaca tapestries

 

I showed you a picture at the start of this post of Felipe in Salasaca weaving on his porch with his family. I went to Salasaca in 2005 for the frst time and met Felipe’s cousin Anita. I was looking for someone to teach me to weave the supplementary warp patterned belts of Salasaca. Anita is not a weaver although she owns a wonderful set of six beaters of varying sizes made for and given to her by her father when she was a teenager. She doesn’t have any daughters and is waiting for the first grand daughter to pass these tools on to. Anita’s sons work at floor looms producing the tapestries for which Salasaca has become known. The designs include those from Navajo weavings, artwork of M C Escher as well as traditional motifs of Peru.

MC Escher inspired design on a tapestry made in Salasaca

I have read that not one of their tapestry motifs is Salasacan in origin. The tapestries are made specifically to be sold to tourists.

The traditional Salasaca designs can be found on their clothes and it was the frutilla (strawberry) motif belt that I wanted to learn to make. As it turned out, they persuaded me to teach them to weave instead! Anita had me teach her youngest son, Juan  and their neighbor Natalia to weave Andean pebble weave which is a story that I will save for future post.
Two of the six beaters in the set that makes up the Salasaca weaver’s tool kit. The small one is used to pick up the warps. The typical spindle is called a “sig sig” after the pampas grass plant stems from which it is made.
Eighteen months later I returned to see how my students were getting on and you will have to wait to hear more about that. It was on this return trip that Anita introduced me to her cousin who happened to have a warp all set up with which he was teaching his youngest sons to weave. This was so lucky for me as it meant that I coud also have classes and not have to worry about messing up someone’s precious belt. The acceptable parts of the belt were going to be salvaged and sold to the local shoemaker who had recently started making sandals using pieces of the traditional woven belts.
Pieces of the “frutilla” design belt used to decorate sandals.
“Manamay” belt with Anita’s spindle and distaff

Salasaca people are small and it was obvious that even the largest pair of sandals would not do for me. In fact, quite a crowd gathered to watch me trying to stuff my big gringa feet into them. I bought them anyway as this was the only way I would get to have a sample of this textile. I could not persuade anyone to sell me a belt eventhough  I jokingly pointed out how unfair this was to Anita as her pig was tethered to the gate with one of her old belts! She did permit me, however, to take photos of her frutilla and manamay belts.

So I spent a few mornings with Felipe and wove on his loom. The trickiest part was remembering to let go of the weft before slamming the gigantic beater down – bruised knuckles to show for the times I forgot! We wove on Felipe’s narrow porch and, as his home is on a hillside, enjoyed a beautiful view over the fields and surrounding countryside.
Front and back of a “fruitilla” belt/
The belt at right belongs to Felipe’s mother-in-law and she kindly allowed me to photograph it. Neither she nor her daughters know how to weave although they are all expert spinners.
I had a lesson in circular warping from Felipe and his youngest son and then came back to Bolivia to document the process in my journal. The warping was quite complicated with several colors traveling at the same time in different directions and being anchored under toes. Then I wove two pieces to be the front and back covers for my journal.
The back cover
The back cover piece on the loom
The front cover. The zig zag designs are called “kingus” and the circular designs are the “frutillas”. As the colored supplementary warps shoud be thicker than the ground weave warps, I used doubled sewing thread for the ground weave and perle cotton for the supplementary warps. In Salasca they use cotton thread for the ground weave and thicker acrylic for the colored warps.
Anita, her son Juan and Natalia wanted to pose for a picture. This was on my first visit and I was only able to give them the pictures on my return 18 months later as they don’t have a reliable mailing address. Women in Salasaca wear traditonal clothes everyday-all that you see here in the picture except for the hat and every spare moment is spent spinning. They normally use other kinds of head coverings on a normal day. Juan put on his festival gear especially for the picture. Anita and her family own a store and you can see their floor looms and tapestries in the background.

I have plenty more to tell about the wonderfully friendy people of Salasaca but will save it for another post.

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WHAT HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN UP TO?

I have some projects from readers to show again this week.

Jeannine made a supplementary weft patterned band from her own design. You can read more about the whole process and see more pictures of her band and her pattern charts on her blog.

Ann finished her supplementary weft patterned band. It looks great with that fringe.  Both she and Jeannine are about to embark on another project using this technique.

Stitchwort wove a backstrap following the instructions in my article on WeaveZine and is now weaving what will be a bag for her loom. She is weaving the bag from her own handspun tencel and it looks so wonderfully sleek and shiny on the loom. I have been curious about tencel for a long time having heard so much about it in online groups and seen gorgeous pictures of pieces with wonderful sheen.

I was lucky to be able to organize a swap of woven goodies with a friend in Denmark and my package arrived this week-tencel at my request and a couple of her own spectacular handwoven articles. The tencel is everything I expected and more!

First, here is a photo of Stitchwort’s projects…

She is using her own handspun ramie as weft and I must confess I have no idea what that is. But I won’t give too much away as you can read all about her backstrap projects on her blog. I just love the shuttle she is using.


 

Tencel, Japanese silk and Argentinean silk

There’s my tencel on the two spools with a ball of silk that a colleague brought for me from Japan along with a skein of raw colored silk from Argentina. The Argentinean silk is a lot thicker than the tencel and the Japanese silk and so I was thinking of using the thin yarns as ground weave and the white silk as supplementary warp. I am terrified that I will mess it up and waste this precious stuff. I will definitely be sampling on a bookmark.

Any thoughts on this project idea?

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. 🙂