Guarani – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Accidents

**There’s been weaving happening at my backstrap loom but this has been a bit different from a standard band-weaving project. A recent incident turned this into an interesting challenge.**

Regular readers of my blog may recall mentions now and then of the fact that I literally fell into weaving after taking a fall while out mountain biking in Colorado. That incident back in 1995, which left me on crutches for six weeks in a Colorado youth hostel, started a chain of events that created the backstrap weaver that I am today. If you’d like to know more, I can tell you that during the pandemic British weaver Stacey Harvey-Brown invited a few dozen weavers to tell the story of how they got into weaving for her Loom Room blog. It’s fascinating reading about the different paths the various invitees have taken to arrive at their looms. Here’s the link to mine.

The reason I’ve taken this little trip back in time to think about an accident thirty years ago that became a life-changing event is because a couple of weeks ago I once again found myself down on the ground thinking “Ouch!”

While in 1995 my first thoughts were about how all my plans to hike and camp in the Utah canyons had been ruined (hiking was my passion at that time), this time my first thoughts were about weaving and all the other fiber-related activities I do that require an intact dominant hand. Darn it, I had broken my right wrist and it required surgery. Was this also going to be a life-changing event?

This screen shot from security camera footage shows white-headed me walking away in the distance while a happy-go-lucky dog bears down on me. It kept going and ran right into the back of my legs taking me out like bowling ball hitting a pin!

Anyway, I’m determined not to let this slow me down too much while remaining sensible and giving myself time to heal. First up was a visit with my Ayoreo teacher, Rocío. She’s been teaching me about the traditional process of stitching bags using garabatá thread as well as about the patterns that identify the various Ayoreo clans.

**Rocío showing me how she connects two lengths of thread without using a knot.**

The last time I’d seen Rocío I had still been practicing the basic stitch using crochet cotton. Since then, and without Rocío’s knowledge, I’ve been scavenging bits of garabatá thread from various sources and working entirely with that material.

The most recent piece was this bag that I stitched during the Carnival break…

My indigenous weaving teachers have never been in the habit of expressing much enthusiasm when I show them my creations. Sometimes it’s a little crushing but I know it’s just their way. My current Guaraní teachers are particularly cool! So, of course I was glowing with pride when Rocío reacted so joyfully to the things I showed her. I think she was shocked. She particularly liked the red, black and white bag with the woven backing I used. I showed that in my last blog post.

She immediately called her husband to come and take photos.

The idea of my visit was to have her show me how to spin and ply the garabatá fiber that she had brought me. While I won’t be able to use my hand to do it myself for some time, at least I can turn it over in my mind in the meantime. A friend came with me and took video. The most valuable thing was seeing how Rocío joins lengths of spun and plied thread during the stitching process without having to use a knot. I hadn’t been successful doing it and had been resorting to using a dab of glue as backup. Rocío was not impressed when I confessed that! We really focused on it this time and I’ve learned a thing or two that had previously escaped me because I simply hadn’t been ready for it yet.

**Showing Rocío some woven rather than stitched garabatá.**

**The fiber is** **spun and plied by rolling it along the upper leg. Both hands need to be involved so I’ll just have to be patient.**

As for that hatband project, I decided that it was time to smarten up my left hand. I really needed to at least try.

**It was a little** **discouraging at first because this is the distance I was able to weave after three consecutive days of spending one to two hours at the loom.**

The gift project had a deadline and I didn’t see myself being able to complete it. But my left hand got smarter and faster and I found that once the cast had been switched to a brace, I could at least insert the pinky of my right hand into the shed to hold it open while I inserted the sword.

**One-handed pick-up. I’m just holding the sword here for the photo. I couldn’t rotate my wrist to be able to insert it in the shed.**

**In progress on the loom and finished. I wish I could complete the gift by attaching it to my friend’s hat but I don’t think either hand is up for that kind of sewing right now.**

And then came a visit with my Guaraní teacher, Eldina.

**Eldina working on a warp just wide enough to be able to demonstrate for me the technique the Guaraní weavers call Moisi.**

I forgot to bring my swords so we used scissors to separate the threads that needed to be heddled. Three sets of heddles are used for this structure. Eldina’s 5-month-old baby girl is never far away when she’s weaving and teaching.

Eldina had to call her mother to be reminded of how threads are selected to go into each set of heddles. Grandma Clara is the Moisi expert while Eldina tends to focus on Karakarapepo. According to Eldina, pick-up for the Moisi style is much more complicated than it is for Karakarapepo. If you’ve read my posts from long ago when I was studying with my very first Guaraní teacher, Angela, you might remember that I soon realized that the structure that I call Intermesh and which I first learned from an Ayacucho weaver in Peru in 1995, is the same as Moisi. This allowed me to easily replicate some of the lovely patterns that Angela had been weaving to make cell phone pouches. Replication is always one of my first steps in learning.

**A cell phone pouch that I wove using the intermesh structure back in the days when phones were small and cute.**

Hopefully, Eldina will eventually take on all of Clara’s skills and knowledge and maybe pass them on to her baby daughter some day.

**Mother and baby busy** **at the loom!**

Clara has been working on samples of jaguar skin print using the Moisi technique for a project that a wildlife photography guide is planning. While this sample is not exactly what the guide has in mind, I’m so in love with this Moisi piece. I think it’s stunning. Hopefully the guide will be able to communicate more precisely his vision for this project but he is, of course, paying for materials and compensating Clara for the time she has spent so far. Commissioned work is hard!

It’s really interesting for me to discover that the thread arrangement while warping and the thread selection for heddles is really different from the way I was taught in Peru. Once my hand is back in actIon, I’d like to set up a warp for my backstrap loom in the way Eldina and Clara set up on their vertical loom. I’d like to see if there’s perhaps some slight difference in the structure that I’m missing. The woven results certainly appear to be identical.

So, my backstrap loom is just a bunch of sticks now. I might give left-handed warping a go eventually to see if I can manage the Guaraní style of set-up for Moisi. But for the next two weeks at least I’ll be giving my wrist a chance to quietly heal. Maybe I’ll dig out the files in which I’ve started writing new books and get my thoughts reorganized on those. I’m in a transition period right now having sold my old apartment and not in a position to set up for photo shoots but at least I could work on the overall plan, chapter headings etc. A good introduction always gets the ball rolling. Let’s see….

And, speaking of my books….the hatband pattern, or at least something very similar, is in my More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns book. There are so many versions of the snake pattern which is basically an embellished zig-zag and I’m often adapting them to suit the number of threads with which I’m working.

If you’re a regular visitor to my blog and have at some point thought about perhaps buying one of my books, maybe you’d like to take the step to buying one now at taprootvideo.com. The accident and resulting surgery have been a significant financial blow and every little bit helps! I’d really appreciate it!

Backstrap Weaving – Garabatá!

Heads-up: Much of this post is dedicated to the Ayoreo looped stitching that I’ve been studying with my teacher here but yes, there’s also a bit of backstrap loom weaving thrown in here and there.

I’ve been back in Santa Cruz for a while now after my trip to see my highland teachers. I got straight back to studying the textile crafts of the lowlands. While I still haven’t managed to get together with my Ayoreo teacher to learn how to spin the lovely bundle of garabatá fiber that she got for me, I’ve still been busily scavenging all the spun garabatá thread that I can find so that I can continue to practice, practice, practice.

**There’s probably a few years of spinning in that bundle….for me, anyway, as a beginner.**

You may remember that I’d taken a few lengths of spun garabatá thread with me to the highlands to throw into the indigo pot. It was such a small amount. I had to think carefully about how to best use it.

**The bundles in the top left corner are the indigo-dyed ones.**

I decided to try to copy the pattern on an Ayoreo bag that I’d bought which had been made with what looks to me to be a combination of Dosapey and Chiqueno pattern. The Chiqueno pattern is the fine-lined diamond shape. For all I know, this combination of figures has another name altogether and identifies another clan. I’ll have to ask Rocío next time I see her. So far, I only know the two patterns that identify the Dosapey and Chequeno clans. Rocío tells me that the techniques used to produce those two can be used in various combinations to create all the other patterns. Right now I have my eye on a pattern on a bag stitched by a Wichi artisan of Argentina which doesn’t seem to be one used by the Ayoreo here in Bolivia.

**While it was interesting figuring out how to combine the two patterns, in the end I didn’t think it was the best way to showcase the indigo thread.**

**The finished pouch is on the right. I used the Dosapey pattern, or part thereof, in all these pieces.**

Because of my limited supply of garabatá thread, I’ve been only stitching one face of the larger finished items and turning to my backstrap loom to weave the other face in cotton.

There’s something so nice about weaving just simple white cloth like this. I’m using the non-mercerized cotton that my Guaraní teachers call “crudo” and which does indeed have a very raw feel to it. The woven and stitched panels are quite easy to combine and I really like the result.

I still had indigo thread left over from that project and decided to try another project in which the color might play a larger role.

I love going to this little store that’s just a few blocks from my place here in the center of town. It’s on one of my regular evening walking routes. Carmen sells Guaraní and Ayoreo crafts and, as far as I can see, is the only one selling Ayoreo products in that entire handcraft market.

I drop by now and then to look at the products and be inspired. Occasionally, I can’t help but buy a little something.

This is one of the products that Carmen sells. It’s made from palm leaves by Guaraní artisans. It’s very firm and holds that lovely egg-like shape. It’s one of those things that just feels so good to cradle in the palm of your hand.

I bought a conveniently small Ayoreo bag from Carmen (convenient because it was one of the lowest priced bags due to its size) which had four rows of the Chiqueno pattern on a surprisingly bright turquoise background. This would inspire my next project…..multiple rows of half the Chiqueno pattern.

**With this I added one more cuff to the collection. These are perfect projects for learning and practicing new patterns. I like the way the indigo is a bigger player in this piece.**

What remained to be done was to continue that pattern to complete the full Chiqueno diamond. This was my hide-away-inside-during-the-Carnival-madness project.

I’m still working on the technique that allows the Ayoreo artisans to join two lengths of thread without using a knot. I’m not usually confident about my own attempts and end up adding a tiny drop of glue for extra security. Keep practicing!

This latest bag also got a woven back. This time I used the intermesh structure as I wanted to weave something that resembles the pattern on the front. The intermesh structure as I know it only allows me to use two colors, though.

**At the backstrap loom once more. The structure that I’m calling intermesh uses two sets of string heddles alternated with rows of pick-up**.

The diamond shapes are very easy to weave although I couldn’t match the scale of the pattern on the garabata piece.

Only after sewing the two pieces together and declaring it finished, did I have the idea of trying to copy the horizontal stripes on the edge of the garabatá piece. I could have woven them as vertical stripes and then turned the fabric sideways to sew. It would have looked pretty cool having the stripes continue from the edge of the garabatá piece across the back of the bag. Too late! But that idea no doubt is going to stick with me until I have a chance to try it out in another project.

Carmen told me that she often travels out to the communities to bring back new products and that she would look for garabatá thread for me on these visits. Because this particular conversation had taken place in December last year, I had given up hope that this would ever happen. However…. I was out on my evening stroll last week and bumped into Carmen in the street. She’d just closed up shop and told me that she had thread for me. The excitement!

**An apple for scale. This will go a long way! I may have to save it to take back to Australia. I love just holding it in my hand and it has the most wonderful smell!**

There’s been some activity with my Guaraní teachers too.

Now that I’ve learned the basics behind dressing and operating the Guaraní loom, I’ve been trying to focus on specific details rather than spending the entire time in class warping for a large project. It’s about process rather than product for me and my desire to do this is not something that my teacher quite understands. In this particular class, I could have happily spent the whole time just making string heddles in the Guaraní style over and over again until I felt less clumsy about it. The Guaraní style of heddle making is not like anything I’ve run across before. I think I have the hang of it now, though.

I think I disappoint Clara a little when I don’t want to put a large warp on the loom. She suggests making a placemat, for example, but no, I’m boring and weird and just want to make heddles…haha.

Below, you can see what the heddles look like at the end of the project when they’re removed from the loom. The warp above is a combination of colored Clea two-ply crochet cotton (roughly 8/2) and the heavier non-mercerized white. My teachers always use the heavier thread for heddles.

I wasn’t all that interested in weaving off that last narrow project. Like I said, I really only wanted to practice making heddles. But I did weave it and it was good practice in heddle operation using a method which also seems to be very unique to Guaraní weavers.

**I grabbed this shot from a video I made many years ago with my first Guaraní teacher, Angela. You can see her using the heddles to create a shed.**

Piecing together strips of that narrow piece to make another zippered purse. I modeled it on the one above that I wove years ago for a plain-weave weave-along that we ran on Ravelry and have been using ever since.

**In the latest class I worked with an even narrower warp, only about 1 cm wide! Sorry, Clara, I still don’t want to weave a placemat.**

In this class, I wanted to learn how to warp a checkerboard pattern that Clara and Eldina often use in their work and see the different ways it can be manipulated to create patterns both with and without doing pick-up. I’ve set up a warp with this pattern on my backstrap loom now for further study. I’ll show you the results next time.

After being cooped up for four days straight during Carnival, I decided to take a trip with a friend up to the foothills for a weekend about 2 hours out of Santa Cruz city. It was a nice way to escape the heat, do some walking, treat myself to some meals out and, most importantly, visit the hummingbird refuge!

**Hills! Santa Cruz city is soooo flat!**

We went to the Refugio de Colibríes (hummingbird refuge) with very low expectations so as not to be disappointed. Maybe we’d see a couple of birds if we sat very still for an hour. Wrong! We saw loads of them. I’m not going to rattle off the various species but if you’re on Facebook you can visit the refugio’s page and see the photos taken by owner, Saúl, with accompanying descriptions.

I managed to get this shot by placing my phone over the eye piece of Saúl’s telescope. I could see the little guy’s chest moving to its heartbeat through the telescope. But the telescope was just an added bonus. The naked eye alone was enough to be able to enjoy the birds and be able to distinguish one species from the next. Owner-guide Saúl was fantastic. Goodness knows how many times he’s explained the same things to visitors but he does so with such enthusiasm.

Maybe there’ll be a hummingbird figure on my next Guaraní warp.

Backstrap Weaving – Dovetailing

Let’s start this post with the bit that is actually about weaving on a backstrap loom.

I’ve been studying with two Guaraní ladies and learning all about the style of loom that they use. It’s not a backstrap loom but rather a free-standing vertical frame.

**A mini version of a typical Guaraní loom.**

After weaving my second project on this loom, I decided to use the cloth I’d produced to cover a notebook in which I could record all I was learning with my Guaraní as well as Ayoreo teachers.

That’s where the backstrap loom came in. I wanted to weave bands with the titles of the book. One half would be for all the notes on the Guaraní loom. The book could then be flipped over so that other half could be used for the Ayoreo notes. I used Clea cotton (2-ply approx 35wpi) and embroidery floss for the supplementary weft.

For the book cover fabric I used a generic cotton from a large cone that my Guaraní teachers typically use and dyed some of it two shades of blue.

And then I had to refer to my drawings again to get back into the swing of dovetail warping.

Dovetail warping….LEFT: Warping the Guaraní loom. RIGHT: Warping the fixed vertical loom in coastal Ecuador. I was creating a warp for a miniature hammock under my teacher’s watchful eye just so that I could learn the technique. We used her handspun cotton.

I had encountered this dovetail style of warping in several places in Ecuador and had had the chance to observe it being done in both wool (Otavalo) and cotton and acrylic (Salasaca) but I only had the opportunity to try it myself when I studied with weavers in coastal Ecuador.

My teacher Felipe demonstrating the way he sets up a dovetail warp for his backstrap loom in Salasaca, Ecuador. The post nearest his left thumb is the dovetail post. He uses an additional post for separating colors. He’s just winding a mini warp to teach me and provide me with a sample to take home.

It can be a little confusing but when working with only one color, you soon get the hang of following this kind of warping path.

**W= Warping stake. C=Cross posts. D=Dovetail stick**

It creates what I call a discontinuous circle. The warp threads travel in one direction until they reach D and then turn and proceed in the opposite direction until they again reach D. The drawing above resembles the set-up that we used in coastal Ecuador and the one that better represents the Guaraní set-up is below.

When weaving has been completed, element D (which was a stick in Ecuador and a string on the Guaraní loom) is removed and the cloth can be opened out to its full length leaving the loops at the ends of the unwoven warp intact. These loops are then used by the weavers in coastal Ecuador as part of the construction of their hammocks. In a normal circular warp, the warp has to be cut in order to open out the cloth to its full length.

When you start trying to use two colors at once on slightly different paths things get a little mind bending. Two colors are used when the Guarani weavers are going to create patterns in pick-up or just horizontal bars. The first time I did this with my Guaraní teachers, I have to admit that I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around it and was just blindly following the path that they patiently pointed out to me. Only later, when I sat down at my notebook and made my drawings, did I get it all straightened out in my head. But even so, I’ll be needing to refer to my notes for a while until I’ve had more practice.

**Here I am passing the thread around the dovetail string. The two upper strings hold the warp cross.**

With this learning warp I wove a piece that was wide enough to make a coin purse. However, once the piece was off the loom, I decided to sew two pieces together side by side and make a wider purse that’s more suitable for tools.

**Winding the two colors together produced the horizontal bars. A weaving class often starts with winding yarn into balls. That’s Clara above. She and her daughter Eldina are the teachers.**

**The style of string heddles that the Guaraní weavers use is very unique. They are chained together and not held on a stick.**

**You can get a better view of them here. This is my teacher Angela who used to allow me to visit and watch her at work many years ago.**

Clara was not keen on allowing me to make the heddles and I had to insist on being allowed to make at least the last three on my own. It wasn’t enough and I definitely need more practice. I hope to make our next class all about heddle making. So, when I created the much wider warp for the book cover, I went with the heddles that I am more used to making and tied them off in small bunches. I find it a lot easier to work with these bunches of heddles rather than with heddles suspended on a stick when working on a fixed tension loom such as this, and especially when the piece is wider than band-width.

**Several two-color sections in my second warp gave me a lot of practice in sticking to the correct warping path.**

This shows the wedges of wood that are the warp-tensioning system. So simple! The lower piece is removed after warping and the upper one, which is shaped, is positioned in order to maintain just the right amount of tension. It gets gradually moved along to its tapered end as weaving progresses and take-up tightens the warp.

**The finished cloth….enough for the book cover and a zippered purse. I didn’t need the loops at the ends of the warp around the dovetail string and cut them off.**

**The cover is on the book and there’s the zippered purse. You can also see the purse I made from the first warp that I’d wound with my teachers.**

**Imagine winding the warp on one of these looms for a hammock! And then making all the heddles. This is the first time I met Angela way back in 2002.**

As`for my studies with the Ayoreo looping technique, I made use of the small amounts of the remaining garabatá thread by dyeing it and creating another cuff. Because I only had quite short pieces left and I haven’t got the hang of the clever knotless way of joining two lengths of thread together, I created this cuff in a slightly different way. Instead of working a wide and short piece, I made a narrow and long piece. That way I never ran out of thread in the middle of a row.

I made it mostly about stripes and added a small Chiqueno pattern in the middle.

The thread takes up the dye beautifully!

**Dyed garabatá thread and an idea for an arrangement of stripes.**

And because my edges, which got hidden within the hems in my other cuffs, would be exposed on this one….and weren’t pretty!….I added a cotton tubular edging to conceal them. And that tubular band is another backstrap loom project to add to this post.

**I have a handy piece of furniture that allowed me to improvise a warping board for the tubular band warp.**

When I next meet with my teacher Rocío, I’ll have her show me the neat way she has of carrying colors along the edge. And then we’ll get into spinning the big wad of fiber that she got for me! (I showed it in my last post if you missed it and are curious).

**The tubular edging makes the cuff hold its shape very nicely, conceals messy edges and adds a really nice finish. I used a button-and-loop closure.**

In the meantime, I’ve been visiting a lovely outdoor artisan market that’s just a few blocks from my place. Señora Carmen has a very small stall there where she sells handwork of the indigenous peoples of this lowland part of Bolivia. There I discovered that there is another group here that works with the same fiber as the Ayoreo people. They’re called Weenhayek and they call the fiber caraguata. They work the looped stitch much more loosely but the finishing stitch that they use along the mouths of the bags is different (and I think nicer than the one used by the Ayoreo). I had to buy one of their bags so that I could figure it out (I managed to) and I’m wondering if Rocío knows how to do it.

**You can see the difference in tightness in the two Ayoreo examples on the left and the Weenhayek on the right.**

And there I’ll leave it for this post. I’ll be getting back to my classes once we’re into the new year. In the meantime there’s plenty to keep me busy with Guaraní, Ayoreo and backstrap loom projects.

Hopefully next time I’ll be able to show a bit about how the garabatá fiber is spun. Until then, sporting a cooling summer cut (the hottest days are yet to come!), I’ll wish you all from my “transition home” here in Santa Cruz, Bolivia a Happy New Year.

Backstrap Weaving – Star Gazing

Every night when no one is around I go up onto the terrace of my condo block and walk about star gazing for half an hour or so. It’s a peaceful, quite extensive space that covers the top of eight apartments. I don’t need to wear a mask up there and in spite of the light pollution from the inner city area in which I live, I can enjoy looking at some of the stars and planets while getting in some stretches and exercise. The air is fresh after a steamy summer’s day and I often wish that I could string up a hammock and sleep up there.

I remember one of the few times I was able to enjoy a night sky that was completely devoid of man-made light. It inspired me to weave stars into what I call my ‘Starry Night” wall hanging. I remember stepping outside my little room on Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca in Peru to go to the bathroom on a clear and bitterly cold night and being stunned and almost knocked over by the brilliance and abundance of the stars in the black, black sky over that dark, silent island. Kurt Laitenberger wove this motif with tablets and and I asked his permission to transpose it into the Andean Pebble Weave structure.

It’s interesting that it was this very same motif that caught my teacher Maxima’s eye the last time I was with her up in the highlands. I had taken many woven samples to show the ladies in the weaving cooperative and Maxima had chosen this one. Her first attempt to copy it on her own was not successful. Actually, she had started out very well but suddenly got stumped and stopped. She asked if she could watch me weave it so that she could learn.

I wove one motif and that was enough. Maxima was then able to continue just by following my woven example.

Up on the terrace In these early months of 2022, it’s been nice greeting Orion on its return to the 8pm night sky on my side of the world and I am currently waiting on the Southern Cross to complete its circle low in the south and once more climb high enough to reveal itself above the light pollution and buildings.

An invitation in one of the online weaving groups to show-and-share star patterns prompted me to write this post. I actually wrote about this same topic about ten years ago but there has been quite a lot to add to it since then. Back then, I was able to share the Andean Pebble Weave strap on which I combined motifs woven by the Guaraní people here in the lowland part of Bolivia in which I live…

The Guaraní weavers use two types of complementary-warp structures in their cotton cloth. In the structure that they call Moisy, they represent all the natural beauty of their surroundings in large, bold renditions of trees, butterflies, birds, plants and flowers. However, in the pebble structure that I used above, they only ever weave two motifs – a snake and stars – and there are an endless number of versions of these two items. You can see one such version on the woven bag.

My teacher told me that it was a snake that came to the first weaver in her dreams to teach her the patterns. The Guaraní people who live along the Parapetí River here in Santa Cruz also use the snake motif to represent that life-giving water. The stars are important guides in their agricultural cycle.

I found a story translated from Guaraní to Spanish in a book published by Artecampo, which is a craft cooperative store here in Santa Cruz, about a legend behind the use of the star motifs in Guaraní weaving…..it says that…

One day the children were taken and placed like stars in the heavens and this is why women cry out about stars in their weaving. The stars not only speak of the sky but also about the richness of nature because one woman, in an attempt to stop her child from being taken, grabbed hold of a finger (or toe, it is not clear in the Spanish translation which). As she pulled on the finger, unfortunately, a piece broke off and this piece was buried. From the burial of this piece a corn plant sprouted. In this way, weaving symbolizes abundance which comes from the piece of the child. And this is why food crops are not only considered elements that feed and sustain men, they are part of Man himself just as the stars are part of Man and Society. Songs name those who are living in the sky and those that sing wear woven cloth to show that they are still with them even though they are distant.

Dionicia added these stars to her pattern repertoire after my visit. She wove them into a bench cover that she sells locally. Being able to include a “novel” pattern gives her a little advantage over other weavers who might also be selling their woven bench covers.

The star patterns above are charted in my book More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns. And, speaking of the ladies up in the highlands, Dorinda has just written a new blog post on her most recent visit now that she is back home in the States. Dorinda had been away in the USA for going on two years and I can only imagine the happy reunion when she visited in November.

In the Bolivian highlands, stars are woven into cloth by the weavers of the community of Tinkipaya. According to Veronica Cereceda in her book which catalogs the designs on these textiles, these ch’askas, stars, are a representation of the world above known as janaq pacha.

The small band in cotton that I wove to test the pattern is pictured above with a couple of wooden tools I got in a market in Potosi, the province in which Tinkipaya is located. I was told that the tool on the left is used to push down the warps behind the heddle rod when the weaver is opening the heddle shed. I have never seen a weaver actually use one of these and I have never seen another one like it. The one I have has a red stain on it and I like to think that it might be cochineal from one day when its owner was preparing to dye. The other tool, of which you can only see the tip, is used for beating and strumming and I have seen tools like this in use in several places in Bolivia and Peru although they are more typically made from a llama leg bone.

The structure used in this piece is yet another style of complementary-warp. The warp floats that surround and fill the star motif are aligned and arranged in a certain way that distinguishes this style from others. Below you can see the same star motifs woven with my hand spun llama fiber into a band that I wear as a wrist cuff.

And here it appears yet again in wool on a little bag I made when one of the online groups held an “orange challenge” several years ago.

I published the chart for this pattern in my More Adventures with Warped Faced Pick-up Patterns book and Susan Torntore, one of my new Zoom weaving friends who refreshed her Andean Pebble Weave skills via a Zoom class with me, transposed it into the Andean Pebble Weave structure and then went on to create something like fifteen beautiful variations. Here are a couple of them. She plans to use this band as a bell pull.

The Andean Pebble Weave structure has the advantage of having two regularly repeating rows which can be produced automatically by enclosing those arrangements of threads in heddles. Some weavers choose to do that because motifs can be woven much faster this way. Others prefer not to fuss with heddles and weave the patterns using pick-up for every row. In the structure used for the traditional Tinkipaya pattern, there’s no choice. Each “row” is unique and the threads for each must be picked up manually.

Wikipedia tells me that the stars on the flag of the United States represent the fifty States in the Union. Well, I knew that. I was hoping to find out why exactly stars had been chosen as opposed to some other figure but I guess there doesn’t have to be a reason. I am sure that we could all come up with some kind of symbolic meaning for a star. I swear that some of the indigenous weavers with whom I have studied have made up things about the motifs they are using just to please or else have a bit of fun with me…I have seen the twinkle in their eyes and the way they look sideways at each other!

Gail wove this very patriotic collar for her dog on her inkle loom many years ago and I have seen this pattern and variations of it show up in the various online Inkle Loom groups many times over the years around the fourth of July. Gail was forever coming up with clever collar designs for what must have been the best-dressed dog in New York.

Speaking of flags and patriotic weaving, I assume that the next starry piece was made by someone who is proud to be Australian. I have this very cool cut-pile weaving of a representation of the design on the Australian flag…

The group of stars is the Southern Cross constellation which really is a sight to behold there in the southern sky. I am so happy to be able to see it low on the Bolivian horizon and it makes me feel somehow connected to Australia and the people I know and love so far away. It is little wonder we so love stars and choose to use them in our cloth.

The large single star, which should only have seven points, represents the Nation’s seven states and territories. This cut pile piece on its beautiful frame is gorgeously dense and I would love to meet its creator.

It was given to my brother as compensation from the Indian owner of a furniture store who went out of business before he could supply all the chairs for my brother’s dining room setting. My brother then gave it to me. One day I will track down this furniture maker and see if I can talk to him about this weaving technique.

I don’t know if the weaver intended to continue with the design. There is so little space at this point and the tension on the warp is so high I can hardly imagine being able to do so.

There are a lot of representations of stars in Andean weaving. I took one small motif and combined it with others to make the guitar strap below in colors reminiscent of the desert and canyons of the US southwest… a winding river, moon and stars. It took me back to clear, warm nights camping in the depths of Utah canyons with nothing between me and the stars. Moonlight bounced of red canyon walls and dozens of frogs singing away at the water’s edge. These were other precious occasions on which I could star gaze without man-made light pollution.

Combining several small motifs in this way is a nice stepping stone toward designing your own unique patterns. I teach the Andean Pebble Weave technique for those who use a standard inkle loom in my book Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms which you can buy as a PDF or as a spiral-bound book from Taproot Video.

And then there are many motifs that look like stars to our eyes but which and perhaps represent something else all together. Maybe one day I will find out what exactly they mean to the weaver. There’s what I believe to be an Andean ch’aska in Andean Pebble Weave on the left. In the center are the star-like motifs that I replicated from Central Asian yurt bands. A motif on a belt from Ecuador is on the right. Its star-like motif is woven using supplementary warp threads.

I chose a star motif for my first ever attempt at using 60/2 silk as warp on my backstrap loom. The motif did not have any symbolic significance to me. I simply needed to use something that was smooth-sided and symmetric. This was because I wanted to use a supplementary-weft technique in which the additional weft is not carried from selvedge to selvedge. I didn’t want the supplemental weft to thicken the cloth and so I used a technique in which the weft just travels back and forth from edge to edge of the motif itself. This only looks nice, in my opinion, when regular rather than irregular shapes are used. So, who knows why certain motifs ae chosen by weavers? It could be for what they symbolize or the choice could also just as easily be for purely practical reasons, as was the case in my silk piece.

There aren’t any stars on my current three-color Andean Pebble Weave piece. It’s all about flowers and hummingbirds. If you have been following me on Instagram (I go by my name: lavernewaddington there) you will have seen some of my progress. At some point I unconsciously stopped being concerned about my hand-spun wool being up to the challenge and have been simply enjoying how lovely it feels instead. But for now, I will stick with the Starry topic and wait to show you more of my three-color pebble in my next post here on this blog.

Let me finish by showing you some beautiful creations that were shared with me by another new Zoom weaving friend, Laurice Johnson. She has converted her pretty inkle-loom-woven bands into these gorgeous star ornaments by following online tutorials. There are several tutorials on Youtube for fabric stars that can be used for inkle bands. They are really stunning. My friend Jennifer Williams also has a tutorial on her blog for a different kind of star made from narrow bands.

I’ll be heading upstairs soon for another night of star gazing. See you next time.

Backstrap Weaving – Different Paths

Facebook is fond of showing me memories from past years and the latest one to show up is from November 2017 when I was at my brother’s home in Australia working on weaving the samples for my Complementary-warp Pattern Book. Sometimes, the will is there to start a new book but for some reason it is just so very hard to get the project off the ground. At times, I have started by laying out the table of contents in a Word doc and that has been enough to kick me into further action. In the case of Complementary-warp Pattern Book it was the act of sitting down with this lovely blank Andean Pebble Weave warp stretched out before me that started the ball rolling.

There would soon be four horses galloping along the length of that warp…four horses called “Eldy’s Mustangs” by their creator, my weaving friend, Deanna Johnson. I love the simplicity of this set-up. Another warp that I set up for this book would have angels dancing among snowflakes, candy canes and Christmas trees. I think that just the colors that I had chosen would have provided a hint of what was to come.

And this next one was set up to display different kinds of maze-like and geometric patterns.

Watch and learn….Of course, I was focused on the way my teachers’ fingers were moving among the threads while picking colors to form the patterns. The body movements when using such narrow warps are very subtle.

All three warps are set up for the two-heddle pebble weave method that I favor when I weave this structure on my backstrap loom. The pencils that you see in the warp are holding what I call the “permanent picking cross”. In the twenty-four years that I have been traveling here and there to study these structures with my indigenous teachers, one of the most important things that I have brought home with me time and time again is the fact that there is no one correct way to do things. There are many different paths that can be taken in order to arrive at the same place. I am so glad that I have been exposed to four very different methods that can be used to weave the Andean Pebble Weave structure.

The set-up that you see in these photos was the one that was taught to me by my very first teachers back in 1996. The mother and daughter who sat with me day after day as I wrestled around with those two sets of heddles came from Ayacucho in Peru. They happened to be living in Huancayo at the time.

I would like to say that they sat by patiently as I made a mess of their carefully prepared warp but it isn’t so. They were perplexed and annoyed by the fact that I was pulling away so violently at the heddles. My warp threads were breaking with all the friction and abrasion. I was not aware at that time of the role my body needed to play in the operation of the loom. The body needs to move and make subtle changes to the tension on the warp which makes the smooth operation of the heddles possible. Several movements need to be coordinated and when you finally find yourself picking up and slipping into the rhythm, it’s almost like a dance. Until then, you are brutish and clumsy and the result is heddles clogged with fluff, broken warp threads and annoyed teachers!

I didn’t understand that there was much to be learned about basic backstrap loom operation before I could hope to learn about the patterning technique. Fortunately it all started to come together eventually.

You can see my teacher picking out her pattern while working close to the cross sticks. This is the method used by weavers in Ayacucho. The two sets of heddles hold the regularly repeating pebble sheds….those that create the little spots, or pebbles, in the fabric.

(If you also find yourself seated at a nicely prepared warp but are unable to progress because of heddles clogged with fluff, you might consider taking a look at the video class that I prepared back in 2016…Operating a Backstrap Loom. It’s available as a dvd or as streamed content from Taproot Video.)

My weaving teacher here in lowland Bolivia uses this pebble weave structure on the large vertical frame loom that is used by the Guaraní people to weave hammocks. Angela uses three sets of heddles…one set holds the threads from one of the two pebble sheds. A second holds all the dark threads and the third all the light threads. The threads for the second pebble shed lie on a shed rod or in one large loop depending on the width of the piece being woven. The Guaraní weavers have a very interesting way of making their string heddles. You can see how they are sort of chained together.

Angela was only working on very narrow commissioned pieces when I studied with her and so I have included here a picture (courtesy of Aude Rossignol) of another Guaraní weaver who is using the full width of her loom for a hammock in pebble weave. You can see the advantage of those loose chained heddles on such a wide piece. If the heddles were suspended on a rod, it would not be possible to just pull on the rod and achieve a good shed clear across that wide warp. This is a fixed tension loom and so using the body to make tension adjustments as one does with a backstrap loom is not an option. Instead, the weavers pull on groups of chained heddles working their slowly way from one side of the loom (in this case from right to left) to the other and inserting the sword as they go.

My weaving teachers in the central Bolivian highlands use yet another method when they weave narrow bands to create the same Andean Pebble Weave structure…

The only name that I can think of for this kind of loom is “body-tensioned”. Maxima’s index finger is one “beam” and her big toe is the other. Her left index finger is permanently in this position to maintain and adjust tension on the warp. All loom operation and pick-up is done with the other hand. There’s no backstrap. The warp is set up with one pebble shed in heddles and the other pebble shed in one large loop. Max makes a picking cross with these two sheds and from there picks the colors to form her pebble weave patterns. And, you should see the speed with which she does so!

The last time I visited Max and the other ladies in the co-op, I demonstrated a new pattern for them using a warp that was tied to my waist in the manner to which I am accustomed. I could see Max studying me and I could almost see from the expression on her face that she approved of this set-up which gave me two free hands with which to operate the loom…a definite advantage when working with the rather sticky handspun wool thread. All the ladies kicked off a sandal and started winding warps using their fingers and toes as warping stakes. Max took a length of yarn and tied hers to her waist. She had decided to try out this “new” method that I was using which involved tying the warp to her body rather than just suspending it on one finger. To my surprise she was immediately mocked by all the other ladies for wanting to do things the “gringa” way!

Max, Antonia and some of the other ladies learned to read my pattern charts. You can see a picture of Antonia showing off the band she wove using patterns from the book I had left behind. Don’t we all love to learn new patterns?

The fourth way is the way that is used by some of the backstrap weavers that I have observed in the Cusco area of Peru in my travels. We were also privileged to have two ladies from Chinchero come to Santa Cruz Bolivia, where I live, to attend a small conference that was held here back in 2011. Only a handful of people from the general public applied to attend and it was wonderful to be able to spend so much quality time with these weavers over the three days that we had together. My Guaraní teacher, Angela, was also invited to demonstrate.

The warp being used by the Chinchero weaver in this picture is set up with all the threads of color A in heddles and all the threads in color B held on a shed rod. She uses two swords to hold what I call a “temporary picking cross” in which all the threads from both layers of warp are raised at the same time and held on swords. She can weave a variety of complementary-warp structures using this method. Some of the patterns that Chinchero weavers use are a complex combination of more than one structure which means that there is no real advantage to storing the pebble sheds in heddles. Some parts of a large motif can be woven using the two-two-two pebble arrangement of warp floats while other parts of the very same motif can be based on a two-one-two-one arrangement.

This two-sword method is he one that I teach in my Complementary-warp Pick-up Book. In my Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms book I teach both this and a modified version of the two-heddle method. In fact, I teach three methods in that book.

You might have guessed that my favorite method for the backstrap loom is the first one that I showed with its two sets of heddles. For me, it has many advantages. I won’t go into them but, if you have ever taken one of my Andean Pebble Weave classes on a backstrap loom, you may recall my talking very enthusiastically about a thing called the “saver cord”. On the inkle loom, I guess I prefer the two-sword method of the three different methods I teach on that kind of loom.

Mary Spanos has woven with me on several occasions when I have been visiting the USA. She loves the backstrap loom and recently showed me her latest project….

This is a Japanese sashiko pattern that is charted in my Complementary-warp Pattern Book. Julia Weldon translated the traditional stitched pattern to the Andean Pebble Weave structure and kindly contributed it to the collection. Mary is weaving it beautifully into this band. I particularly like the way that she has chosen to use a lavender and white strip of plain Andean Pebble Weave as a border stripe instead of a solid color.

And, here’s another band by Mary using a series of fish patterns from the same book alongside some of her own creation…

Carlos is also using a backstrap loom and the two-heddle method to weave a wide piece of fabric to be made into a shoulder bag. The same book mentioned above has charts for three bee motifs. The center bee on this piece is included and is Carlos’ own creation.

Lausanne also learned the two-heddle method using a backstrap loom with me on one of my visits and you can see her here weaving a hatband for her husband with, yet again, a pattern that is charted in the Complementary-warp Pattern Book (from a pre-columbian textile fragment). This is one of my favorites…one of some cheeky viscachas rocking to and fro…

Here it is on the hat….

Annette Giles is using the two-sword/temporary picking cross method to weave the Andean Pebble Weave hummingbirds. Yes, they’re from that book again.

And, here are some initial results from Carol Berry from one of the very first Zoom classes I gave on Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms…

So…… enough pebble weave! How about some double weave?

Nancy Ayton is using her inkle loom to weave warp-faced double weave bands and is creating her own fabulous patterns. Don’t you love the elf?! That’s just one of Nancy’s original designs on this band. The band includes some motifs from my book Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms.

I think I will weave the elf on a set of Christmas tree hanging ornaments like the ones I made last year.

On Maureen Farndell’s warp-faced double weave band you can see the motif that I adapted from Bedouin textiles and charted in the book. It’s lovely the way she has connected the motifs and turned them into one continuous pattern along the length of the band.

As for me, I am plodding along with another silk ikat sample. This one is a study of take-up and the number of warp-ends and picks I need to create a square. Hopefully the information on take-up will help if I later decide to try and tie some curved shapes into a warp. I do hope so because the study sample pattern I have chosen is just plain boring to weave! It’s rare for me to sit at my loom and think “Urgh, I just couldn’t be bothered”! But sometimes you just have to slog through this sampling process. Hopefully, when it comes time to write my next post, it will be off the loom and I will be on to something else with all the valuable information I have gathered from this sample.

Until then….stay safe and well.