Category: Guarani

Backstrap Weaving – Tools, Trinkets,Tinkipaya and Treasures from the Lowlands.

It’s been one of those computer weeks…chained to the keyboard…. that has left me with little time at the loom. Still, I discovered a new weaving tool, fell in love with yet another weaving style, made a couple of things from tiny samples and rediscovered some bits and pieces of Bolivian lowland handcrafts that I have had stashed here and there around the house.

First the new tool about which I am very happy…

I inherited this from the Santa Cruz Handweavers Guild and it used to belong to Nora Rogers. It was holding the end of a Hopi wedding sash in sprang technique that she was creating. I don’t know if it was bought or home made but it is heavy and solid and does one heck of a job clamping. The beauty of this for me is that I can weave a piece and then clamp this thing onto the warp, cut off the finished piece and continue to weave!

It isn’t just two flat pieces of wood clamped together. The two pieces are shaped so that one piece fits neatly into the other. It holds really well and there is no need to have knots on the end of the warp to stop it from slipping through. I love it!

So, I was able to cut the little Bedouin sample on which I was working last week and carry on weaving on the same warp.

I wanted to make the little Bedouin sample into a small amulet-type bag as a gift for someone and didn’t feel like waiting until the whole warp had been woven, nor did I want to cut off and just abandon the warp and waste the yarn.

I need more of these clamps in different lengths!

So, you may remember that I was experimenting with using double weave for the Bedouin shajarah patterns and that I was trying to handle the two wefts in a way that didn’t make the transition from double to plain weave too abrupt.

I finished the first sample, added a piece of cardboard to separate the start of the second one, wove a bit, applied the clamp and then cut off the first finished sample.

I was so pleased with it all…the finished piece, the double weave and the nifty new tool… that I had half sewn up the little bag when I realized that I hadn’t yet taken pictures of the inside to show the double weave and the lack of long floats So here is one not-wonderful photo of my trying to hold the thing open while taking a shot… but I think you get the idea.

I love these little amulet bags. What are they good for? I don’t know…they are just so cute! I have decided to call them “doorknob danglers”.

This one is for a friend but others will be dangled from doorknobs and will be used to stash those odd things that one finds on the floor and doesn’t know quite what to do with…like that strange button that doesn’t seem to belong to anything. I guess they could also be used to hold jewelry especially now that my pieces with Bedouin designs no longer have any floats on the inside and, therefore, nothing on which jewelry can get caught…yay!

And they give me an excuse to do the dressing up thing…you know, add braids and tubular bands, cross knit looped edgings etc..

I made a  four-strand braid for this one and then sewed it to the edges. I added extra strands to make the tassels.

Here’s one I made along time ago and gave away. This was fun to decorate with a ñawi awapa, Bolivian pom poms and a crossed-warp strap.

Here is another band experiment that I decided to turn into a ridiculously tiny bag. I  think that this one will hold my house key in my purse. I haven’t had time to dress it up yet and I will probably sew a snap closure to the inside and add a wrist strap.

I have already had a friend ask me to make her a tiny one like this for her guitar picks.

Now, what about this weaving style that I have fallen in love with….it’s Bolivian, it’s from Tinkipaya… and it’s “wow”.

I saw a weaver from Tinkipaya at work at the Tinkuy de Tejedores in Urubamba, Peru in 2010, have seen and admired lots of their work for years especially when I was in Potosi learning to weave, have a fabulous book on their designs by Veronica Cereceda and now, after all this time…suddenly it really grabs me.

What I think I loved most about seeing the lady from Tinkipaya weaving when I was in Peru was the reaction and intense interest displayed by the Peruvian weavers. I delighted in watching their stance and expressions while observing the Bolivian weaver at work. And some of the Peruvian weavers were just as intent on capturing the moment, whipping out their digital cameras.

But most times there wasn’t a chance to see as the weaver had a solid wall of admirers around and above her so I had to settle for enjoying watching the watchers and there was much to be enjoyed in that activity.

I enjoyed looking at the hats, the skirts, the footwear, the woven cloth as well as listening to the sound of the conversations in Quechua.

While the Tinkipaya weaver does her pick-up (amazing how she could even do it with all that attention focused on her!), one of the Peruvian ladies appears to be pointing out the picking cross that she is using …held on two cords high above the weaving line and beyond the heddle rod.

Meanwhile, these ladies ponder from above…

There is a wonderful museum in the Bolivian city of Sucre which is currently devoted to the work of the weavers from Tarabuco and Potolo but  which I have heard is going to be expanded to include the weaving of two more Bolivian areas…those of Tinkipaya and Calcha.

I need to gather more pictures so I can show you to what I am referring and why I am so enthralled.

From Tinkipaya in the Bolivian highlands let’s drop down to the lowlands, where I live, so I can show you a few of the crafts of this area…bits and pieces that I have bought from a co-operative store called Artecampo just one block from my house…things which have gotten stashed away as my little home got filled with more and more books! When looking for something this week, I started discovering these things tucked away in corners and decided it would be nice to take a look at them here.

Artecampo sells crafts of the various groups of artisans in the Santa Cruz area which includes the  Ayoreos, Chiquitanos, Guarayos, Izoceños and Criollos.

These sweet wooden boxes are painted by a group of boys and girls, the youngest of whom I am told is eleven, from the community of  Guarayos de Urubichá.  The idea for this craft was born when the Center for Research, Craft Design and Cooperative Marketing (CIDAC) made an experiment over twenty years ago in this community by giving the school children paper and colored pencils and asking them to  draw scenes of  life in their community. One youngster was selected to be trained in painting techniques in the city of Santa Cruz and then returned to his community to pass on his skills and knowledge to his young peers.

The boxes are posed on a woollen rug woven in Vallegrande in the foothills of the highlands. Maybe one day I will go there and get to buy some of this wool for my own weaving as there is certainly none to be found here in the city.

The people of Isoso are a unique mix of Guaraní and Chané cultures and produce woven cotton pieces on leaning vertical looms. Hammocks, table runners, placemats, bags and wall hanging are among the items sold at Artecampo.

Clay pieces from Guarayos de Urubichá and Cotoca…. The embroidered scene on the cloth in the background is typical of the color, and depictions of  lush vegetation and animal and insect life present in many of the crafts.

I love these simple solid coiled baskets and must ask the folks at Artecampo to remind me of their origin.

My favorite things of all are the looped bags made by the Ayoreo craftswomen using a fiber called garabatá which is extracted from the leaves of a plant in the pineapple family and twisted by rolling on the thigh. As far as I can tell these are the most “genuine” articles that Artecampo sells. The bags have always been used on a daily basis by the Ayoreo people and have not been altered in any way for the tourist market.

I have opened out the bags and use the pieces as wall hangings. I love the colors and the smell and feel of the fiber. They are on the wall of my bedroom and now, would you believe, it has just occurred to me that these colors must have crept into my mind when I planned  my most recent ikat experiment pictured above.

The other “genuine” piece that I treasure, especially since it is no longer being sold, is the wooden bowl/scoop below left, also made by the Ayoreo people. It is lovely to hold this piece in your hands and feel the cool smoothness of the wood.

Of course, this is just a fraction of the things that are sold at the co-operative store. The store does not allow pictures to be taken and from now on when I take visitors there I will have to make sure that I take pictures of the purchases as I won’t be buying any more things from there…no room! I wish I could show you more of the beautiful textiles they have, both woven and embroidered. I take a lot of pleasure from dropping in there from time to time and seeing what is new. They are quite used to having me come in an stroll around and not buy anything.

Well, time to put this blog post to bed and get back to the other keyboard stuff so that I can then do what I really want to be doing…weaving!

Backstrap Weaving – Teachers

I was reading Anita Osterhaug’s post in the weekly Weaving Today letter about teachers and the knowledge they impart. She quoted ” When the student is ready, the teacher will appear“. I had not heard that before. She then added, “Sometimes you carry a teacher in your head until you are ready“.

This was amazing to me as it is the very thing that has been going through mind this week as I work on my new book. Almost sixteen years ago I learned backstrap weaving with my first indigenous teachers in Peru and I find that even after all this time has passed, certain things they taught me which I have been performing mechanically since then, are suddenly taking on a whole new meaning.

I can take certain processes which I now clearly understand and apply to them to other situations and create things I had not been able to previously envision.

It is hard to explain and I know that this all sounds a little vague but I am much more explicit in the book. It is nice to know that I have been carrying those teachers around in my head, as Anita said, all these years and can still benefit from what they showed me. I wonder how many of my other past teachers will make an appearance as the years go by and what seeds of knowledge are sitting in my head waiting for just the right conditions in which to sprout.

So, I thought I would dedicate this blog post to some of my weaving teachers and say just one or two things that I took from my experience with them.

This is Hilda, my teacher in Potosi, Bolivia who taught me “once a weaver, always a weaver”. How must it feel to have been raised a weaver, as Hilda most likely was, having this activity become a part of your very being and identity only to have to abandon it at a relatively young age.

Hilda started out in my lessons by sitting by my side and pointing or calling out the warps that I needed to pick up for my design. Apart from warping with me and setting up the loom, she never once actually sat at the loom and showed me how to weave so there was a lot of “no, not like that” as I was not being given a model to follow. She complained that her eyesight was too poor and her back too weak to weave anymore. Besides, she said that she had forgotten most of the patterns.

However, I started to notice that my piece was growing somehow from the time I left it in the evening to the time I arrived the next morning to pick it up again. Hilda simply couldn’t resist unrolling my work and weaving when I was gone but still felt somewhat shy about weaving in front of me. I am sure that weaving in the low evening light was not helping her. Eventually, she gathered the confidence to start weaving together with me on her own projects in broad daylight leaving me to figure out the pattern for my own work on my own. Happily, I was well on my way by that time.

The other thing I took from Hilda (although it didn’t stick for long) was the idea that cloth should have four selvedges. This is the most natural thing in the world for weavers in Hilda’s world and a weaver finishes her piece without any fuss. Hilda sighed and muttered only because of her poor eyesight.

One doesn’t choose, as I do, whether to have fringes or three selvedges with a fringe at one end. There will be four selvedges and that is that. It gave me the confidence to go straight home and weave a few pieces like that in wool, although, as I said, it didn’t stick, and once I started weaving with cotton, I stopped weaving four-selvedged  fabric.

Felipe in Salasaca, Ecuador has been my only male weaving teacher so far. I was most impressed by the fact that Felipe has taught all four of his sons to weave (one son is absent from the picture) and that they all approach it with such enthusiasm and pride in a world where fewer and fewer youngsters in indigenous communities show any interest in learning to weave. I wondered what Felipe’s secret was.

Although the boys didn’t yet have the skill to warp well, they could certainly tell me exactly what was going on as their father demonstrated it to me. Felipe told me that he was self taught and has created some of his own variations of the traditional Salasaca “frutilla” pattern. His bands are cut into pieces to decorate sandals which are made by a local shoe maker.

He is obviously an innovator with plans for the future and perhaps this optimism is what he has passed to his boys.

As I prepare to travel and pack my portable warping board, loom bars, dowels, metal rods, beaters and shuttles I remember Maxima in Cochabamba and the ease with which she wound warps on her finger and toe.

All we had a was a pleasant shady spot outdoors, a few balls of yarn and we were able to spend several lovely afternoons producing pebble-patterned and tubular bands.

Yarn was used for cross sticks, fingers formed picking crosses and a hand moved with a slicing action beat the weft into place…the wonderful simplicity of it all. I went home and looked at my buckets of loom bars and beaters for all occasions! Of course they are needed for wide pieces but I tend to depend on them very much even for the narrowest of bands.

I also took home a new pattern which I used on a cell phone pouch and the knowledge of a new way to do pebble weave.

Learning to weave with a family in coastal Ecuador showed me just how much an entire family can become involved in every aspect of the process from cotton boll to finished project….together most of the time sharing the tasks or at least keeping company with the person doing the work with lots of chatter and laughter. I tend to think of weaving as a very solitary process. Don’t speak to me when I am warping for goodness sake! and I can’t even listen to songs let alone chat while I am doing pick-up.

Trini made mistakes while she warped but the discovery of her mistakes only led to teasing and laughter rather than frustration.

Trini is the main weaver but there are plenty of other family members involved in other parts of the process.

A nephew cuts material for dyeing, a brother tends the dye pot and everyone helps to remove seeds from the cotton after the evening meal.

Trini and one of her sister’s share the task of beating the cotton to prepare it for spinning. (photo by K Klumpp)

A sister doubles the handspun cotton singles, all the adult women spin and Mother checks that the pattern-shed warps have been correctly selected.  I am trying out spinning on this occasion. How nice it was to be sitting with this group of ladies and spinning the evening away. You can see that pretty much everything takes place on the floor. Wooden chairs hang from nails on the wall but Trini’s mother is the only person who sits in one. Maybe it was this experience that has me now so comfortable doing everything related to my weaving on a small square of bedroom floor.

My first Guatemalan weaving teacher, Lidia impressed me with the amount of care and time she took preparing her warp. She is a quiet, calm and graceful person and this all carries over into her weaving. Every single warp thread was patiently and delicately lifted on the tip of a pointed stick and placed in its correct position on the loom bar. She didn’t treat it as the tedious thing that one has to do before the weaving begins. After weaving with Lidia, I started to take everything slowly and really enjoy every part of the process devoting as much time to warp preparation as I am willing to spend selecting the threads to create the patterns.

I loved how Lidia would have me un-weave mistakes. That is just what I like. I have had many weaving teachers who have gotten annoyed at my insistence on fixing errors. In Potosi I would sometimes take my warp home at night to fix an error I had made early in the day that Hilda had not let me un-weave! I have to say that Lidia had a way of spotting a mistake about to happen! She was quite amazing like that and saved me a lot of un-weaving.

I also learned about the efficient use of materials. I have never met a weaver who knows how to measure so precisely the amount of supplementary weft she needs to complete each of the different motifs in a piece.

Angela, my Guaraní weaving teacher, blew me away from day one. She was warping a hammock on a vertical loom and I watched in awe how she passed the warp thread thousands of times up and over the loom, bending down low to pass the thread under the bottom beam and then reaching behind to pass it around the dovetail cord. And then there were the thousands of heddles! Not just one set but three.

Many years later, I got together with Angela again and now she impresses me in other ways with her appetite for learning new techniques and looking for new ways to do things. I could sense that my teacher  Maxima in Cochabamba wanted to learn double weave from me but was shy to come right out and ask. She doesn’t know how to do the “eye” pattern tubular band either but did not seem interested in learning that.

Angela saw my string heddles on a stick on day one and, recognizing that knowing how to make them could be useful, said “Teach me that”. She is willing to learn any new method or skill that comes her way.

And I know that she will teach others in her community to make them too if she thinks that they will help make weaving more efficient. I have come across strong competitiveness in weavers between and sometimes within communities where information like this would not be shared. Don’t get me wrong…I am not condemning that. Everyone likes to have that “edge”, right, especially if weaving is putting food on the table.

I taught a young man in Ecuador to do pebble weave. When I returned eighteen months later to see how he was getting on (very well), I had his brothers begging me for lessons as Juan was refusing to teach them!

Below you can see Angela talking about Guaraní weaving at a gathering of highland and lowland weavers. School children were able to try weaving on a small warp that she prepared.

Angela is one of a group of people and institutions responsible for the spread of knowledge and the growing appreciation here in Santa Cruz of Guaraní weaving and culture. Even the institute where I used to teach English is now teaching the Guaraní language.

You know I could just go on and on. There are many more teachers to talk about. I carry them all about in my head, as Anita says. I write up all the techniques that I learn in journals when I get home and weave samples and paste in step-by-step pictures. What I don’t write in the journals are the little bits and pieces that I have mentioned here and it is kind of nice to have this blog in which to remember and record such things.

Hopefully I will write a future blog post about some of my other weaving teachers from other parts of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Guatemala as well as the Asian ladies with whom I have studied more recently in the US. You have already met most of them here.

I have one thing to show you before I go. An online weaving friend of mine in Florida made me some t-shirts. She cut the stencils and painted them herself using some motifs from weavings that I have done. One of the designs is the Guaraní snake motif. These are so cool! I look forward to wearing them on my next trip.

Backstrap Weaving – Picking, Dropping, Counting,Twisting….Pattern!

Did I mention last week that this latest piece I am working on is SLOW going? It’s a complementary warp pick-up technique, not one of those friendlier partly-loom controlled ones, and I have almost 600 ends in the pattern section. So, if I show you a picture of where I am at this week you can be excused for thinking that I have done nothing, or at least very little!

I had, in fact, progressed further but I un-wove a fair bit after discovering that the next pattern I had chosen wasn’t coming out anywhere near as big and bold as I had envisioned. I will need to re-chart it at twice its size. It is heartbreaking un-weaving after having picked all those threads but it is bound to be worth it in the end.

And as if the pick-up isn’t slow enough, I have decided to add some weft twining. What is slower than picking and dropping?…twisting and enclosing.

So far I have only added that one thin strip of twining which is one of the elements which will link all the hangings I am making in this series. I am thinking of adding yet another broad strip of patterned twining that will go from edge to edge. I shall think carefully about this as undoing twining is probably the worst kind of ripping out there is!

The Wayuu twine along the bottom of their si’ira belts but I am undecided about whether to use their technique or the one with which I am more familiar.

In the meantime my cat is determined to get as much of her hair as possible over the other two almost finished pieces.

This all had me thinking about this process of  picking, dropping, twisting and enclosing to make patterns and why I love it so much.  It occurred to me as I was writing the first few paragraphs here that I was making the process sound somewhat painful and frustrating when in actual fact it is both relaxing and stimulating.

I have been emphasizing the slowness of it all which may give some an impression of tedium…quite the opposite in fact.

What has made the work on this piece slower than it should be is the lack of planning on my part…it’s all my fault…thus the weaving and un-weaving and yes, that part can definitely be described as frustrating and tedious.

Take a look at this video of weavers in Bhutan (link provided by Toby from the Ravelry group) doing weft inlay patterning. Their tiny picking movements are graceful and delicate and rather than think “oh my gosh, how painfully slow and tedious that must be!” I think “how incredibly beautiful, skillful and relaxing. I want to do that too!” I wonder if I look quite so calm and peaceful as I work!

I do find that I need to stand up from this piece more frequently and take a walk around. I definitely don’t progress the four fingers width that weavers here in Bolivia have told me is the measure of a good day’s work. Sometimes I spend an entire day charting what I think will be the next part of the design only to abandon it! Lets see how far I get with it this coming week.

Fortunately not all the patterning techniques involve picking and dropping every single warp thread across the width of the loom. Many techniques can use pre-programmed patterning sheds and be partly loom-controlled.

Pebble weave is one such technique in which many of the designs can be woven with the aid of two sets of string heddles meaning that you only need to do pick-up in every other shed….pick-up warps by hand in one shed and then enjoy a free ride in the next by simply raising a string heddle and passing the weft.

The Moisy technique which my Guarani weaving teacher Angela uses is another one that rewards the hard work of a row of pick-up with a “free ride”, that is, a weft pass every other row through a heddle controlled shed.

And then there are those techniques which I have nick named “drop-down” rather than “pick-up” methods. Warp substitution is one of them. The weaver simply drops a warp thread out of the open shed in order to create the pattern rather than having to select and pick one up.

Basic supplementary weft inlay is also a technique that I would nick name “drop down”. The weaver drops certain warps out of a shed which creates gaps through which the colored inlaid weft can be exposed to form a pattern.

The simple warp float technique, in the way I was taught to do it, also falls into my invented “drop down” category. Warps are dropped out of the open shed. Those that are kept will float to form the design.

These are all nice ways to get used to counting and handling the warps, dropping, selecting, saving and picking them to form the patterns. Some people may find that one of my so-called “drop down” techniques is the one with which they feel most comfortable.

Others may find that they like the added challenge of selecting, picking and dropping the warps while also being able to enjoy that loom controlled “free ride”.

Yet others will become so enamored with the pick-up process and the patterns it enables them to create that they will be more than happy to sit for hours and be proud of their four fingers width progress each day. Check my tutorials page for links to the various instruction pages.

Here is some beautiful pick-up inspiration from weavers of Peru and Bolivia…

Last week’s mindless fun for my breaks from the loom was juggling. This week I played around online on a site which allows you to create your own mudcloth design. This link was provided by someone in one of the Yahoo groups and apart from a few minutes of fun, it also gave me some nice bold designs which, who knows, could form part of a future weaving.

Here is what I created…

And, thinking back to last week’s post and the crochet work and juggling balls, I see that Education and More are offering some unique crocheted Guatemalan juggling balls on their site.

The crocheted designs on the Wayuu susu bags I showed last week are still enticing. If you are contemplating getting out your hook and trying to make something similar here is Carol Ventura’s (author of Tapestry Crochet) video on a technique that can be used to create such designs. I can’t say for sure if this is in fact the technique used by the Wayuu to make their bags but you could certainly use their designs and colors as inspiration for something in tapestry crochet.

So, what will you be into this coming week…hooking, picking, dropping, twisting, juggling, or clicking the mouse and gathering resources?

Gathering resources?…I have posted more goodies to my RESOURCES page. Take a look 🙂

Backstrap Weaving – Bag Mad

Look out…I have been sewing again. I challenged myself in my blog post last week by saying that I need to sew this piece, with its supplementary weft pattern and weft twined bands…..


into something that would extend my meager sewing skills. So, I had to resist the temptation to simply fold it, flip the end over to make a flap and sew up the sides…done, easy, onto the next project. I decided that I wanted to make a kind of sausage bag, that is, one with a flat bottom and rounded sides – a sewing challenge indeed for this inexperienced sewer. I Googled away for instructions and found none. How to get the straight edge of the main piece to bend neatly about the rounded ends??….for me it was kind of like trying to get the square peg to fit the round hole.

I will show the still unfinished bag to you a bit later and then you can judge for yourself whether I succeeded!

And now I can even better appreciate why so many bags made by the weavers I have met here are simple rectangles, folded in half and sewn up the sides. Of course, it makes perfect sense after having worked weeks to weave a piece to want to use it ALL…not cut it up, tuck and pull it about to make an ”interesting” shape and besides, it will hold more that way too.

So, I have been looking through some of my photos of weavings and here and there online and have some bag pictures to show you. What a wonderful variety of designs, structures and materials I saw but all with the same highly practical shape…a basic square or rectangle.

The bag on the left is knotted using a fiber extracted from a plant related to the pineapple which is called “garabata” here and is made by the Ayoreo people of eastern lowland Bolivia. The one on the right, from Betty’s collection, was made by people of the hilltribes of northern Thailand and appears to be made up of several bands sewn together.

The Ayoreo work their pieces as rectangles which are folded and then sewn together at the sides. According to Peter Collingwood in The Maker’s Hand, bags or bilums, some made with the same knotting technique used by theAyoreo, are made in Papua New Guinea but worked as a tube rather than a flat piece….only one seam to sew.

Above left is a dual-pocket cotton saddlebag or alforja from coastal Ecuador. Both ends of the woven fabric are folded in toward the center to form the two pockets. On the right is a cotton bag from tropical lowland Peru. You might recognize the design from my recent placemat project.

Two coca leaf bags or ch’uspas from highland Bolivia and Peru made with cotton, acrylic and wool.

The Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) weavers make what they call “Bible bags” with commercial cotton thread. Verses from the Bible are often woven into the straps. Cotton satchels with zippered compartments and buckles are being made by one family in coastal Ecuador for the tourist market using ancient weaving techniques and often their own homegrown and spun cotton.

I would say that the bag made in Tinkipaya, Bolivia on the left is destined for the tourist market too. The double weave bag on the right is from Mexico and has motifs that are commonly woven by the Otomi and Huichol people.

I think that the weavers make up for what may be seen as a lack of “shapeliness” in their bags by using various finishing techniques. I am a big fan of finishing techniques and I too enjoy “dressing up” a piece with pretty straps, pom poms, baubles, braids, tubular bands, cross knit looping, fringes, tassels and other frills, fluff and stuff.

The tiny amulet bag at left has a crossed-warp strap, tubular band edging, braided tassels and Bolivian-style pom poms.

The body of  ceremonial ch’uspas are quite often completely dwarfed by a myriad of tassels, giant pom poms, braids and coins making them both colorful and musical as they jiggle about on a dancer’s hip.

I love the braided treatment of the warp ends on the Mexican bag.

Colorful edgings are added to pieces sometimes to strengthen and reinforce the edges or prevent the tendency for fabric which has been woven with overtwisted yarn to curl . And sometimes it is there solely for decoration.

The cotton bags above left from coastal Ecuador, which have been made for the tourist market,  have been edged with plain-weave bands and have had large tassels added at the corners. The technique is the same as that used on the traditional saddlebags where the bands are used to strengthen the edges. I have been told that tubular woven bands are added to large pieces in Chinchero to help stop curling. I would say that one has been added to the small zippered purse above for decoration.

Here you can see highland and lowland weavers adding bands to the edges of their woven pieces using different techniques. The edging bands used by both weavers are sewn and woven at the same time using the weft as the sewing thread. (see the videoshere ). The weaver from  the Tarabuco area of Bolivia uses a toe and finger-tensioned warp with a heddle and loop shedding system. Trinidad from Manabí province in Ecuador uses a homemade rigid heddle to create her sheds. One end of the warp is generally attached to a screwdriver which is wedged between the floor boards and the other end to a wall beam or other fixed point.

I have yet to get a zip I like for my bag creation this week. I have just pinned a metal zip into place for the time being.

This looks like a giant sports duffel bag, doesn’t it, but it actually only measures 7″ x 4 1/2″. It’s a nice size for a travel cosmetics bag. The sides are made from left over material from one of my purse projects and were woven using the three-shed method that I describe in my Andean Pebble Weave book. This produces a nice dense piece of cloth which worked well for this purpose. I cut them after a generous application of a “stop fray” product and then came the fiddly sewing process. I made use of my sample band to add a tab…something to hang onto while pulling the zip open.

I added black-and-beige tubular bands to both sides to outline the rounded inserts but, darn, you can’t even tell they’re there!! And sadly, the weft twining ended up on the bottom. That will teach me for weaving away with no end product in mind! But, sewing skills were extended and that was the post- weaving plan.

My Huichol piece is slowly moving along…

You may remember me saying that this finnweave technique behaved very well for me in that I did not need to use a reed to maintain the warp spacing. Well, it turns out that I may need to rethink that. You can see that the warps are spaced wider in the center than on the sides and I am having to fight a little with the right hand edge where the warps are threatening to scoot over next to each other.

All in all I am pretty pleased with it. I will just weave on until there is no more room to make the manipulations and see what kind of bag I can make from this. I have been searching about online for the kinds of designs that the Huichol and Otomi weave in this technique and have only come across bags and belts…..the kinds of items where you would ideally want a fairly sturdy fabric. The piece I am weaving would stand up quite well as a bag. I certainly wouldn’t call it light and “drapey” but not sturdy either. So, I was blown away this morning when I saw this on Teyacapan’s Flickr page…

An Otomi shawl, or rebozo made in what I am guessing is the same technique. Look at the braided fringe treatment. Now my question is “what’s on the other side?” (see last week’s post). The other side of my piece shows the same motifs with their colors reversed but they are clearly imperfect. That is the nature of this technique. I have seen Huichol belts online that have the same “flawed” motifs on the back while on others the motifs are clearly perfectly reversible. I shall ask Karen if I may have a peek at the other side.

Doramay Keasbey described in a recent article in Handwoven magazine (Jan/Feb 2011) five different types of double weave pick-up showing both sides of the fabric to compare the motifs. Some have varying degrees of feathering around their edges but are reversible while the motifs in the finnweave example have smooth edges but are not reversible. I wrote about this article in a previous post but I thank Marsha Knox, who has been making her own experiments in double weave pick-up, for reminding me about it.

Ah well, I shall just continue with my ten-inch wide piece and dream about one day being able to make a rebozo!

Something else I played with a little this week was two-color alternating warp floats. This comes via the “Worldwide Weaving Web”.

Yonat cast the first strand in the web by weaving some bands in this technique and posting them on Facebook.

Annie (ASpinnerWeaver) picked it up and went from there creating her own piece, a guitar strap, and posting it on Facebook too.

That’s her piece pictured at left.

I saw it and immediately loved it. It reminded me so much of something but I couldn’t quite pin it down.

Someone on Facebook commented that it looked Egyptian while Annie herself remarked that it reminded her of some Hmong designs she had seen.

Yet another said it looked like a person standing with open arms and legs.

In any case I wanted to weave it.

And then I remembered a motif from Bhutan that I have in a book which has some of the basic elements. This is what Annie’s piece reminded me of.

I wove something based on Annie’s design making some changes to make it my own version.

I used a solid color stripe down the center and added in a five-span float on the outside.

What I didn’t realize was that by adding that single-color center stripe I had changed it into one of those “eye-bending” designs which changes when you shift your focus somewhat like those 3-D designs years ago that we all used to go cross-eyed over. It was only when I turned the band over to see “what’s on the other side” that I saw the other design. I wonder if you see it too.

Look at the image, below left, of the back of the band with its diamonds for a while and then look at the one on the right of the front. What do you see now? Do you still see the stick-like patterns or do you see diamonds?

After that, all I could see was diamonds!!

I had to go take a break and come back to be able to see the nice stick pattern once again.

Then I continued weaving it as a complementary warp technique which made the design reversible. It also compressed the motif so that the five-span floats were less cumbersome.

Looking at it now all I can see is diamonds once again.

The design is just made up of floats of alternating colors starting in the center and working their way out to the edges. Here is a chart for a very large version of this pattern.

So that was all a bit of a fun distraction!

I have a band that I bought in Guatemala where the weaver has made use of some of these eye-bending motifs. It is in basic black and white which is very unusual in Guatemala where bright colors abound. I bought this belt in the same town that is famous for  hair sashes which scream with color and are heavily laden with supplementary weft designs.

When the black and white floats alternate in succession they produce quite a three-dimensional effect.

I have lots to report on the Ravelry group backstrap Weave-Along but I will save it for next week except for Amber’s amazing finished work which is in keeping with the bag theme in this week’s post. Look at her gorgeous lined tote bag! Okay, lining has to go on my list of sewing skills now….

Oh, and one more thing –  another delicious distraction arrived, this time in the post…a birthday gift from my friend Anna in Australia. My goodness it was hard not to drop everything and get into this but I shall do so on the weekend. All my off-loom time this week has been spent sewing,  trying to get that square peg into the round hole!

 This book, by Dutch author Mirja Wark, is about the si’ira, which is the intricate belt weaving of the Wayuu Indians from the Guajira, the northern border area of Venezuela and Colombia.

I flicked through and was immediately struck by a couple of things. It appears that the Wayuu make and operate their heddles in the same way as the Guaraní weavers here do, a way that is completely different to anything I have seen in the highlands or elsewhere. (see the pictures and video in this post) One of the Wayuu designs strongly resembles the design in the Ayoreo bag in this post. I imagine the Wayuu inhabit lowland regions like the Ayoreo and Guaraní….I need to stop here and go read!

Backstrap Weaving – Ready, Set…Weave Along!

I fear the truth in the adage ”out of sight, out of mind”. You wouldn’t believe my computer desktop! It is a cluttered mass of folders and icons. I just know if I put anything away into a file, I will forget about it and I have new ideas coming up all the time.

The same goes for my bedroom/work space. We have had to come up with some interesting solutions to the lack of space in this little home which means we have two single beds side by side, one of which folds away during the day so I can have some floor space on which to work.

Everything has to be rolled up, picked up and put away at the end of the day so the bed can come back out. You would think that that would keep things fairly orderly…

I still seem to end up with piles of stuff on the floor everywhere…weaving sketches, books, tools, baskets of yarns, things I don’t dare put in a cupboard or closet because they serve to remind me of the latest new weaving idea I have had. They have to be covered so the cat won’t get at them. It is a merry mess, it lives and grows and never stagnates. But, it’s time for a change!

The fact is that there simply isn’t anywhere to put things anymore as my books have completely taken over…no more floor, shelf or closet space left but aha! there is wall space!

So, I am going to have lovely woven storage bags hung on the wall to hold my project bits and pieces and, on the whiteboard, a nice orderly list of what’s waiting to be explored. The bedroom will start to look like some kind of crazy textile bazaar! Actually it kind of does already.

Storage bag ideas: I love the woven sacks that are used up in the highlands for storage, transport and display in the markets and fairs. I have been searching for ideas for interesting bag shapes but I have to admit in the end that a rectangular piece of cloth folded in half and sewn together at the sides is probably the most economical if not the most elegant way to create a practical bag from a piece of handwoven fabric.

You can see one deep storage bag that I have at the top of this post that Tracy sent me from Qatar. The wool fabric is part of a Bedouin tent divider. That currently holds all my Tour de Fleece gear.

This wool bag that I made years ago with  Mapuche designs woven with supplementary warps hangs on a doorknob and holds all my camera stuff…battery recharger, cables, tripod attachments etc.

This gigantic cotton bag with Guarani pebble weave designs, which was bought here in Santa Cruz, hangs off one of the bed posts.

So there are more bags to be made so I can get everything off the floor and onto the walls! Well, you all know that I am just looking for an excuse to weave more things.

So, I am in the process of weaving a hanging strap, which I couldn’t resist decorating, for what will be a new storage bag made from a piece of fabric I wove some time ago as an ikat experiment. The strap has motifs from Bhutan as does the bag fabric.

It will also need a back and some sides in plain black…it will be very fast to weave those.

This will hang on the wall and hold what is currently being stored in a large basket on a shelf. The basket will go and yes! that way there will be more room for books or at least something that is currently on the floor. (I have a new book coming in the mail…thanks Anna!)

The motifs have been woven using supplementary wefts. I used one and a half strands of embroidery floss as the supplementary weft with my 35wpi cotton warp and weft. Veeeery slowly things may become a little better organized.

I have been admiring the designs made by the Huichol people of Mexico in balanced double weave for a long time ever since I first ran across their work in a museum in the US in 2007. They make bags on which they add large corner tassels and have an unusual way of braiding the warp ends.

These are a couple of samples I made in this technique some time ago.

 I prefer the patterns that they use in their belts and so I will probably try to make a storage bag in this double weave with motifs from their belts. I wonder if I can figure out how they work those warp ends.

The other project I worked on this week was the mug rug set.

My friend, who has decorated her kitchen with flower and butterfly motifs, saw the prototype I had woven (at left) and asked for a set for her breakfast bar. Now she tells me that they are too pretty to use and that she will put them on her wall.

I have made three and will wait for her to choose the colors for the fourth. The motif is neither butterfly nor flower and is based on a Guaraní leaf design which I wove one way and then mirrored.

The red and black sample, which is larger than the other three, will stay here as my tea mug rug where I work on the floor and the other three will go to Evelyn with a fourth one yet to be made. They have all been edged with tubular bands.

Evelyn’s kitchen is yellow with bits of green and blue in the wall tiles so I think these will look nice there.

It’s hard to decide which face to make the “right” side.

There is another commissioned piece that I have been working on, which I can’t show here yet, but this piece has made me even more enthusiastic about the simple string heddle.

This is a particuarly long but narrow piece that I am weaving in Andean pebble weave and I have set up the warp with four sets of string heddles (two more than I would normally use for pebble weave), and what an incredible time saver this has been! This project is simply zooming along!

The black and white cord that you see in the warp is my “saver cord”. By using these two additional sets of heddles and the saver cord I actually get to do seven consecutive weft passes without having to do any pick-up for this particular design.

String heddles are so cool! I love how they allow you to put one warp thread into multiple sets.

No matter how they are made, whether they are single or continuous, I love them.

You can use one, two, three or four as I am currently using. I am not sure what limit I would put on the number that I would personally consider comfortable or practical for my own backstrap weaving. I have seen backstrap weavers in pictures with many more.

The warp on this vertical loom in Ecuador will have eleven sets of patterning heddles plus one that will control one of the two plain weave sheds.

They can be made on a stick, made around the fingers and knotted into a bunch or chained together.

There are so many different ways to make them with no one particular way being the “right” way. I have chosen my favorite ways over the years but love seeing and learning new ones.

Education and More has just posted the following video on YouTube showing a Guatemalan weaver teaching her foreign student the way she makes her string heddles.

While on the subject of Guatemala, it is always fun for me to go to Facebook and see the latest video that Red Corn Tours has posted on Guatemala…weaving, costume, festivals and different aspects of simple daily life from the making of tortillas to the washing all those beautiful hand woven huipiles.

And now for our plain-weave backstrap loom weave-along progress….

We started this week with more people, so far, opting for the balanced weave project after a flurry of pre weave-along DIY reed and hole-and-slot heddle making activity.

Warp-faced projects for the color and stripes challenge from Bobbie in cotton and Jennifer in her homespun wool.

Those who have not joined the weave-along have been turning out projects on their backstrap looms as well.

Jennifer is weaving a balanced piece using hemp yarn and a reed made for her by Janet. She has also finished three plain weave warp-faced panels with her homespun wool which will be joined into a bag.
Here's the beautiful reed that Janet made. Kathi has set up her loom with a rigid heddle with different kinds of yarn for her balanced weave project.
Cindy has joined in showing us her warp wound on its stakes and there she is with loom set up and ready to weave a warp-faced band.
Blomster is using wool in a piece she is weaving with a rigid heddle on her backstrap loom. It is pictured next to the warp-faced band she made with the same warp. She is making a bigger wall hanging using her rigid heddle loom and natural color and madder-dyed wool as, being new to backstrap weaving, she does not feel ready to attempt such a wide piece yet on a backstrap loom. Her wide piece is inspired by the hanging you see nearby which she bought in Oman. She thinks that it was probably made with goat hair.

Both Amber and catknitlatte have reported that they are on their way and we hope to see progress pictures soon.

Fiall and WannaGTD finished these backstraps before the weave-along started but these backstraps could easily be weave-along projects as they fit the plain weave criteria.

The instructions for weaving these backstraps are in my WeaveZine article.

Janet is making a shawl using her 24" rigid heddle and a bunch of different yarns. Her warp is cotton and her indigo-dyed weft will come from her homespun stash. This is really amazing! She will weave it in several panels.

Knitnfrenzy and ElizArtist have both checked in. Knitnfrenzy is going for a warp-faced project while spindleori showed us her homespun, at left, which she will weave up with a rigid heddle to make a bag.

Dygvvi is going to weave fabric which will go around a frame to make a yarn storage bucket.

We are waiting to see what Franco, AuntJanet and Phil have been up to. We know that Phil has a painted warp and can’t wait to see how that is going.

Marsha and Traudi have been working on their patterning techniques on projects outside the weave-along. Marsha's band has designs in both simple and two-color alternating floats ("warp floats galore") while Traudi has been playing with supplementary weft patterns.

And what about my weave-along project? Blush…I had better get going and go warp one up!