jewelry – Page 2 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – A Basketful of Bands and Memories

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who has bought my new e-book, Complementary-warp Pick-up, since it was released last Sunday evening. I am looking forward to seeing how you use the technique and patterns. And, thanks also to the many people who wrote to me to give such kind personal comments on it.

And now, after having completed my third instructional manual, I am working on a big book of both large and small patterns for Andean Pebble Weave. I am really excited about it and have many samples to weave and photograph. These are patterns that I have been collecting for years! It is, after all, five years since I published my last book with Andean Pebble Weave patterns and much has happened since then.

Just some of the bands that I wove for my second book.

What I now find myself with, after all this weaving of samples, is a rather large basket of bands. Some of them are from my books and some were woven just for fun.

Band weavers will know that it is quite okay to weave bands just for the pure joy of it. They don’t need to have a purpose! A few of the bands in my basket were woven when I ran some weave-alongs on Ravelry a few years ago. By the way, I am planning to run another weave-along in January on cuffs and bracelets after all the madness of Christmas, New Year and end-of-year activities has passed. Northern hemisphere folk will be sitting by cozy fires. I’ll be in my Fortress of Solitude with the air conditioner blowing cooling air, no doubt! Good times for a weave-along, right?

Each and every one of the bands in my basket holds a memory and I remember very clearly where I was in my weaving adventure at the time that I wove them.

For example, I remember weaving a few bands like the two in the center, above, in sewing thread shortly before heading off to visit my friend Janet in California back in early 2011. One of the sewing-thread bands is still the fob for her car keys. Two of them were made into bookmarks that my brother still uses. These two remain. The upper one is in warp-faced double weave and the other in complementary-warp pick-up. In fact, I included the chart for that pattern in my second book.

Here’s another band in sewing thread…this one uses the Andean Pebble Weave structure. I might recover this one from the cover of my journal and make a bracelet from it.

Now the brown sewing-thread bands have become bracelets by adding ribbon clamps, braids and buttons. One of my favorite things to do when I am traveling is visit yarn, fabric and button stores to find interesting buttons for these pieces of jewelry. I usually find a button that is a good match for an existing band, but there have also been times when I have woven a band just to match a cool button!

The black and red band in the top part of the photo of the sewing-thread bands has beads along the edge which I had threaded on the weft. That one is a leftover band from a key fob weave-along I ran on Ravelry some years ago. That weave-along was a lot of fun. The band never got used as a fob and now it will be a bracelet.

These silk bands were woven specially to be made into wrist cuffs. One end of the bands has a selvedge (which is one of the many nice things about using a backstrap loom….a third selvedge can be easily created) which means that one of the ends doesn’t have to be turned and hemmed. I create that third selvedge on narrow bands by placing a metal knitting needle through the warp ends and lashing it to the backstrap beam. That way, I can start weaving at the very end of the warp. I have all kinds of needles…some super fine ones too for when I weave with yarn like 60/2 silk.

Using a fine knitting needle at the start of the band and finishing by removing the needle and then passing the starting tail of the first weft shot on a tapestry needle to fill the gap.

I can sew simple snaps to the ends that have selvedges as well as to those that have sewn hems. And, there are some really cool snaps available these days (thank you to Susan in Canada for telling me about them, and for even sending me some). The usual types that I have always known and used are those classic bulky metal ones. Now there are some lovely flat ones that come in black, white and clear plastic that you can see in the photo of the silk cuffs.. I remember Google-searching like mad for these and getting frustrated as I simply did not know what to call the little things. It turns out that they are pretty easy to find in craft and sewing stores.

Those silk cuffs remind me of shopping trips with people with whom I have woven in my travels. Sue in the U.K took me to the Handweavers Studio in London back in 2012 where I bought lots of tiny leftover spools of 60/2 silk. The little tree pendant that looks so nice on the silk neck ribbon was bought on an outing with Christine in Arizona a couple of years ago. The colors on the silk neck ribbon were modeled on a hand-dyed and hand-painted silk warp that Sara Lamb gave me some years ago. All great memories! 🙂

The bands for my bracelets and cuffs that you see above are woven in various materials…mercerized cotton, worsted spun wool, fingering weight knitting yarn and naturally dyed silk. The pattern on the first band on the left is in my first book. The next one was a sampler for my second book. It remains to be seen how ”pilly” the one made from the knitting yarn gets after a lot of wear. That one was woven for my newest book and reminds me of the last trip I made to the highlands. Maxima and the other weavers up there fell in love with that pattern and I ended up teaching it to them. There are many fond memories tied to that trip.

Adviana learning to weave the new pattern.

The naturally-dyed silk band with the leaves reminds me of warm and generous friends in Grass Valley, California. While visiting with them, I was given a bunch of little naturally-dyed silk skeins which enabled me to weave beautiful bands and pieces of cloth for book covers.

Generally, if my band has a selvedge at one end, I will sew a button to that end. I then use a ribbon clamp to cover and protect the raw edge at the other end. I can braid some yarn and thread it through the loop in the ribbon clamp, knot it together and use that to loop over the button. That is also a good solution if the band in my basket is not long enough to allow me to use the more traditional jewelry findings, like rings and a lobster-claw clasp. The longer bands get the traditional findings (although I have to say that I am no expert at applying the tiny split rings even though I have the tools! I get crazy when those little rings slip out of my grasp and ”ping” across the room!).

If I have two raw ends, I use ribbon clamps at both ends. Sometimes I sew a button on top of the ribbon clamp just for decoration, or because I have a particular button that happens to match the band well. It is very easy putting the bracelet on and slipping a braided loop over the button.

Depending on the kind of yarn, I sometimes paint some diluted PVA glue or Fray Check on the raw ends before putting them into the ribbon clamp. This helps to tame stray warp ends that can sometimes flare out at the sides of the clamps.

The red and black band with the beads is kind of an odd one. It is a very short band that was meant to be a key fob. I had worked the unwoven warp ends into a bunch of tiny braids. I applied the ribbon clamp to the braids and I think it looks pretty good, if somewhat unusual.

So, I hope I have given you some ideas for maybe making some jewelry from your own band stash, or perhaps weaving some bands specially for that purpose. I think the bracelet/wrist cuff weave-along in January will be fun and very productive. If you would like to participate, you will have plenty of time to look for buttons and findings.

I want to leave you with a piece of exciting news about my video Operating a Backstrap Loom. The dvd went touring with me on my recent trip to Australia. It was very interesting talking to people who are interested in the video and who do not live in the USA. I listened to their thoughts on buying streamed content as opposed to physical dvds.

Operating a Backstrap Loom on tour in beautiful Australia.

And so, I am so happy to tell you that Taproot Video is now offering LIFETIME STREAMING of the video as well as the usual option of buying the dvd. Those people who bought the original 30-day streaming option will have heard by now that they have been automatically upgraded to lifetime streaming at no extra cost.

Thank you to everyone who has bought the dvd or streamed option so far.

Oh, and one more thing… my “Sunrise, Sunset” piece is off the loom. This is the piece that I set up so that Marilyn and Rainer could film me for a documentary they are creating. It was a little stressful as I usually dither over new projects and need to ponder them for days, if not weeks. I am usually planning the next project as I sit at my loom half-way though another. In this case, I just had to grab yarn (10/2 mercerized cotton), wind a warp and go for it. I chose berry colors…ones that I like to think of now as the soft tones of sunrises and sunsets…dusty pinks and purples bathed in the golden rays of the sun.

I am going to sew it into a tool pouch for Marilyn, whose yarn I used. Maybe I will dress it up with a tubular edging too.

Until next time….

Backstrap Weaving – From little acorns…

There is something about the process of weaving all the tiny projects I have been working on these last few weeks. While I love my large projects on which I sometimes work for weeks and weeks, it is hugely satisfying to be working on small ones and turning out something new almost every day….new colors, new materials and new textures. But there is something else about the process, and I am not sure exactly what it is, that is opening up doors and letting ideas come flooding in. I am writing and sketching them and saving them for later. Sometimes from little projects come big ideas.

The last couple of weeks have been about making jewelry…”arm jewelry”, as I like to call it. I want to wear lots of cuffs and wristlets and bangles all the way up my arm. I am not sure how practical it will be to weave with all that stuff jangling away, but we shall see.

In my last post, I showed you the beginnings of a blue set of pieces. The bangle was the latest addition…

Since then, I have added two wristlets, another bangle and a neck ”bangle” (?) (I have no idea what that thing should be called)…

I am also using the sample pieces I wove when I was planning my silk journal covers and making them into arm adornments. I used more of that lovely cochineal-dyed silk to make another bangle and wristlet with leaf-themed patterns…

The berry-colored silk pieces are on the right. One of the wide bands is decorated with leaf motifs in supplemental weft and the other has a leaf pattern I invented for the Andean Pebble Weave structure. I used a slight variation of the classic Andean ”meandering river” motif to make another leafy pattern on the narrow band and bangle.

I used a tubular band pattern that I saw woven by weavers from the community of Chahuaytire in Cusco to make a bangle in the brown set (second on the left) and an Andean Pebble Weave band to make another (far left). The pieces connect using buttons and braided loops, or snaps, or end clamps and lobster claw clasps.

I then set about making a matching silk pendant for the light blue cuff I wove some time ago. I put it together like the brown and black pendant on the right. There was lots of pick-up to be done with tiny threads of 60/2 silk but the pendant only required one pattern repeat and so I was able to finish this project fairly quickly. I love these small projects and love my backstrap loom even more as it allows me to warp and comfortably weave such tiny things with little waste.

This is the pattern I used for the neck ”bangle”. It’s one that I wove using the Andean Pebble Weave structure and I was able to set it up with multiple sets of string heddles which made the weaving relatively fast.

You can probably tell that I had a lot of fun with these little projects. One idea that came to mind while I was sitting there weaving and sewing and struggling to put together tiny split rings and other jewelry findings, was how to edge the wool panels that I wove some time ago and had put aside to finish awaiting inspiration.

I have two raw edges with which to deal on this wool project. The cloth is really lightweight and I know that it would not support a tubular band which is what I usually use to edge my sturdy warp-faced projects. Besides, I don’t think a tubular band would work in this case to cover and stabilize the raw edges.

I really liked the way the pattern that I wove for the blue neck ”bangle” looked when it was rolled into a tube and so, I came up with this idea for edging my brown panels using that same pattern. Here is the sample…

The ”star” motif is a big part of the design on the large wool panels that I wove and so I think that this pattern will be a good match for the edging. I am going to fold the band in half and sew it so that the center pattern forms a tube. The edge of my panels will then be sandwiched between the solid brown sections which will cover and protect the raw edges well. A couple of little tucks help the band bend around the corner of the blanket and I am really pleased with the way that looks.

Here is the small sample placed at the edge to give you an idea….

So, from the little jewelry projects came the big idea of how to finally finish my large wool pieces….at last! The two wool pieces have been sitting in a box for months waiting for me to come up with just the right idea for this finishing touch.

I am still lumbering along trying to improve my braiding technique. This is the Peruvian braid that I studied with Rodrick Owen at the recent BRAIDS 2016 conference. I am now trying it in fine wool. You can see the chunky wool that I used in the class. My fine piece is full of flaws and wobbles due to poor tension and a little carelessness. I blamed the cotton for my last wonky attempt thinking that it must be easier with wool. The cotton is not the problem…of course, it’s me! and my lack of experience. Try again, try again. I’ll get there. The idea is to make a wrist cuff but I won’t be wearing this one! It goes in the Reject Box.

One last thing I have been playing with is lettering in silk. I am enjoying this a lot. There are no prizes for guessing what word I am writing. After completing this sample, I might weave a band with writing which will become the strap for another conference pouch.. I will tell you more about this lettering when I have sampled a bit more. Ruth, with whom I stayed in Melbourne, gave me the idea for this. I wonder how she has been getting on with her own lettering.

My online weaving friends have been doing some amazing things and I will show you all of that next time. Bands, yardage, scarves and fobs are being created by my backstrap weaving buddies around the world.

My friend Adem, in Turkey is always up to something interesting and has been at the beach weaving on a tripod loom. Here’s a sneak preview of more to come about this in my next post…

Ah, I managed to squeeze in a few more rows of lettering before posting….It’s growing on me!

Until next time….

Backstrap Weaving – Tales from Way Down Under

I went to Melbourne as a 10-year old. Most of my parents’ friends from India, where I was born, seemed to have settled in Melbourne rather than in Sydney where we lived. So, we made a summer family trip to visit. I remember eating lots and lots Indian food, the tremendous summer heat, the trams on the city streets…but little else.

So, I was delighted and excited when I was invited to teach backstrap weaving by the Handweavers and Spinners Guild of Victoria. Here was a chance to venture to the southern end of the Australian mainland once again and experience Australia’s second largest city.

I was hosted by Ruth Mitchell who lives within walking distance of the guild. The guild is a truly unique place among the various guilds that I have managed to visit in my travels. It is located in North Carlton, a beautiful city suburb of Victorian era cottages and terraces. I do love inner city living and spent some years before I left for South America in Strawberry Hills in inner city Sydney.

I loved walking the blocks to ”work” every day at the guild. Every little cottage and terraced house was gorgeous…the lace iron work, the little gardens, the colors!, not to mention the palm tree-lined streets. I couldn’t get enough of it. Of course, I took lots of pictures strolling home in the late evening light and I can’t wait to weave something inspired by all those iron work patterns and colors.

The pattern formed by the colors of the brickwork in this house reminds me of the dru, horse’s tooth, pattern used in Bedouin weaving.

These patterns in classic white inspire me to weave something similar in brocade. I would love to weave white patterns on black using a supplementary weft somewhat like I did in this piece some time ago…

It will be interesting and challenging to try to create patterns in brocade that capture the beauty of the Victorian era iron work motifs. I must get some fine silk for that so that I can make the patterns as detailed as possible. It will be a nice piece to commemorate my Melbourne visit.

As you can imagine, after strolling these streets in the mornings with thoughts of pretty iron work and brocade in my head, I would arrive at the guild feeling very inspired and ready to weave!

I did tell you in my last post that the home of the guild is a marvelous place. It’s big! There’s a large library, craft supplies store, exhibit area, woven and knitted goods store, workshop spaces and rental equipment storage space. The craft supplies store certainly did some damage to my wallet. I wanted to bring home Australian fleece for spinning and I also bought some Landscape Dyes…colors of the Australian landscape. Lesley gave me a skein of yarn from Bendigo Woollen Mills to use with the dye I had bought. It’s labeled ”fine merino magnolia” and it feels gorgeous. I will weave something with it on my backstrap loom.

I also had a fiber and textile outing in Melbourne with Ruth and I purchased some lovely fabric pieces from Kimono House for perhaps lining some of my woven bags and pouches.

Here is the first of the two Melbourne groups busily winding warps for Andean Pebble Weave. My host, Ruth, is second from the left facing the camera.

The guild is a busy, welcoming and fun place every day. At least four volunteer staff are there every weekday to run the craft supply store, front desk and library. Marie on the left was my ”go-fer” for the day. I am not used to having one and was hard pressed to keep her busy. I was certainly well looked after!

The library now has my books! 🙂 Lesley was on library duty on this day.

I picked up some bargain book gems from the boxes of used books. The open magazine has articles on Australian Aboriginal art and Maori textiles. You can see a piece of Aboriginal art work on the open page with a beautiful leaf design…right up my alley!

If you are wondering about the weight of my luggage when it was time to come back to Bolivia… well, yes, less important things, like clothes, got left behind in Sydney.

Here’s new guild member, Sia, working on her Andean Pebble Weave patterns. Sia walked into the guild and signed up as a member, saw a flyer for my class and jumped on the opportunity. She is hoping to come to the Tinkuy in Peru next year and maybe visit me in Bolivia so perhaps we will meet on this side of the world.

Sia made a wee mistake in one of her patterns and ended up creating the design which I have named ”Sia’s fish”…

June is celebrating the completion of her first star pattern. She was particularly happy when we later learned how to make continuous string heddles mounted on a stick. She had gone to Japan and brought back a traditional Japanese backstrap loom and has been teaching herself to work on it. However, she told me that making the continuous string heddles had defeated her. Here is a picture of her loom. It’s an intriguing set up. I find myself saying over and over ”If I come back to Melbourne, I will….”. That list of activities includes the hope of being able to see June weave on this loom.

In any case, even though she has been finding the heddle making challenging, it looks like she has been producing some lovely cloth.

She brought along some Japanese textiles to show me as well as her tea ceremony equipment… all wrapped in a furoshiki cloth, of course. You can see one of the beautiful bamboo reeds that she got in Japan.Tatiana, from Chile, was in my second group of Andean Pebble Weavers. She does meticulous handwork and brought me one of dozens of hand knitted dolls she has made. The doll collection is fabulous and I told her that she really should make an exhibit for the guild. When in Chile, she had seen such knitted dolls being made by Aymara ladies from northern Chile and this gave her the idea. She tells me that the Chilean dolls are more rustic and charming. I find the doll she gave me absolutely adorable!

She also had a bag decorated with the embroidery of Ayacucho. I have shown this in other blog posts. My friend Dorothy has some of this Ayacucho work and when I made an appeal on this blog, several people wrote to me to tell me how to do the stitches. I have never actually used the stitches but, you never know, one day….

It seems that wherever I go, I will run into something South American. I showed you in my last blog post the Mapuche belts that Gerlinde gave me. These belts traveled from Chile to Europe to Australia and now are in my home in Bolivia.

Of course, the beautiful work of the weavers of Chnichero, Peru is internationally known. One of my Melbourne students, Melanie, had been to Cusco where she took weaving classes. The little pouch she uses for her weaving tools is from there. The Chinchero pieces with their gorgeous natural dye colors are instantly recognizable.

I worked with two groups in Melbourne. They both learned Andean Pebble Weave. There is talk of forming a study group and I hope that comes together. The guild has the space to hold such meetings but I was told that the problem is finding a spare day as there are so many study groups and other activities happening in the space. While I was there, the kumihimo and tapestry groups got together to braid and weave.

On my day off between the two workshops, Ruth kindly took me into the city.. a short tram ride away. We did a little textile and fiber tour stopping first at the famous Australian Tapestry Workshop. It is housed in a historic building in South Melbourne that was once a knitting mill and it is beautiful both inside and out.

From the mezzanine level we got to look down on the work area with its works-in-progress and recently completed pieces. Amazing!

This piece designed by British artist Keith Tyson is called Gordian Knot The circular piece seems to float in space.

Australian designer John Olsen’s piece, Life Burst, was on display in the gallery.

Hi signature appears in the corner along with the emblem of the Australian Tapestry Workshop where his design was woven by a team of tapestry weavers. It was amazing to look closely at the piece and see just how many colors had been blended. What appears in the picture above to be solid yellow actually comprises many strands of multiple shades of yellows, oranges and other colors.

It was fascinating and mind boggling watching one of the weavers at work. I will always remember Joan Ruane’s remark when she watched me doing pick-up on my backstrap loom. She said something like..”Oh my God, it’s slower than tapestry!” After watching this lady at work…I don’t think so! This piece is called Perspectives on a Flat Surface and was designed by John Wardle Architects. You can see the sample pieces that have been woven and mounted next to the main piece of work. Yep, tapestry weavers have to sample too.

It was a very enjoyable visit. There was a hands-on piece in one of the galleries where Ruth and I got to pass a few wefts and leave our mark and then we went yarn shopping. I picked up a half dozen tiny cones of tapestry wool which I think will work wonderfully in warp-faced weaving. There are 362 colors from which to choose and the workshop has a resident dyer. I will weave something to remind me of my visit to the ATW.

Melbourne is a pretty city. I found it light, open and airy. It has quite a few churches. This one is St Patrick’s Catholic church. It is possible that Sydney’s CBD has just as many but they just don’t seem to jump out at you like the ones in Melbourne.

The Flinders Street Station is bustling and beautiful…

I loved running into these landmarks. These are names that I have heard all my life growing up in Sydney.We crossed the Yarra river that flows through the city dividing Melbourne into north and south banks.

We went to the Nicholas building which houses an eclectic gathering of craftspeople including a tailor from Peru who uses, among other materials. industrially produced fabric from Peru in interesting ways to make elegant coats.

After being thoroughly absorbed looking at the various stores and studios we suddenly realized it was 3 o’clock and we hadn’t had lunch. I enjoyed visiting one of Melbourne’s famous laneways. This one, Central Place, is stuffed full of tiny eateries that have just enough space to seat a handful of people. We crouched on tiny stools eating sushi and watched the people go by. There are apparently many of these laneways, each one with its particular personality.

At home, Ruth showed me what she has been weaving. I am kicking myself for not having taken photos. She has been using my second book to learn intermesh and has been using her Ashford inklette to weave bands with lettering. She adds the two additional sets of string heddles for the ”mesh sheds” to her inkle loom and was using fine wool to weave a striking red and black band. I was happy to meet Ruth’s two daughters and discover that her elder daughter, Lisa, is a well known Australian singer and songwriter and has been so for the last ten years. Well, I have been away for 23 years and am not caught up with what is happening in Australian music.

Lisa Mitchell is her name and here she is performing with one of Ruth’s hand woven guitar straps. I was tickled to see that she had used some of the celtic knot patterns from my second book that I adapted to the Andean Pebble Weave structure. Ruth has woven several other beautiful guitar straps for Lisa, one of which has silver-colored threads and which catch the light beautifully when Lisa performs on stage. And yes, that’s one of my friend Annie’s guitar strap kits that she is using.

I got back to Bolivia last Thursday. It was a 54-hour trip…don’t ask! I don’t think I have ever really known what jet lag is until this trip. Sure, I get tired after a long flight but jet lag is something else again. I have been trying to claw my way out of the fog and get back to my loom and I am pleased to report that yes, it finally happened. I have been putting to use some of the jewelry findings I bought while in the U.S.

The cuff isn’t new. Nor is the silk lanyard. You might remember that I wove this lanyard pattern again as I hadn’t been happy with this first attempt. The ”good” one went to the BRAIDS 2016 where I met its new owner. This less-than-good one is now the holder for my new glasses. I forgot my glasses in Sydney, darn it. The new thing in the picture is the bangle. I want to have sets of ”arm jewelry” and wear them all at once from wrist to half way to my elbow…cuffs, bangles, braided wristlets and bands like the lady in the picture below. I have been fascinated by this idea ever since I came across the picture. You may remember it from this blog post. So, here are two pieces in the ”blue” set. There will be more ”arm jewelry” in blue to come.

From Afrostyle magazine and designer Tarun Tahilian

Now there is a brown set underway…

So far, I have a bangle and a wristlet. I will use a tiny braid to connect that wristlet, tied through the eyelet at one end and looped around the button. The wider piece is going to be sewn into a cuff with a tubular edging and then I will weave a few tubular bands to also use as wristlets. I have lots of things going on right now that are preventing me from getting into a large project…although my head is overflowing with great ideas!! The list gets longer. Traveling opens my eyes to so many things and gives me the time and head space to organize my ideas, visualize possible projects and make adjustments and improvements before I can even touch the loom.

My small jewelry projects are keeping me happy for the time being. They are fun. I hope I get to wear them soon.

See you next time.