Peru – Page 2 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Encuentro de Tejedores de las Americas – Part Three…and more….

Before I get into Part 3 of my report on the Encuentro de Tejedores de las Americas (see Part 1 and Part 2 here and here), let me show you how I have been getting on with my latest experiment with supplementary-weft patterns.

You may remember from last week’s post that I was inspired by seeing textiles from Bhutan with their gorgeous motifs created by using supplementary wefts.

I was happy to see that I could decorate my own woven cloth with similar patterns using techniques that I had learned in Guatemala.

At left is the sampler I made to practice the techniques and experiment with the spacing of the pattern warps. I had some fine cotton from Guatemala that my friend Betty had bought about 30 years ago. How nice that this cotton could finally find its purpose.

The black cotton disintegrated as soon as I pulled it out of the closet. I guess that there is something in the black dye that causes the yarn to rot quickly. The other colors…red, green and purple….were just fine and, fortunately, there was plenty of white to dye black. I had my heart set on a black scarf.

There were a lot of ends to wind to make 7 inches…672!!

The cotton is kind of sticky and I can see why Guatemalan weavers very often choose to size their yarn with a kind of corn starch wash.

I am using it as is and need to be very gentle. I broke one warp before even getting started and my heart sank but it turns out that it was due to my clumsy handling of the pick-up stick…phew! No more breaks so far but there is still a looooong way to go.

Of course I made a wee sample before diving in to see how many ends I would need to make an inch. I also needed to test the ideal number of strands of tencel to use for the weft patterns.

In the picture you can see my tiny warp with its string heddles and shed loop . The two sticks are the pattern sticks that I talked about in my last post. Of course, the yarn was already showing signs of stickiness even on this tiny project but I decided to go ahead undaunted 🙂

Sample done…width calculations made. Now, how long should a scarf be? Seems like a silly question, but I have never made a scarf before. Fortunately, I do own just ONE. After all those years spent skiing and then living in Patagonia you would think that I would be more scarf-wise.

There is the warp and I am ready to make the 336 string heddles. I like making heddles…time to put on a cd and sing! and I didn’t cross or double up any warps…phew!

I have lots of pictures that I have taken of Bhutanese textiles in friends’ collections for inspiration and David K Barker’s books are wonderful too. (See my RESOURCES page for information on how to download his books for free.) However, I decided to play it safe to start with and weave one of the patterns that I had already tested on my sampler.

So, I sat down to weave and that is when it hit me…wow, this yarn is really FINE….and….it’s black! All the clues that I usually use to make the pick-up easier for supplementary-weft patterning are dependent on actually being able to see the threads!!

Boy, had I made things hard for myself but, believe it or not, I got used to it and came up with other ways to eyeball the placement of the patterns without having to become a slave to pattern charts and endless counting. It became a very cool learning experience and, as with all things new and experimental, much un-weaving was done and all with my heart in my mouth as I don’t think that this yarn will take much “backing and forthing”!

Here is the first pattern under way. I placed several thin pieces of cardboard in alternate sheds in the warp beyond the cross sticks. This gave me a place to make quick adjustments to loose warps within arm’s reach and with the warp under tension rather than having to get out of my backstrap and crawl up to the end of the loom.

Sometimes you don’t get to choose when to weave. I would come back in from a break to find Her Highness reclining in what was, apparently, the most comfortable spot in the house. Would you dare disturb someone with a look like that on their face? You can see the next set of patterns in progress here.

And this is where it stands for now. I am just getting past the first warp break and have my fingers crossed that there won’t be more. I watched a gentleman from Chahuaytire weaving on his backstrap loom when I was in Cusco. A warp broke and I loved the calm and cool way he went about fixing it like he had done it hundreds of times before (well, of course, he probably had). He didn’t need to have anyone tensioning the warp while he leaned forward to fix the break. That is the part I find hardest.

Be prepared to see a lot more of this project in the weeks to come. Unless, of course, those warps start a- snapping, and then you will most likely see it finished really soon as a zippered pouch or journal cover!

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ENCUENTRO DE TEJEDORES DE LAS AMERICAS – PART THREE – SPINNERS AND WEAVERS IN ACTION

The Encuentro…it was over two months ago now and I am finding it hard to sum up here but I will try!

It was about yarn being created with the simplest tools…

Handspun cotton by the Matsigenka weavers of the Amazonian region of Bajo Urubamba, Peru — Fine and incredibly even handspun cotton by the Matsigenka weavers of the Amazonian region of Bajo Urubamba, Peru

The "malacate", spindle used in Mexico to spin silk with its horn whorl. — The spindle known as “malacate” used in Oaxaca, Mexico to spin silk. Its whorl is made of horn.

The traditional "sig sig" spindle of Salasaca, Ecuador made from pampas grass. — The traditional “sig sig” spindle of Salasaca, Ecuador made from pampas grass stems. A small piece of thin solid stem is inserted into the soft interior of the large stem section to suspend the wool yarn as it is spun.

A spinner from Chiclayo, Peru showed me how she spins the natural brown cotton that is cultivated in the region. She told me that a heavy stone is usually placed on top of the cotton as she draws out the fiber to be spun. Not having one handy, she used the bottle of water that you see in the video. The spindle whorl is a piece of avocado seed.

It was about sticks…lots of sticks!

Sticks used by the weavers of Bajo Urubamba to create their warp-float patterns.

Twenty-four heddle sticks are used to weave the traditional pattern on the "faja sara" of San Ignacio de Loyola. — Multiple heddle sticks are used to weave the traditional pattern on the “faja sara” of San Ignacio de Loyola.

It was about threads being strung together in a stunning display of color and texture…

An ikat warp ready to be woven into the traditional shawl of Tacabamba, Peru. The ties on the sections of threads were the only means I could see to keep the threads aligned for the ikat patterns.

Threads are stretched on the typical leaning vertical loom of Tarabuco, Bolivia. Multi-colored figures depicting ceremonies and scenes of daily life in the community will sit on a white mesh-like background. The colored threads are generally thicker than the white ones which gives the figures relief.

The backstrap loom with its cotton warp from Chiclayo, Peru. A single-faced cloth decorated with warp-float patterns is created.

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

A floor loom holds the warp on which a weaver from Ayacucho, Peru will create a beautiful tapestry. — A floor loom holds the warp on which a weaver from Ayacucho, Peru is creating a beautiful tapestry.

And it was about the wonderful hands and spirits of the talented craftspeople and artists who use sticks and fiber to create beautiful cloth….such an amazing variety of people from across the Americas!

Weaver Natividad Machaca Quispe of Taquile Island, Peru creates a sash with bands of warp-faced double weave motifs and complementary-warp patterns. — Weaver, Natividad, of Taquile Island, Peru creates a sash with bands of warp-faced double weave motifs and complementary-warp patterns. This piece had six bands of pick-up patterns.

A weaver of panones of Tacabamba, Peru, puts the finshing touch on hher woven ikat shawl by knotting an intricate pattern into the the fringe. — A weaver of Tacabamba, Peru, puts the finshing touch on her woven ikat shawl by knotting an intricate pattern into the fringe.

Here is a short video of Nila at work knotting the fringe of her woven ikat pañon…

And what about that belt loom with its twenty-four sets of string heddles? Araceli shows us how it is done…

A Matsigenka weaver from tropical lowland Peru creates warp-float patterns in cotton on her backstrap loom.

A woven tubular band in progress...putting the finishing touch on a woven piece from Pitumarca, Peru. — A woven tubular band in progress…putting the finishing touch on a woven piece from Pitumarca, Peru. The tubular band had been set up with three sets of string heddles and a shed loop and, therefore, did not require any pick-up.

And cloth comes off the loom and comes to life when draped around shoulders…

and wrapped around waists and heads…

Diana from Guatemala, pictured above, wore this spectacular fine, ikat-patterned corte, or skirt…

There was time to watch and chat and share….

Time to look and learn from Navajo weavers and spinners and an alpaca fiber weaver from Tanta, Peru…

Time to sit or stand and ponder…

Time to listen to weavers talk about their communities and textile traditions and meet new leaders in the field of textile research…

Bolivian Elvira Espejo shows the two most recent books she has written with British/ Bolivian Denise Arnold on weaving in the Andes. Representatives of the textile community on Taquile Island, Peru spoke about weaving and knitting traditions and the 547 families that are part of their textile co-operative which had begun in 1971 with only 7 families. Taquile Island has become an enormously popular tourist spot over the years. One point which created a bit of fun was their comment that "Taquile fashion" was being worn and loved around the world despite the fact that it was not appreciated in their own country of Peru. "Taquile fashion" then became one of the catch phrases of the conference and made us all smile. — Bolivian Elvira Espejo shows the two most recent books she has written with British/ Bolivian Denise Arnold on weaving in the Andes. Representatives of the textile community on Taquile Island, Peru spoke about weaving and knitting traditions and the 547 families that are part of their textile co-operative which had begun in 1971 with only 7 families. Taquile Island has become an enormously popular tourist spot over the years. One point which created a bit of fun was their response to a question about how they felt when a hat that was created to be worn by a high-ranking official was bought and worn by a tourist completely out of context. They said laughingly that they were proud that “Taquile fashion” was being worn and loved around the world despite the fact that it was not appreciated in their own country of Peru. “Taquile fashion” then became one of the catch phrases of the conference and made us all smile.

And time to just stand in complete awe…time and time again!

A weaving of the Jalq'a people of Potolo, Bolivia. — A weaving of the Jalq’a people of Potolo, Bolivia depicting *Ukhu Pacha*, the underworld, with its *khuru* figures.

Well, I hope that this gives you just a taste of what the week of ETAM was like. Thank you Maria Elena del Solar, Paula Trevisan and Luis Masa for organizing this event. And thank you Mara Elena for pushing me to go when I was dithering over the cost of getting there. It was the best birthday gift to myself ever!

Thank you Centro de Textiles Tradicionales de Cusco for the fabulous exhibit of textiles from your nine member communities that you organized in the Convention Center to coincide with this event and for providing outstanding teachers for the workshops.

As for Elvira Espejo and Denise Arnold’s books about which I know you will be curious, I have to find out if they are available in English and from where…stay tuned.

Of course, you do know that the CTTC is having its second Tinkuy this coming year, don’t you?! 🙂 Are you coming?

Backstrap Weaving – Wish List

My new book has both a cover and title now…YES!

Now it really is starting to feel like a book, albeit an e-book, and not just a pile of pattern charts on the floor, half woven bands on sticks everywhere and thoughts, plans, ideas and enthusiasm dancing in my head.

There are more finishing touches to be applied but I can stand back now and look it over and feel very pleased with the whole thing. But, just when I may be getting a little too pleased with the result of all my work, along comes something like this to humble me and put things into perspective…

A Facebook friend posted about the publication of this book recently, and oh-my-gosh, this is a definite candidate for the Wish List.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I had never heard of the Qaralqalpaqs and had only a vague idea of the location of the Aral Desert before I checked out this book and the associated website.

This promises to be a book filled with stunningly beautiful drawings and gorgeous pictures of these Turkic minority people and their crafts…lots of textiles and information about the weavers, their looms and the clothing and furnishings for their yurts that they make with their cloth. This website announces the launch of the book and shows some sample pages. That page is part of an entire site devoted to the Qaraqalpacs. In a way it is fortunate that the book has only become available now as the temptation to adapt some of the Qaraqalpaq textile motifs to complementary-warp weave and include them in my book would have been too great and who knows when my book would be done!

Other Wish List items include weaver, Chinchero native and CTTC director Nilda Callañaupa’s latest book which is bound to be spectacular. How often do we get to hear from the weavers themselves in these indigenous communities?

and I know that all lovers of warp-faced bands are keen to get their hands on Anne Dixon’s new work…

This book by Ann Pollard Rowe, Lynn A. Meisch, and others is the third which presents the massive amount of research and field studies conducted by the authors on the textiles, costume, identity and history, and weaving and dyeing of highland Ecuador.

I am particularly excited about this third publication as the work that anthropologist Kathleen Klumpp has done documenting the ancient cotton weaving and spinning tradition in Manabí province in coastal Ecuador, to which I contributed, is cited therein. I contributed to the hammock weaving section.

Kathie has just finished putting together a documentary on dvd of the work she has done with the Manabí spinners and weavers which I am hoping to see on my next US visit.

It is wonderful to see what has resulted from her first encounter with this family of spinners and weavers when she was studying pottery techniques in the area. She happened to spot a farmer on one of the local rural buses carrying a woven saddlebag that was decorated with pick-up patterns and curiosity took her to the home of the weaver who had created it. But, as it happens so often to all of us, life got in the way and it was thirty years later, in 2006, that Kathie was able to resume contact and strengthen her friendship with this and other families in the area while striving to ensure that the weaving and spinning techniques and traditions are not lost when the elders in these small settlements pass away.

Dare I put the cover of my new book here among all these wonderful publications……? I don’t think so. In any case, light is so sparse in my little home that I need to wait for just one more sunny day for a final photo session and then….

Until next week…happy weaving and happy reading 🙂

Backstrap Weaving – A Little Weaving Therapy

I guess that two months isn’t really such a long time to be away from home. It’s just that I haven’t done an extended trip like that in a long time. I am reminded of the times when I lived at the southernmost tip of continental Chile and used to go up to Peru and Bolivia for the winters. I would spend months away wandering about, only going home when I had become too skinny and undernourished (I always traveled on a typical backpacker’s budget!). It is always bewildering after you have seen so much, experienced so many different things, met so many cool people and learned so much to go home and find that everything is the same!

How could this be when you feel so different?! However, returning home this time was a little different because things had changed. Stuff happened, people disappeared, things accumulated….one of them being DUST…two months of the wretched stuff!

But now I am back into the old routine. Yes, here I am blogging away on Thursday in socks and sweaters. Fifty-five degrees…that’s COLD for Santa Cruz. The palm trees look rather forlorn against the grey sky.

Time for some weaving therapy!

I made up the bag for the wee Casio camera.

This project accompanied me on the road and was hitched to numerous places along the way. I finished the weaving while I was up in Massachusetts. The pattern is one from Bhutanese textiles. Now, how to sew it up?

The first idea was the one on the left…a bag with a flap which I would cut and shape and edge with a tubular band. However, the motifs were not ideally placed for that and so I ended up with the style on the right.

I squared off the bottom of the bag and added a single large snap closure on the inside. It is edged with a sixteen-end black plain-weave tubular band. I continued weaving the tubular band after covering the edge so that I could also use it as a strap and then added a four-strand braid to that for extra length.

The transition from tubular band to four-strand braid is covered by a tassel…a trick I learned from my sling braiding teacher in Peru.

I think these tubular bands are very cool and so handy. I have been playing with some other plain-weave ones in different materials. The one on my bag is in #10 crochet cotton and here are a couple of others that I made in wool.

The yellow and blue one is woven with a DK weight wool I love the way the simple stripes spiral.

The other one is in a lighter weight wool and you can see that even a lightly twisted yarn works. As the warps are so narrow, the problems of stickiness that usually occur when using wool in warp-faced projects are not a big deal. The warps did not break but my weft did once from pulling it very tightly but that was not a problem.

Another cool thing about tubular bands is that it does not matter what the lower face of the band looks like. That gets hidden within the tube.

I wove a ñawi awapa band (see some ñawi awapa bands pictured on the left) as an experiment as a flat rather than tubular band and saw the chunky chaos of crossed and twisted floats that is created on the back side of the band from all the strange warp crossings and manipulations.

But that does that matter? No! All that gets hidden within the tube.

Now what other technique do I know that has a pretty “right” side and a messy “wrong” side of awkwardly long floats?…the warp subsitution technique, of course!

Actually, any warp-faced band whether it be plain or patterned with any kind of pick-up can be made into a tubular band but, since the warp substitution technique is often overlooked because of the long floats that are created on the reverse of the fabric, why not use it for tubular bands where none of that matters?

So, the other band pictured above has three-color horizontal bars which I was able to create with the warp substitution technique.

All the cumbersome long floats are hidden within the tube.

These bands are fast and fun to weave, quick to warp and can be stretched between a toe and finger to weave.

If that doesn’t suit you, you can attach one end to your waist with a cord through the end loops.

If you don’t fancy using your big toe, as the weaver from Tarabuco pictured at left is doing, a cord can be passed through the end loops at the other end of the warp which can then be wedged inside a drawer or looped over a “C” clamp.

I am going to use these tubular bands as pretty ties for my loom and any other time I need cord for my weaving projects and I hope to experiment a lot more with designs and colors.

So, that was one on-the-road project finished. My other demo warp is something quite different. A big white canvas looking at me and asking to be decorated…

There is something very lovely and somehow “earthy” about creating this plain and simple warp-faced white cloth and I want to make any patterning minimal. I have added a couple of weft-twined sections. Perhaps I will do some more weft-twining or maybe some soumak with a bit of added patterning with supplementary wefts. I left a lot of unwoven warp at the start in case I want to add a large weft-twined pattern later. As usual I don’t have plans for the finished piece. I will just see what happens.

Then there was time to do something with a sample piece that I had completed shortly before leaving.

You may remember the ikat weave-along that we were having on Ravelry.

My friend Betty in the US gave me a huge roll of ikat wrapping tape so there will be many more ikat experiments in my future!

I have been using cassette tape until now and had a small “oopsy” in my last project when my dye solution was too hot for the tape.

I am sure that this special tape has been designed to stand up to being boiled in dye baths. It is very wide but tears easily into perfectly straight narrower strips…what a dream!

Here is the second warp which I tried after the green one above. This was my first time trying over-dyeing with a second color and spot dyeing.

My friend Jeen in the US gave me a lovely travel journal and, even though its cover is very beautiful, I decided that my experimental ikat piece would make a wonderful jacket for this book.

I have to admit I was a little nervous. Was I about to ruin both sample and journal?

I used contact cement which is pretty strong stuff. Would it eat into the material on the journal’s cover and destroy it? Would I mess up and glue it on crookedly?

I have done that before with contact cement when gluing cork sheets to a table top. Once that stuff is ready to go you are pretty much committed and it won’t forgive any mistakes! Fortunately it all came together and I am very happy with the result.

The little vessel in the picture was a gift from a friend in Ecuador. The pen is made from sandalwood and was brought to me from India over forty years ago! Goodness knows how I have managed to hang onto it after all these years of moving around and having to abandon possessions along the way. The mug rug on the far right is part of a set inspired by African designs that I made on my backstrap loom in double weave.

My new-to-me used camera got a dressing up too with a new strap. I was happy to have a chance to weave that bird design again…the one on the old fragment that Tom Knisely showed me…

Here it is off the loom and on the camera…

And here it is on my backstrap loom. I love the way the bird motif changes from black to white along the length of the band.

And now I have a new strap to study which was lent to me by Susan who visited me when I was traveling. She brought it along and I was delighted to be able to see both sides of it. There are so many pictures online of these bands from Oaxaca, Mexico but you never get to see the back side. There are many more examples of these on Teyacapan’s Flickr page of Mexican textiles.

Perhaps this structure is woven somewhere here in South America too but I have never come across it so this is a great opportunity to take a good look. Maybe it was woven here in pre-Columbian times. She urged me to take it home and just send it back to her when I am done. How cool is that?

I have this urge to go back to some simpler things and explore them more…like the white plain-weave piece I am doing, some more very simple ikat motifs which again involves just plain weave and I have been also looking again at simple warp floats.

One of my weaving friends in the US wove this cool backstrap after having woven simple warp floats with me.

We just played a little with floating both colors and she went on and ran with it.

At left you can see various parts of Kristi’s backstrap which is patterned with floats in two colors. She used it the second time we wove together.

When I was at Maryland Sheep and Wool I got to see many people of all ages being introduced to fiber activities.

Elisabeth Hill, who I have known some time online and whose fabulous work on deflected double weave I always follow on her Flickr page (she’ll be teaching it at Convergence), came to Sheep and Wool with her niece Kylie. Kylie got a class in inkle weaving from Sally Orgren on her famous and well-traveled loom when we had a Weavolution meet-up at midday. Look at that smile. It looks like a new weaver has been born.

One of Elisabeth’s deflected double weave pieces won first prize in the exhibit at Sheep and Wool. I don’t think the picture I took does it justice so please take a look at her Flickr page to see all her beautiful creations.

Some lessons, like the one Kylie had, were completely impromptu. I wonder if as Kylie grows and continues to weave (and what wonderful inspiration she has in her aunt Lisa) she will remember her very first lesson there in the Rabbit Barn at Sheep and Wool on Sally’s “Inky”. Other classes were more formal…

There’s my friend Claudia chatting with spinning teacher Maggie Casey before class and Richard Ashford was at The Mannings booth giving spinning tips with Tom Knisely looking on.

And the guys were into it too. Here is a gentleman having a spinning class on the ”Pocket Wheel” which was a big hit.

It was fun to see the team of young guys and gals who entered the Sheep to Shawl Competition this year.

Some things I saw at Sheep and Wool inspired this little project this week…

A simple little pebble weave band, right? But wait until you see the band that inspired this…

Isn’t that spectacular! Now you can see where my little purple and yellow band fits in! This was woven in Ayacucho, Peru and is probably from the same area or at least very close to the place from which my pebble weave teachers originated. Although they taught me in Huancayo, they are natives of Ayacucho and the little animal motifs on this band are very much like the ones they taught me. I would guess that this band was woven with the same two-heddle method that I learned in Huancayo with some additions for the third color.

The quality of the weaving is superb. Sadly it probably won’t be “popular” with some tourists who generally seem to prefer handspun wool and natural dyes. There is so much weaving in Peru that we just don’t get to see and coming across these bands at the Sheep and Wool festival was such a treat for me especially since I have not seen anything like the motifs I was taught back in 1996 in the books I have on Peruvian weaving.

Except for the purple and yellow section, it is a three-color pebble weave. Aren’t those braids and pom poms beautiful?!

Here is a little something I picked up from the same stand. I was tipped off by braider Rodrick Owen that these were available there….a sweet braid with tassels from Ayacucho being sold as a keyfob.

And finally, here is a wonderful display of bands made by Yonat. Yonat feels more comfortable on an inkle loom and so takes what she weaves with me and transfers it to her loom. Not everything here was originally backstrap weaving. Some bands, for example, are from the workshop on Sami weaving by Susan Foulkes and others are Yonat’s original creations.

See you next time. I hope that all of you can take some time off for a little weaving therapy this week.

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 – Staying on Track

I have been trying to resist the urge to warp up for an al’ouerjan project and join in on the fun in the Ravelry group. You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, after having posted the warping tutorial for these traditional Bedouin patterns, Tracy suggested a weekend warp-along. Now we are seeing the increasingly large and impressive results of all that warping practice. Take a look at the bag strap that Tracy made at left.

But…I am staying on track which means that I am sticking to my chamanto-style leaf-patterned wall hanging (although I couldn’t resist throwing in a bit of weft twining). I finished the first pebble weave hanging in this set with weft twining and so I decided that, apart from the common color scheme, the weft twining would be another theme that would tie all my planned wall hangings together.

While I sit and pass the shuttle, strum the warps, beat and coax the sheds open I think about what will be next in this series. I have no problem whatsoever in coming up with ideas…the problem is that I want to weave them all at once!

I stand back and look at this piece and I still can’t get used to it.

It’s not quite like anything I have done before but I have to say that I am having fun with it especially adding in that twined section with the motif within. I had to stop for a bit to chart those smaller leaves on their vine, sample them etc…It took a while to get them right.

I think that all my planned red, black and white pieces will look pretty nice when hung all together. The question is….where? Although I have been doing some major cleaning out, I still haven’t managed to uncover any significant amount of wall space.

Next on the clean up list is my dear old Ashford traditional wheel. Yes, I have a spinning wheel…who knew? It has been sitting there so long unnoticed, dusty and in desperate need of oil…poor thing. It was born in New Zealand and made its way all the way over to the Falkland Islands before finding its way into my home in southern Chile. I left a lot of stuff behind in Chile but the spinning wheel came up to Bolivia where it has sat in the corner for almost 14 years…shameful! I won’t take a picture of it now in its pitiful state. I will clean it up and get it back into shape. I have room to use it now!

I only had it for four months before leaving Chile and just got into using it and being able to turn out something consistent. I did, however, spin enough yarn to construct a vest, knitting the natural colored front and weaving the dyed brown back. The edging has been worked in cross knit looping.

This, too, sits neglected here in this hot steamy climate. It is a souvenir at least of the Patagonian sheep.

But, back to the al’ouerjan and let’s see what else the Ravelers have been up to…

So, there’s the strap that I showed you earlier on the gorgeous bag that Tracy made. She will line the bag to protect the warp floats on the inside. She used an additional weft to secure the floats on the strap. You can see details about how that is done here. One of Tracy’s other warp-along products is the pillow cover which includes some tapestry-style twining in the lower left hand corner and a striking and beautifully executed joining stitch.

Aunt Janet’s piece above left is in her own handspun wool. She has three sets of al’ouerjan patterning and that blue looks amazing.

Traudi so loved Tracy’s piece that she got into the act too using brown instead of black which looks fantastic. She twined along the bottom of the piece too. We are seeing more and more twining in this group…cool. Here is the tutorial for basic weft twining.

Jennifer did some charting and planning for the shajarah patterns before warping a wide piece that also includes an al’ouerjan design.

The charting paper with ovals which is useful for double weave, warp substitution and supplementary weft patterns can be found here. A tutorial for weaving these kinds of warp substitution patterns is here.

So, January has gotten off to a great start in the Ravelry group! Pantoffels has been wrangling with what she calles an ancient inkle loom and still managed to make this pretty needle pouch with plain pebble weave patterning.

And then she got a new inkle loom under the Christmas tree and will now try the pebble weave patterns in my book Andean Pebble Weave.

While I have been weaving my “leaf” piece based on the Chilean ponch known as a chamanto, I have been getting out other pictures of ponchos that I have to study the design layout that weavers use on these large pieces.

I own one poncho which I bought in Calcha, Bolivia many years ago. It is made from very fine handspun wool which has been colored with natural dyestuffs. It is patterned with simple stripes, some very narrow and simple ikat bands as well as several very narrow strips of pebble weave.

It has been woven as two panels with four selvedges each and a woven band has been sewn around the four edges with an added fringe. Don’t you love that decorative stitch that has been used to join the panels?

There is definitely an art to stripes. You can see the clever placement of fine white stripes to break up some of the richer colors.

An extremely fine and simply patterned manta from Chile. It is always interesting to see how the colors and stripes are distributed. As is typical, a broad band has been woven and sewn to the four edges of the piece and there is no fringe.

The typical poncho of Tarabuco and the smaller version known as unku can be seen above.

At a handcraft fair in Tarabuco I saw weavers making the long poncho panels. My friend, Anna, showed me the unku on the right that she had bought in Tarabuco when she came to visit me.

I spotted this gentleman in his much more subdued woolen poncho in a small plaza in Sucre. He was performing an offering to Pacha Mama in the early morning. How wonderfully simple and light the poncho looks although I am sure it is extremely warm and virtually waterproof.

And then you have the incredibly intricately patterned calf-length ponchos woven and worn by the men of Chahuaytire in the Cusco area of Peru.

From Argentina and Chile we have the Mapuche makuñ with its ikat patterning technique executed in such a way that there is virtually no blurring of the design. The popularization of the poncho, from what I have read, is generally attributed to the Mapuche who wove them for their own use as well as for barter. On the right you see the chamanto of the Chilean huaso, with its leaf, fruit and floral motifs, which are said to have both indigenous and Spanish roots.

I have a few pictures from Ecuador too…scans of old prints…

This is the “jijon” poncho which is factory-made in Quito and worn by those men who can afford one in Otavalo. You can see it being worn with its grey plaid face showing by the gentlemen on the left and with its darker face outward on the right. These men were wearing their ponchos to the market on a regular day. Apparently there is a much more costly blue double-faced poncho which is woven on the backstrap loom made-to-order. The ownership of one of these special ponchos indicates wealth and high social status.

On Sunday, which was both market day and church day in Cañar, a very social time around the main square and surrounding streets, I saw quite a few ikat-patterned ponchos being worn.

And finally there’s Juan below, (my pebble weave student!) with his mother and neighbor. Juan put on his narrow, black fringe-less poncho and felt hat especially for this picture. On another visit during a festival all the men were wearing their ponchos for the occasion.

You can see the backstrap looms on which I was teaching Juan and Natalia pebble weave tied to the pole. In exchange Anita introduced me to her cousin on my next visit and he taught me to weave the typical supplementary warp patterned belts of Salasaca.

Okay, so I promised you some double weave edge samples this week, right? I am sorry, I didn’t get those done. I was busy trying to stay on track and not get “dis-track-ted” by all the goings-on in the Ravelry group. I want to finish my leafy hanging. but I must say that I have a bowl of tencel calling to me wanting to be made into a scarf…

That blue ball is indigo-dyed Japanese silk…a fabulously thoughtful gift brought to me from Japan by one of my old teaching colleagues here.

Hopefully I will get the leaf piece off the loom this week, plan and warp the next hanging, play a little with my tencel, get the Ashford Traddy up and running and do those double weave samples for the tutorial too….phew!

Oh, and I have started a new page for RESOURCES. You will see the tab for that on the header and I am slowly extracting all the links to interesting sites, articles and products that I have linked to in my 105 posts so far. This is quite a job but I hope to add two or three links to the page every week. I hope you find it useful.