silk – Page 10 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – A Potpourri of Structures

Phew! I didn’t think I would get this post out today. The internet was out for most of the day… on again but really painfully slow, then off again. I have started lifting weights while I wait for pages to load. How many bicep curls can I do while waiting? I finally gave up and wove.

It has come back to life again this evening but I have my heart in my mouth as I type. Last weekend, along with Monday and Tuesday, were Carnival days and I believe a good many people packed up and left town. That left me with high-speed internet for those four glorious days. Perhaps there is something good to be said about Carnival after all. You may have guessed that I am not a fan of this celebration. Anyway, I knew there would be a price to pay for enjoying all that high speed! Everyone came back and the system collapsed

I had a few things going on this week. I simply cannot weave on my yellow scarf project at night. I can even manage black thread at night with the aid of a head lamp…but not this yellow. Light from a head lamp makes things even worse. It’s like looking into the sun. So, it was good to have a couple of other things to play with in what happens to be my favorite time for weaving. I turn on the air conditioner and enjoy an evening of fresh coolness at my loom.

There was the sewing on my brown wool panels to complete. This was not an easy job even though I had chosen the simplest of the decorative stitches to use. All the things that I had envisioned going wrong when I joined my two cotton panels last month, and which never actually happened, went wrong on this wool piece. The softer, slinkier wool fabric moved around and the edges got misaligned. I can’t tell you how many times I had to pull out the stitches.

I finally got it under control. This was definitely something I wanted to do at night in the cooled air. Having that wool thing on my lap while I sewed during the heat of the summer day was horribly uncomfortable. Now, I would love to weave an edging but this project used up all my brown wool. I simply can’t see it done in any other color and so I will just have to wait.

In the meantime, I have been planning the next wool project. I am going to use more jewel-like colors on the next one and weave patterns using the supplementary-warp structure. This, along with Andean Pebble Weave, were the first structures I learned in Peru back in 1996.

I was not a big fan of the supplementary-weft structure at that time. My teachers in 1996, and another with whom I had studied in 1997, had taught me to weave tiny animal motifs and some of them were a little awkward and had really long warp floats. That had put me off.

It wasn’t until I saw the more geometric Mapuche motifs woven in this structure when I visited a sheep estancia in southern Argentina, that I started appreciating the structure and all its possibilities. Nevertheless, I haven’t used it very much. While weaving with my teacher Maxima in Cochabamaba, I saw some of the supplementary-warp figures woven by ladies in her co-operative and those have given me ideas for this next project. First, I needed to weave a sample in the wool that I plan to use so that I could figure width. That kept me busy in the evening when the yellow warp had to be put aside.

There it is above. Weaving this gave me the chance to see that there was a glitch in my pattern chart. I had woven four repeats before I even realized. I am glad I caught it now and not in the middle of the larger project.

When I got back to Chile after my first weaving classes in Peru in 1996, I was very excited and wanted to weave everything I had learned at once. I wove a narrow band with some of the pebble weave figures I had been taught and then I got very brave and wove a wider piece using both the supplementary-warp and Andean Pebble Weave structures together. Back then, I didn’t for a moment question whether it would possible to successfully combine a complementary-warp and supplementary-warp structure. I didn’t know any better. I had no idea about such things as ”take-up” and there was no one to tell me that I shouldn’t do it or that there might be problems. I just did it. And, I guess I was just lucky that it worked out fine. I am thinking I will do the same on my next wool piece…combine the two structures. This is not uncommon in the highlands.

You can see the green and white supplementary-warp figures on the edges of the piece I wove in Chile back in 1996. I had figured out a way to chart those little figures but I hadn’t come up with anything for the pebble weave. I just followed my scribbled notes with all their references to numbers and color.

Everything was upside down and back-to-front on this warp! The warp was very crooked as my stakes had leaned. I ended up with my warp upside down. The supplementary-warp figures show their ”right” side. I consider the right side the one where the supplementary-warp threads (in this case the white ones), are forming the figures. However, the pebble weave figures are showing their ”wrong” side in the picture above.

Complementary-warp structures do not have a structurally right or wrong side but I had wanted my cloth to have white figures on a red and green background and didn’t have the experience at that time to know how to adjust the way I was doing the pick-up to fix that. I had come back from Peru not having a deep understanding of what this was all about. I was just blindly following my scribbled notes. Having a thorough understanding came much later after lots and lots of weaving and more trips to Peru and Bolivia.

You can see the finished cloth above adorning the cover of one of my photo albums….now showing the ”right” side of the pebble weave but the wrong side of the supplementary-warp sections. Even the narrow strips of pebble weave came out wrong. That is not the pattern I had intended at all! My pebble sheds were out of order and I ended up creating an entirely new motif….a happy mishap. I am so happy that I still have this piece of weaving. It holds a lot of stories.

While digging around for that old photo album, I unearthed the only picture I have of myself weaving in my home in southern Chile. It is totally out of focus, but what a happy memory from 20 years ago! I am working on the piece I just described.

You can see the very large pattern charts I had created for the supplementary-warp figures. My backstrap loom is attached to the bottom beam of my Navajo-style loom. I am sitting on my legs…can’t do that anymore! You can see a pile of Peruvian hats that I had brought back on the chair at left. What really makes me smile is the small pillow on the sofa. It is covered in one of my very first weavings… a tapestry piece in acrylic that I made on a frame I had knocked together a couple of years earlier into which I had hammered nails. I knew nothing about winding a warping and had simply tied a piece of sewing thread to a nail at the top of the loom, cut it and then tied it to a nail at the bottom of the loom. And so on… I so wish I had kept those little things I had woven.

As for the yellow scarf, I have just finished the intensive supplementary-weft patterning at the beginning and am moving on to a nice relatively free run of plain weave. I will repeat the bands of supplementary-weft patterning at the other end. I had started with the idea of covering the piece with cream-colored silk supplementary weft so that only small bits of yellow would be revealed but I found that the supplementary weft thickened the cloth too much for my liking. I didn’t want to lose all the light liquid flow of the silk.

Here is the first band of figures. I adapted the pattern from a cotton rebozo of Mexico.

I changed the pattern for the second band so that the flower motifs show in the yellow negative space.

And then, the plain weave starts. It will be decorated with scattered flowers. And, this time, when I say ”scattered”, I really mean it! I have planned pieces with so-called scattered motifs before only to find myself measuring and looking for symmetry. I can’t seem to help myself! No. This time they really will be scattered. I have woven more since I took this picture and added a couple more flowers. I am enjoying this whole ”scattered” business now. I don’t have to count any of the 700 ends to see how to place the motif and create balance and symmetry. I just pick a thread, any thread, and start weaving the motif…love it!

Hopefully, I will get the wool warp wound this weekend. That will give me something to work on in the evenings next to the 86 inches of yellow scarf warp.I need a longer bed to which I can lash these various projects side by side!

A friend in Chile sent me a link to a free e-booklet on natural dyes in southern Patagonia. It’s in Spanish but still lovely to look at even if you don’t understand the text.

This would have been so nice to have when I was living down there. There was a time when I played around with dyeing during my 5 years there. I used anything I could find in the back yard and dyed some small samples of wool. I kept notes but never dyed enough yarn to make anything. When I came to Bolivia I wrapped the dyed samples around tubes of newspaper and made a lid for one of my tall storage baskets ( which I had also made of tubes of newspaper.) It’s still in pretty good shape despite having had cat claws in it multiple times. The very dark brown, by the way, is just plain old loose-leaf black tea. I needed a dark color to contrast with the others.

You may remember I posted this next picture a couple of weeks ago. These are the sweet coin purses made with fabric created by the Hmong people of Thailand. I noticed that there were a lot of hits on the link to the Fair Trade store that sells these. My friend, Susan, in Australia, sent me a link to a tutorial on how to make them which solves the mystery of how much fabric they require… not all that much after all. The site provides a pattern template. Beware, you may fall down the rabbit hole of Renaissance Ribbons when you visit the site…I did!

There has been some double weaving going on among online friends. Moniek Deroo in Belgium wove red poppies on a band dedicated to the fields of Flanders where she lives…red poppies on the blackness of war, bordered by the green grass of the battle fields…

Moniek is using her inkle loom for this and has added extra string heddles to speed up the pick-up. It can be woven as a simple two-shaft structure and that is actually how I was taught to do it when I learned it in Potosí, Bolivia.That’s also the way I teach it in my tutorial. Moniek is weaving the embedded version of the double weave structure which I teach in this tutorial.

I add extra heddles when I work with particularly fine or numerous threads like on the 60/2 silk piece below…On narrower pieces, or those with heavier thread, I enjoy not having to deal with the clutter of all those extra heddles and am pretty fast doing the pick-up without them.

Betsy has just started following my online tutorial and is working her way through the exercises. Betsy has woven Andean Pebble Weave with me and says she finds double weave easier. I find patterns easier to read on double weave pieces as there are no warp floats and it is quite easy to read the pattern repeats on the cloth just by looking at the motifs you have already woven rather than at a chart. I find it faster to reach that ability when doing double weave than when weaving structures that involve warp floats.

I have a few more things to show you from my talented online weaving friends but I will end on this last one as my internet is showing signs of giving up again.

Liza has also been dabbling in double weave and is already designing her own patterns. I love this leaf pattern of hers…

And, she made this wonderful rug using a backstrap loom and old jeans…how cool is that…

I asked her for a shot of her work in progress because I wanted to see her loom set up. She sent me a beauty…

I’ll quickly publish this before my internet breaks down to a crawl or to zero again.

If you are a bit bamboozled by the potpourri of structures I have presented in this week’s post… supplementary this and that, double weave, complementary-warp, warp floats, blah blah, I do hope to update the Structures and Terminology page on this blog soon to explain them in a bit more detail for you.

Until next week…

Backstrap Weaving – Making Do

I just love this picture and this weaver’s work space. Place all you tools on the warp, roll everything up and leave it hanging from the post to which it is anchored…the simplicity! Gone are the days when I used to have to roll up everything and put it in the closet every night. A folding bed had to take the place of my work space at night. Apart from that, my cat would have gotten into everything if it had been left out.. The bed is no longer needed and the cat has moved away so, now I have a permanent piece of floor as my work space. Things tend to get out of control when you don’t need to put things away anymore, especially when I have several projects going at once. The photo of the neatly stowed backstrap loom is being offered as a screen saver calendar by this Mexican site.

Here’s another pleasant work space. This one is more cat-friendly…

This is the work space of one of my Bolivian teachers. She has one room dedicated to her weaving which holds three of her enormously long leaning vertical frames. Look at that lovely clear floor all around. She is weaving a long piece from which she will cut and sew three bags for a museum store. She has all the tools she needs on hand….a nice piece of sheep skin on which to sit, a sword which is leaning against the loom, a metal pick which is within the weaving, a piece of plastic coated wire which holds one half of her picking cross, her beater (the llama bone wichuña) and a tape measure. Cat and hat are optional.

The problem with my work space is that I have so many options…so many books from which to gather inspiration, so many sticks and needles and bits and pieces which somehow seem so essential. And then I need to chart patterns and make notes about things that my weaving teachers carry in their heads and hands. I have an ”out of sight, out of mind” mentality and need to to have every idea on which I am currently working under my nose. I am sure that with fewer things I would just make do with what I have.

Here’s the view from my bed when I wake up in the morning. I need to walk on top of all of that to get out the door.

You can see the two projects on which I am currently working. I have been fiddling about sewing the two wool panels together. First, I tried the triangle joining stitch, the arku siray, but found it too large and bulky and now I am working with the k’iska join which is much more discreet and one which I think better suits the busy pick-up patterns.

I have been taking my time over this. Sitting for long periods sewing with wool cloth on your lap in the summer heat is not comfortable. I think this weight will be really nice for a light poncho.

Maxima in Cochabamba adds extra twist to her handspun yarn before winding a warp for a pebble weave band.

Working on this wool piece has been really interesting. I used wool straight off the skein . I didn’t re-spin it to increase the amount of twist.

My weaving teachers here use tight over-twisted yarn that they spin themselves. They always re-spin the acrylic thread that they buy in the market. This makes the yarn stronger so that it can withstand the abrasion that comes from warp faced weaving. It also helps to smooth the yarn and sort of lock away a lot of the hairs, the things that make neighboring warp threads want to grab and stick to each other.

What I have realized from working on my wool project is that the over-twist also takes out pretty much all the spring and stretch from the yarn. The yarn I used was stretchy and that makes it really difficult to get a nice firm beat. My weaving teachers greatly admire cloth that is firm. With the hard beat and the tightly twisted thread, the resulting cloth is virtually waterproof and incredibly durable. I could beat away forever on my piece with its stretchy yarn and never get the firmness that my weaving teachers desire. And that’s okay because I really wanted something light and soft and flowing. The fabric softened up beautifully after I washed it. But, I know that if I ever took this piece to the highlands to show my teachers, they would either shake their heads sadly at it or tease me for being too weak to beat hard. It just wouldn’t be good cloth in their world of weaving.

You may remember that one of my weaving goals these days is to go wider, finer and longer. I only got a two-out-of-three with the wool project. It wasn’t longer than my usual projects. I haven’t managed yet to get all three going in one project.

The yellow warp you see in my work space gives me another two-out-of-three. It’s 86” long, which is much longer than my typical pieces and, being made of 60/2 silk, sits in the ”fine” category. It’s only wide enough to make a scarf.

Winding the warp was a challenge. I didn’t like my set-up…too many twists and turns for my liking…you know how fussy I am about the whole warping process. The way I chose to warp had my cross sticks placed at the far end of the warp. Just the action of dragging the cross sticks down to the front of the loom (and I did it as gently as I could) fluffed up my nice silk warp…darn. I picked off all the fluff. Next time I wind a long warp, I will definitely figure out a better way to do it.

I could have wound a circular warp, but I chose not to. It’s a single-plane warp and I have rolled up a lot of it around the far loom bar using sheets of paper to keep everything spread and even. That way it can fit into my small weaving space.

A circular warp would allow me to weave the 86” warp without having to roll it up. You can see the difference between a circular warp and a single plane warp in this next picture of two bands. Single plane warps have two ends…you start weaving at one end and finish at the other. On a circular warp you weave around a full circle until you return to the start point and then cut the warp apart.

I am starting a floral pattern on my yellow scarf warp using silk supplementary weft. The motifs are in cream colored silk. I like to think of this as ”mangoes and cream”. After this band of pattern I will weave 6”-8”” of supplementary-weft pattern where the cream weft fills the background revealing the motif in the yellow ground cloth. That’s what I will do at each end of the warp and everything in between will be basically plain with perhaps a few flowers scattered here and there.

It is so interesting seeing the different ways that weavers set up their looms and wind their warps. I have had a chance to look at new set-ups on backstrap and other simple looms this week by making contact with some weaving friends around the world. It has given me a chance to revisit the topic of the Shed Rod that I wrote about in a previous post.

You may remember that in that post I had noted that of the two basics sheds on backstrap looms- the back shed and the heddle shed- the back shed is often the one that is more difficult one to open. This, of course, depends a lot on the kind of yarn being used. Weavers come up with different ways to deal with that. They can use a shed rod of very large girth, they can strum the warp threads with their hands or with a tool or, as backstrap weavers in Ecuador do, they can distribute the threads over two shed rods and raise only half of them at a time. You can see the two shed rods in place at left. The weavers I saw doing this were using quite heavy wool warp.

Just after I published my post on the technique employed by backstrap weavers in some parts of Ecuador, my friend Kathleen Klumpp posted a video to Youtube that she took last year in Miguel Andrango’s workshop in Ecuador in which you can see the weaver using the two shed rods. I have been waiting for the right opportunity to show it here. Thank you. Kathie.

The weaver has quite an unusual way of doing the pick-up. It is not a method that I have seen used elsewhere and I am wondering if Mr Andrango was taught this way when he visited Cusco or if this is something of his own that he has passed on to the weavers who work with him in his workshop.

He first picks out all the light threads from the light colored shed and saves them. Then he picks the dark ones from the dark shed and combines both the light and dark threads into one shed.

On the other hand, the weavers in Peru with whom I have worked form a picking cross of all the dark and light threads and then select the colors, both light and dark, all at once.

Above, you can see the classic loraypu pattern, which is woven in Chinchero, Peru, on Miguel Andrango’s loom.

Adem, in Turkey has taken up backstrap weaving and has been sending me links to wonderful pictures and videos on Turkish textiles. He learned kilim weaving techniques from his grandmother when he was school aged and, while researching weaving online, came across my blog. Now, he and his wife are both happily backstrap weaving at home. I love how he has made do with all kinds of things that he has at home to set up to warp and weave….

Starting simply…

And then, adding some more tools, like a cardboard roll, that works brilliantly as a shed rod….

Finding more stability in his set-up…

Length is obviously not a problem…

Now Adem and his wife have my book and I am looking forward to seeing what they create with Andean Pebble Weave.

Weaving tools around the world, all serving the same basic purposes, can be so very different in shape and size. Not everyone can wander down to the Sunday market stall, like this one that I visited in Guatemala, and pick up just the right kind of stick or sword.

I love seeing how people make do with what they have.

As for the video links that Adem sent me, I have embedded one below which shows a wonderfully simple loom being used by a 75-year old woman in Turkey. Some of the pieces of equipment are not like anything you would find in a Guatemalan market. A simple stick tripod permanently raises the heddle shed. Her shed rod is a sword-like stick rather than a cylinder which she tips on its side to raise the back shed.

I love the sounds of the weaving in this film as much as I like the visuals. After the first minute, much of the video is devoted to interviewing the weaver. Adem tells me that she is talking about how she prefers living in her village rather than in the cities where her children have gone to live. She and other weavers used to create wide pieces but that is not done anymore.

The band she is weaving in the video is used as the strap for baskets like those in the picture below found here…

(Oops, well it looks like that video has been removed from Youtube. Here’s another one instead which also shows the warping. One lady winds the warps while another sits by and makes the heddles. You can see how the tripod is set up and there is great footage of the the weaver operating the loom as well as braiding the ends.

A flat shed rod just on its own, in my experience, makes raising the heddles difficult on a backstrap loom. However, this is not a problem in this loom as the heddled threads are already raised. The heddle stick is being held up by the tripod.

Another interesting shed rod can be seen in this next video from the Ukraine. The warp threads are coiled around the shed rod. This is a screen shot from the video which is embedded below…

The weaver shows how it is placed in the video. I think I learned the Ukranian words for ”over” and ”under” from watching this process as she coils one thread over the shed rod and then the next one under, again and again. This makes the shed rod very stable. Despite being much longer than the width of the band, the shed rods sits nicely in place and does not flop or roll around. She shows very nicely how she uses her sword behind the heddles to open the heddle shed. With a flat shed rod, that method simply wouldn’t work.

All the videos I have posted here are very light and I had no problem watching them with my erratic internet connection here in Bolivia. I hope you can watch and enjoy them too.

Backstrap Weaving – Two out of Three Ain’t Bad

Here’s enough inspiration for this year. In fact, it might be enough for the rest of my life! I fell in love with this picture that recently showed up on Facebook…

From Afrostyle magazine and designer Tarun Tahilian — From AfroStyle Magazine and designer Tarun Tahilian.

This was shared from the page of AfroStyle Magazine.

Just when I am into weaving and wearing wrist cuffs, along comes this image of forearms covered with them. And, I have always thought that a turban would be the perfect solution to that awkward transition period from dark brown to grey hair. Not just your conventional turban, but multiple layered silks!

And imagine multiple silk ribbon necklaces around the model’s neck. Gorgeous!

Do a Google Image search for designer Tarun Tahilian and be prepared to melt. I can’t believe my clothes-challenged self is so taken with this.

I chose just one of this designer’s pieces to show as I have been working on a 60/2 silk piece that is in a similar teal-y tone.

Here it is on the loom and in a place in my bedroom that doesn’t really favor photography. It looks away too blue.I simply could not get the camera to capture the green tones of the thread…

Once the weaving had advanced so far that it was uncomfortable to reach forward and operate the sheds, I needed to roll up the fabric around the front beam. That was when I really had to do something about the lack of long enough sticks for this project. I was already lacking a suitable back beam and now, a roll-up stick. I looked up on the terrace where people who move out of their apartments frequently dump unwanted brooms and mops. I have cut down many of them for loom pieces. The search didn’t turn up anything and so I headed to the market. It’s all of a block and a half from my place to one of the biggest and most chaotic street markets in this city with its interesting sights, sounds and aromas.

I am showing this picture of the broom stall that I visited on New Year’s Eve with a table of underwear in the background so I can tell you about a New Year tradition.

It is traditional to sell red and yellow underwear at this time of year as wearing red underwear to bring in the new year will attract love to your life. Wearing yellow will bring you money. The markets are full of this in the days leading up to January 1st.

There’s wood under the spotted plastic coating on the broom stick. Unfortunately, the melted plastic seam was very rough and would have shredded my silk and so I had to spend quite a lot of time picking it off and then sanding the gnarly wood underneath. Of course, a couple of days later when I was out and about, I ran into a stall selling bare wooden broom sticks that were wonderfully smooth. I bought two of these perfect ones…two out of three ain’t bad. They cost 80 cents each!

Someone on Ravelry posed a question to the weaving group about changes in our loom inventories at the end of 2015. With my new extra long sticks, I guess you could say that I added a new loom to mine. A front beam, back beam and roll-up stick for under $4.

My collection of sticks and swords and shuttles has out-grown my bedroom and now lives in the living room. It may not be obvious, but there is some kind of order there.

And so, I was able to spread out the threads at the far end along the nice new long beam and roll up the cloth as I progressed. Once off the loom, I was able to pose the fabric in places with better lighting and I think this picture shows more accurately the true colors…

I am really pleased with it!

I am pleased and relieved that my small sample of 200 ends gave me reliable information for the 2000 ends that I eventually used. I was able to set the width and maintain it rather effortlessly for the entire project. I spent an entire morning trying to ensure that the threads were all evenly spaced before throwing the first shot of weft.

It is supposed to be a bandanna/neckerchief sort of thing but you may see me wrapping it about my head turban-style one of these days, if it is big enough.

You can see the cloth being worn and looking very blue again. The larger picture, above, shows it fresh off the loom before wet finishing.

I don’t think any picture will show you the exciting change after washing and pressing. You would have to feel it, but here’s a picture of it after washing anyway…

Now I need to hem it.

One of my weaving goals for perhaps the last couple of years has been to go longer, wider and finer. I achieved two out of three with this project and it has been a great way to start the new year.

Maybe I will get a three out of three with the next project. Length has never been an issue. I have woven long warps stretched all the way across my room. I have rolled up unwoven warp onto the back beam when there hasn’t been room to stretch out the warp and I have also wound circular warps that have allowed me to halve the amount of space required in which to work.

I hope to go a bit longer than my standard lengths in the next project but the biggest challenge will be the sticky fine wool. I want to weave two panels that I will later join into one. I have no product in mind for this piece. The project will be about learning how this wool handles in warp-faced weaving on a backstrap loom. If it works well, I will have something nice to put on a table and perhaps all the information I need to go on and make a poncho.

I spent some time watching dvds and listening to music while I rolled the yarn into balls. I had bought lots of it! Then I was ready to wind a sample warp. Hopefully this will give me an idea of the width I will achieve with a certain number of ends in both plain weave and Andean Pebble Weave.

I chose a pattern with which I am very familiar as I really wanted to focus my efforts on handling the wool and not on the pick-up. I do have concerns about this yarn breaking over the course of a long piece. It wasn’t taking too well to being constantly rubbed against itself. But, what the heck…I think I will just dive in and try the larger project that I have in mind. You might have to remind me of this ”what the heck” attitude in the next few weeks when I start whining about all the broken warp threads that I have had to fix!

Below, you can see the two faces of the band. The width wandered about a bit before settling. Now to figure out colors.

Let me now show you what some online friends have been weaving and sewing…

Marieke Kranenburg set herself a sewing goal for the holidays and put together various inkle bands and fabric to create this fabulous pillow.

Julia T made a backstrap using the intermesh structure and her own pattern. She is pretty pleased to have this lovely cushy s trap now and to be able to leave aside the improvised pillow case backstrap she has been using. I teach the intermesh structure in my second book.

Lori has started making her own backstrap too using the Andean Pebble Weave structure. I wonder if Lily has been weaving at her side.

Annamieke's inkle loom with Andean Pebble Weave. — Annamieke’s inkle loom with an Andean Pebble Weave in progress.

And, Annamieke Ruijper has been using her inkle loom as a frame for tensioning her Andean Pebble Weave warp. She has woven a series of four-revolution patterns from my book and also included a couple of her own designs. I love that she already has the confidence to do that.

I do not give specific instructions in my book for setting up Andean Pebble Weave on an inkle loom using the loom’s own heddle system. My book shows how to wind a warp and dress it and then you are free to tension it any way you wish…using the frames of inkle, rigid heddle or tapestry looms, for example, or your own body at one end – backstrap-style.

There are many possible ways to set this up on an inkle loom and this is just one suggestion. I have done it at least three ways, sometimes using the inkle loom’s heddle system, and sometimes not.

Sophie Regny wove this Andean Pebble Weave piece using a pattern in my second book. When I was putting that book together, I started seeing potential Andean pebble Weave patterns everywhere. I created this design from the pattern on the inside cover of a journal that I had been given. It’s lovely to see someone using the pattern and Sophie’s work is crisp and neat.

Marianne Planting tensions her Andean Pebble Weave bands using a backstrap set-up and a band locking device. Below, you can see her work in progress where she is using one of the patterns I adapted from the tablet weaving of Louise Ström in my second book.

Here’s a gorgeous colorful band with a classic pattern of Chichero also made by Marianne…

Facebook reminded me today that five years ago I was working on the strap for my backstrap loom bag. I had decided to create the word ”weave” in various languages and fonts. I used a weft twining technique to do so. The strap didn’t need to be that long and so I only managed to fit five or six words on it of the many that Facebook and blog friends had given me. Today, when I shared the Facebook Memory, I received some more. I think I need to come up with another project in which I can use all the words I have been given from weaving friends around the world.

Here are the ones I was given five years ago. Maybe you have a word to add for me. And, with that, I will leave you until next week…

Backstrap Weaving – Silk, Stitches, Samples and Shed Rods.

I thought I would write a post between Christmas and New Year this week so that while everyone is relaxing between all the festivities, they might have time to go online and read.

Here are some sweet handcrafted fiber decorations and ornaments that I have been seeing online…

These were made by Arlene Davis from a pattern by Heidi Bears. You can see more about this project on Arlene’s page Woollen Wonders. I was about to launch into a project using teal and was happy to have this confirmation that I was heading in the right direction by planning on combining purple with it. This really makes me want to pick up a crochet hook.

Jennifer Williams, aka Inkled Pink, came up with a way to fashion inkle bands into gorgeous Christmas decorations…

And, she shared it by writing a tutorial for these on her blog.

As a testament to how well the tutorial has been written, Annamieke Ruijper, in the Netherlands, quickly followed the directions and made her own. What a great way to use those pretty patterned bands that we tend to accumulate.

I don’t do Christmas. I was here at home on the 24th and 25th happily winding a new silk warp, stitching panels together and sampling for a new project. The weather has been kind these last days with lower temperatures than normal. It is awful working with silk when you have sweaty hands and fingers. Mango season is in full swing and the large rosy ones from the Yungas have arrived costing all of 12 cents a piece. Meanwhile the local smaller yellow ones are raked together in their hundreds to rot in huge, smelly, fly-infested heaps on the street. While people enjoy the shade that the mango trees provide, most people consider the abundance of fruit a curse.

I got out the tubes of 60/2 silk that Deanna had given me when I recently visited her. Beautiful tubes of teal and yellow…loads of it!..reminding me of the colors of mangoes and refreshing tropical seas.

You can see them there in the photo at left among other goodies I brought home. My pictures can’t quite capture the amount of green that is in that teal.

I was pretty excited about the silk. Although I have lots of colors in 60/2 silk that I had bought in the UK several years ago as well as some from Redfish Dyeworks, they were very small skeins and tubes…enough for use as supplementary-weft or for my small wrist cuff projects. I didn’t have enough to take on any kind of large project.

Speaking of silk wrist cuffs, I spent some time sewing plastic snaps to the ribbon necklace and cuff that I made to match the yurt pouch I showed last week. They are made from 60/2 silk in both warp and weft and these are the largest things I have made with this silk so far…

I was really keen to make something much larger with all the new silk I had to play with. But first….some sampling.

I had learned from past experience that not all my 60/2 silk was the same. The purple that I bought in the UK is finer than the turquoise, for example, which meant that letters that I had sampled in turquoise a long time ago had their proportions altered when I tried to weave them in purple. I gave up and just wove the ”real” piece in turquoise. I was not in the mood to re-chart my letters for the purple silk.

This is the silk bookmark I wove with the letters for my nephew, Ryan, the triathlete. The inspirational quote was his favorite at that time.

In another project, I found that the Redfish Dyeworks 60/2 silk did not behave the same way as the UK stuff when washed. I had used some of each as supplementary weft in a project and they shrank differently when wet. That was disappointing! As a result, I ended up with scalloped edges on the brown project below.

So, I wasn’t taking any chances with these tubes of yellow and teal 60/2 silk. I wanted to know exactly what I was getting…no surprises, thank you very much.

I sampled with the yellow for width and a bit of weft inlay. And, it’s a good thing I did as I had very much underestimated the width I would get from 200 ends.

And then I decided that I couldn’t even trust the information for the yellow to be the same for the teal and I sampled again in teal. Fortunately, samples for backstrap weaving do not need to consume huge amounts of yarn. The samples are a bit lumpy and bumpy because I didn’t use a coil rod.

I messed about with some supplementary-weft motifs to see how many warps the wefts could span before becoming awkwardly long and impractical. I tried silk and embroidery floss as the supplementary weft and decided I liked the silk better.

You probably know by now that I am not product-driven. Its all about the process for me and so the very last thing I decided was exactly what I wanted to make. I really just wanted to weave something large with the fine silk in plain weave and see if I could manage it on my backstrap loom. I decided on a sort of bandanna, or neckerchief. I remember some time ago planning one of those in the Guatemalan cotton that I had. It had never materialized.

I planned for about 18 inches of width based on a cotton bandanna that I have, wound the 2000 ends that were required, and then realized that none of my loom bars were long enough to comfortably hold this width.

Fortunately, I have an old Guatemalan loom that Lorraine in California gave me years ago. It had been given to her by her weaving teachers in Guatemala in the 1970s and she passed it on to me.

That loom is old and well used and full of character. The loom bars were just long enough but I still felt uncomfortable with the warp ends sitting so very near the end of the rods. The wonderful shed rod that came with the loom was longer and did the trick for the near beam. The shed rod is a thick piece of wood that is amazingly light for its size…just what you want in a shed rod. I wonder what kind of wood it is.

You can see above, the shed rod that I am using as the front beam and one of the other beams that I will use as the roll-up stick. And there’s my favorite Guatemalan pick-up stick. Below you can see the complete set of sticks and a spindle that Lorraine gave me. Those swords get a lot of use. This is the first time I will be using the shed rod.

I so wish my camera would capture the green in the teal silk…Anyway, here is the warp stretched ready for heddles. I haven’t found a long stick for the back beam yet and have the threads crammed onto one of my regular loom bars for now.

Now to make 1000 string heddles. I love making heddles and used some size 60 tatting thread for them (thank you, Sharon).

Taking a break to go look for more tatting thread….

And here it is underway…

Before I could start weaving, there was the coil rod to install and the cross to flip. As usual, I spent an entire morning sliding threads around trying to get them evenly spaced before I could throw the first shot of silk weft.

I LOVE wide warps! I am having so much fun with this…using the big swords, strumming the silk threads with the blunt end of my pick-up stick, snapping the back shed through the heddles, having my legs completely disappear beneath the width…so much fun!

I am using a discontinuous supplementary-weft technique which has the weft-turns shadowing the outline of the pattern. You can barely see the turns because of the fineness of the silk. I did not want to carry the gold supplementary weft from one edge of the fabric to the other or even as far as the gold stripe as I didn’t want the fabric to be ”thickened” by the extra weft sandwiched between the layers of threads.

You can see that I chose, as I generally do, to use a fairly slim shed rod and that I have it secured to a second stick. There are so many different ways that I have seen to set up and operate what I will call the ”back shed”. This happens to be my current preferred way. Anyone who has spent some time backstrap weaving will soon realize that it is the back shed that is the trickiest to operate. Clearing the threads through the heddles and to the front of the loom can be difficult if the yarn you are using is sticky. Forget the common description ”smooth as silk”…this spun silk is surprisingly sticky. There is a lot of strumming involved while sitting back and and applying as much tension to the warp as I can. I insert my sword next to the shed rod and then tip it on its side next to the heddles while strumming in front of the heddles with my pointed stick. My llama bone tool would be a little too rough on the silk.

Many weavers prefer to use a shed rod with a very large girth. This can add a lot of weight to the warp and I have seen weavers here in Bolivia and Peru use pvc pipe to give them the girth without excessive weight…

They simply draw the shed rod down to the heddles and strum in front of the heddles to clear the shed while applying tension to the warp. If the yarn is not sticky, those threads will snap right through the heddles effortlessly. The drawback for me is that a very thick shed rod requires the weaver to use more effort to raise the heddles. There are many different ways to operate these simple looms!

Weavers in Ecuador with a load of heavy-ish sticky hand spun wool on their looms use two shed rods, as you can see above. The number of warp ends are halved and distributed over the two rods and the rods are rolled so that one set of threads is first raised and then the other.

What I will need to eventually find is another long rod for my back beam. Right now, the coil rod is keeping everything nicely spread at the far end. I can usually count on going up onto the terrace of my building and finding an abandoned broom or mop to cut down. The place at which I used to buy my dowel rods stopped carrying them over a year ago. Well, I can always just buy a broom, right?

As I started a brand new project, I decided that it was also time to finish off an old one. You may remember that just before I left on my last trip, I had woven two brown panels which I had been hoping to join using one of the kinds of decorative stitches that weavers here in Bolivia use. I had been disappointed to find that the nice straight edges that I had been hoping to butt together and connect had come out scalloped after the wet-finishing process.

You can see the two panels, at left, before they got washed.

Well, I just went ahead and tried to connect them anyway…and, it worked!…far better than I ever could have hoped. I had anticipated everything that could possibly go wrong and none of those things eventuated.

I was inspired, as I have been so many times before, by my teacher, Maxima. You can see her below joining the two panels of one of her new carrying cloths with a different stitch to the one I used. Hers look like staggered triangles.

Picture courtesy of Dorinda Dutcher and PAZA Bolivia.

And speaking of Maxima and the weavers and spinners of Cochabamba, a new product has been developed by the co-operative. Maxima has been teaching the teenagers to weave and put together yoga mat straps. Aren’t they great?

Here are some projects from my weaving friends…

Moniek Deroo has been using my Andean Pebble Weave books and weaves her bands on an inkle loom. She is even designing her own original motifs.

Julia has added another wall hanging to a beautiful series that she has been creating. This one has a pattern from my second book. It is a motif that I translated to the Andean Pebble Weave structure from a tablet woven design by Louise Ström. In the chart in the book, I left a large blank space between the repeats and challenged readers to design their own ”filler”. Julia did just that and created something that so perfectly matches the rest of the pattern. She is using Knit Picks Curio cotton which has beautiful sheen. It is a 2-ply cotton and I imagine it to be similar to the Circulo Clea that I use. I do prefer 2-ply to the more ”round” 3-ply crochet cotton thread.

Bethan sent me a picture of the first of two panels that she will sew into a poncho. She is using her own hand spun wool. She mentioned some struggles with the back shed and that is to be expected, especially when using wool. I have seen Bolivian and Peruvian weavers strum away patiently for quite some time trying to coax those sticky wool threads to break their grip on each other and behave.

Finally, I will show you one of Lily’s Christmas presents from her mom, Lori. You may remember Lily weaving pick-up patterns in my ”Wee Fingers” post not so long ago. Lori wove a small backstrap for her. It’s adorable!

Back to my silk bandanna project and the hunt for a long back beam for my loom….

Backstrap Weaving – The Yurt and other Tales

It is strange as I go back and edit the pictures from my recent trip to look at crackling fire places, fall colors and warm and cozy living spaces while I sit here sweating in the ever green tropics. It is hard to imagine that I was going around in a down vest just over a week ago and that Melinda had given me one of her own handknit hats to keep me warm while visiting friends in the east for Thanksgiving. And, a yurt in California, with sheep skins, plush pillows, a down comforter, soft lighting and heating was my exotic bedroom for two nights.

My first time in a yurt was back in 2010. I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and the temperature was unexpectedly high….well into the 90s. After a hectic morning visiting the vendors and waiting in line for cold drinks, I wilted and took refuge in a yurt that had been erected.

In more ways than one, it really was the coolest place to be. I attached my backstrap loom to the wooden lattice walls and sat on top of the sheep skins to weave. A refreshing stream of air was drawn within from the opening in the roof. I wished I could have stretched out and napped but people kept entering thinking that I was the ”keeper of the yurt” and asking me questions about it. I imagined spending a night under that roof opening and gazing at the stars above the plains of Mongolia..

I visited a weaving friend, Sara Lamb, on one of my trips and marveled at her exotic yurt fiber studio nestled in the woods….

And this was my yurt bedroom at Susie and Rex’s place for a couple of nights on my latest trip. What fun!

In his living room, Rex had erected a pole for his backstrap weaving so he could sit among the collection of exotic rugs and textiles and create some of his own. The pole is seated in a plank which is weighed down by piles of books and furniture and allows him to experiment with having his warp extended at different angles.

Perhaps one day he will create a band to encircle the mini yurt he built in the backyard in which I got to spend those luxurious nights.

Yurt band woven structures became a part of my weaving experiments back in 2009 when my friend Lisa showed me a band that she had purchased.

Even earlier than that, in 2007, I had made my first visit to the Textile Museum in D.C where I was inspired by its exhibit of tent bands of Central Asia.

Using ideas drawn from that exhibit and Lisa’s 48-foot band, I went on to weave quite a few small pieces using the terme structure starting with this one, below, that I gave to Lisa for her cell phone…

I spent some time weaving with both Susie and Rex. Rex showed me a small experimental bench he had built to make sitting at a backstrap loom more comfortable. I tried it out and I have to say that it was quite amazing.

Here’s Gwen showing us how it works….

It was really comfortable sitting in this position…a position which I simply would not be able to tolerate for long without the support of this little bench. This position, sitting on the back of the calves, is how my Guatemalan weaving teachers sit with their backstrap warps angled rather steeply upward. Put a little cushioning on the seat of the bench and it would be perfect! What a clever simple device. Rex wanted to give it to me to take back to Bolivia. If only I had had room!

All this yurt talk takes me now to what I have been weaving this week.

In the last blog post, I showed you the silk warp that Sara had given me. There it is above…the gorgeous reds, orange, fuchsia, copper and purple. It is reeled silk that she dyed and warped and passed on to me to enjoy. I am hoping that along the way, some of Sara’s color sense rubs off on me.

Here it is on the loom with a pattern in the Andean Pebble Weave structure that I chose… a serious of ‘S-hook’ shapes woven this way and that…

And now, off the loom and washed and pressed undergoing that wonderful transformation that I have told you about before. It’s quite likely that you won’t be able to see the difference but, believe me, you can feel it….

Now….what to make with this lovely piece of cloth? I really didn’t feel like folding it over to make a square pouch with a flap…been there, done that. Even though I love cutting and shaping bag flaps and edging them with tubular bands, I wanted to do something different this time. So, I came up with this, a tribute to my recent yurt encounters…

I made a little yurt-ish shaped pouch. We can even imagine, if we like, that the strip of pebble weave is the band encircling the yurt. I had enough fabric to be able to cut a circle which forms the base of the bag and then sew the remaining cloth to it…a rather big challenge to my hand-sewing skills. It isn’t finished. I hope to add some exotic tassels somehow with the copper-color silk that Sara gave me and possibly edge the seam where the body connects to the base with a tubular band. And, of course, a strap is needed too.

Here’s another view… taken without flash so the colors are little duller…

So, now I have plans….I have my 60/2 silk and I want to weave a ribbon to edge the neckline of a black tunic top that I recently bought. I have all the colors of the warp that Sara gave me, except the fuchsia. I want to edge the neckline of the tunic with a band of those colors and use the little yurty pouch when I wear it. Urgh…I can hardly believe what I am saying…fashion plans! There will be much sampling and I just hope that I don’t destroy the tunic top in the process. My main concern is whether I have the ability to neatly sew on the ribbon.

So, there are the tubes of 60/2 silk that I plan to use with a line-up of possible replacements for the fuchsia that I am lacking.

And, that’s the backstrap I wove with the Good Earth cotton/linen yarn. It is not as plush as the Plymouth cotton backstraps that I have made before but I really like the way this yarn feels. It is certainly a good sturdy backstrap.

The fuchsia yarn labeled Luxor that you can see was a gift from my friend Wendy in Australia. You may remember Wendy Garrity from previous blog posts about the time we spent together here in Santa Cruz and later in Santa Fe and the weaving she learned to do in Bhutan. She sent me a care package that showed up two days ago with all sorts of Aussie biscuits and sweets as well as this yarn. I wasn’t expecting it at all! She had been using the yarn in the Key Fob Weave-along that we ran earlier this year and I was interested in trying it and writing about it for backstrap weavers in Australia. The Luxor 100% cotton, is made by Fibra Natura, the same brand as the blue cotton/linen.

So, there’s plenty to keep me busy and I have the linen warp that I wound from Lori’s stash to try as well. Speaking of Lori and the weaving friends with whom I spent time while away, let me show you some of the textiles that I encountered on this trip…

Two bags that form part of Lori's collection of Huichol textiles. They have been woven using a balanced double weave structure and have interesting edgings. I took lots of pictures of those edgings to study. — These are two bags that form part of Lori’s collection of Huichol textiles. They have been woven using a balanced double-weave structure and have interesting edgings. I took lots of pictures of those edgings to study more closely now that I am at home. It is so exciting to discover decorative edgings on these pieces from Mexico.

If anyone knows the origin of this scarf, Christine and I would love to know. Christine found this in a Goodwill store and I love it. I was trying to figure out how the patterns at the ends of the scarf were created. The little figures are identical on both faces. It seems that some of the warp ends themselves were used to wrap others and create the patterns. — If anyone knows the origin of this scarf, Christine and I would love to know. Christine found this in a Goodwill store and I love it. The main pattern is beautifully fine and simple and the whole thing is set-off by the fascinating more complex patterns at the ends. The little figures at the ends are identical on both faces. It seems that some of the warp ends themselves were used to wrap others and create the motifs. I would like to figure out the technique and this is something else that will have me peering at my photos.

Nicole made me so happy when she showed me the tapestry puece she had woven as a cover for her ipad. Dhe edged it with aplain weave tubular band that she had learned using the tutorial on my blog. It is funny thath other weaving friends, Sara and Diane, had just been suggesting the possibility of using use the tubular bands as not only edging s for warp-faced weaves, but also for weft-faced pieces and even knotted pile. — Nicole made me so happy when she showed me the tapestry piece she had woven as a cover for her iPad. She edged it with a plain-weave tubular band that she had learned using **the tutorial** on my blog. It is funny that other weaving friends, Sara and Diane, had just been suggesting the possibility of using the tubular bands as edgings for not only warp-faced weaves, but also for weft-faced pieces and even knotted pile. And then, along comes Nicole to show how well it works.

Here’s Leslie’s backstrap showing us how nice the variegated Plymouth yarn can look. She had just started braiding the ends. The pale solid stripe that she added in the center really sets off the variegated stripes.

I got to see pieces, now off the loom, that Jean and Jane had been working on last time I met up with them. Jean’s black piece with its pattern in supplementary weft is her new backstrap. She adapted a warp pattern from my second book to the supplementary-weft structure…so clever. I am pretty sure that Jane intends sewing her fabulous complementary-warp pick-up piece into a bag which she will edge and decorate.

Liz and Caroline showed me what they have been working on since we last met and wove together. Caroline made her own backstrap and is currently weaving the band with the bird figures. I love Liz’s band in the middle with the variegated thread. I keep saying I want to try out some of those variegated yarns and have not managed to do so yet.

Here’s a nice selection of Andean Pebble Weave bands from the weavers in Arizona…

And, Deanna made me smile a lot when she went on to design her own Andean Pebble Weave figure after my stay with her. These are experiments for a hatband for her Mustang-driving husband. She was inspired by some tablet-woven horses that she had seen. As she discovered, designing for Andean Pebble Weave is just like a connect-the-dots exercise.

And here is what Julia wove, after we parted, using Andean pebble Weave patterns from my second book….we all love that red and black! Julia’s work is gorgeous and always so beautifully finished. She is great inspiration for everyone in the Ravelry group. I was tickled to see a pattern I had charted for the second book but never woven myself…the one on the right.

I just read on Facebook that Unicorn Books closed last week. Sad. In 1995, my new weaving friend in Colorado, Gladys, gave me their catalog to take back to Chile with me. The catalog was like a newspaper and oh, how I would love looking over the pages and pages of fiber arts books. I ordered Double Woven Treasures of old Peru from that catalog and waited impatiently for it to be shipped to the southernmost tip of Chile where I was living. It was that book that had me throwing on the backpack and heading to Peru to learn to weave in 1996.
And, just to show that my recent trip wasn’t all about crackling fires and chilly nights…southern California put on some spectacular weather and Deanna, Gay and I spent a gorgeous afternoon having lunch at the ocean.

You can see the exotic woven band…a balanced double weave pick-up… on the Panama hat that Gay lent me for the strong sun.

It is one of many textiles that Gay and her husband collected in their travels. You may remember when last I visited her I was so excited to buy a Huichol belt from her that had designs I had once chosen to weave in a piece of my own, also in balanced double-weave pick-up.

I took lots of pictures of it and then gave it a nice home in my friend Janet’s place.

I will leave you for now with the setting sun on that perfect day down by the sea and get back to decorating my little yurt bag….