supplementary weft – Page 12 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Re-defining “fine”

Internet fail yesterday kept me from blogging. All kinds of crazy specials and offers by the phone company here have the whole system on the point of complete saturation. Goodness knows how long it will all keep running before everything comes crashing down. Of course, the phone company tells me that everything is just “fine”. So, I couldn’t write my blog but, never mind, there is always plenty to do.

Once again I was immersed in the warm woolly smells and happy colors of the highlands as I took out the beautiful bands made by the weavers in Independencia, Bolivia from their handspun yarn colored with natural dyes.

You know how much I love to dress up little bags and pouches. I am cutting up the bands just as the weavers themselves are doing in Independencia to make cell phone pouches and other such things to sell. So, I have been weaving and sewing tubular bands, braiding and embellishing away and having fun.

Here is one partly dressed-up pouch with a brown and red tubular band, braids and tassels. These projects give me the perfect opportunity to put into practice the many little finishing techniques that my weaving teachers and sling braiding instructor have shown me over the years.

The two-color edging stitch that my sling teacher in Peru taught me for decorating the cradle section of the sling looks lovely along the edge of fabric. I have used it to edge a table runner.

Now that it is not so hot here, it is really nice to feel the wool in my hands. It is also nice to have something off-loom to play with.

On the loom, I have the black warp that I took on my last spring trip away. I am using the fine Guatemalan cotton which I recently wove into black and purple scarves decorated with supplementary-weft patterns.

As I am still in my supplementary-weft phase, I have been thinking about what to do with this black demo warp. I created it with nothing in particular in mind…just something to show one of the ways in which a warp can be put together for backstrap weaving.

Now I am thinking that since I used patterns based on Bhutanese motifs on the black scarf and Guatemalan inspired patterns on the purple one, I should base the designs on this new project on supplementary-weft patterns from another weaving culture….either Bolivian hatband motifs or the designs used by the Montagnard weavers with whom I studied in the US.

I have a few hatbands that I have gathered over the years. The problem with studying the motifs on these supplementary-weft patterned bands is that the thread that Bolivian weavers use for these is so incredibly FINE!!

What I like about some of the Bolivian hatbands that I have seen is that the supplementary weft is used to fill the negative spaces.

Look at the flower pattern at bottom left on the hatband from Calcha, Bolivia. The ground weave is white and the colored supplementary wefts fill the negative spaces so that the ground weave below is exposed in the shape of a flower. The thread used in that flower band is unbelievably fine….almost like strands of hair! I can’t count the threads and will need to get a magnifying glass to do so. The fineness of the thread means that the weaver has been able to get away with making some very long floats of supplementary weft. As the piece was designed to be worn around a hat, long floats are not really a problem as it is unlikely that they will catch on things and get pulled.

For my sample piece I have had to modify the pattern to eliminate some of the long floats as my Guatemalan cotton, as fine as it is, is nowhere near as fine as the Bolivian thread.

You can just see the top half of the flower head in my sample as I weave to check the proportions. Look at the difference in size between my sample with my “fine” cotton and the Bolivian band. I think that I will have to re-define “fine”!

The Bolivian weaver has used a colored stripe to border the pattern so that the colored wefts don’t just end “in space”. Besides looking good, this also saves her the trouble of having to count threads to see where the wefts need to dip back down within the shed. I was trying to just eyeball it when I was doing it and found myself one warp thread off the mark many times. So, to weave this, I really need to make a new warp with stripes included or….maybe I can come up with another plan by doing some more sampling.

Hopefully the sampling will become something acceptable and I will be able to make this little black piece into a pouch with lots of embellishments.

In the Ravelry group, Cindy has been doing pebble weave on a Gilmore Wave loom making what might become a backstrap. The pattern is one that my teacher Maxima taught me and is charted in my second book.

Betsy is making guitar straps on her backstrap loom with her own handspun. Janet is her spinning teacher and Betsy works hard at her spinning every day, so you can imagine that her handspun is really lovely and works beautifully for backstrap weaving.

Jennifer demonstrated how using a coil rod eliminated the annoying corrugated look in her cotton warp and gave a new life to this abandoned project. She then used the warp to create a really interesting solid-color warp-float pattern using a pattern stick and heddles to raise the warps for the floats.

Well, it’s back to sampling on the cotton warp, embellishing the wool pouches and playing some more on the inklette project for the article. My internet is running again and all is “fine”.

Thanks to everyone who wrote with suggestions about the embroidery stitch on the pillow cover from Peru. I think that it would make a nice cover stitch for joins and hope to experiment with it soon.

In the meantime I have also found out that the word used by Spanish speakers for tatting is frivolité….love that word!…and that a few of my online friends do it. I follow the Textile Museum of Oaxaca on Facebook and they are even giving a workshop on it. Let’s see how I can add a bit of frivolité to my weaving!

Backstrap Weaving – What I love about sharing backstrap weaving

What do I like about sharing my weaving? One of the best things for me is how much I manage to learn myself from my interaction with my weaving friends. And, there are many other things about it that I love, both tangible and intangible. Let me try to list at least some of the things that make this such a wonderful experience…..

1.Receiving a picture like this via email shortly after weaving with a group:

Karen, who wove Andean Pebble Weave with me, sent this picture to show me what she has been up to since then. She completed the bands that we started together and wove more bands as she continues to work her way through my book. Not that many people rush home and weave and get to this point so quickly but it is just the simple fact that she wanted to show me what she has been doing and keep in touch that makes me really happy.

2.Getting a picture from an onlooker who captures the interest and delight on people’s faces while I am busy showing samples and talking:

This picture of (from left to right) Karen, Nan, Laura and Stephanie was taken by Franco. I miss some of these little moments while I have my eyes on the textiles.

3.Getting to spend “fiberholic” evenings with my friends, while chatting and cluttering up the place with WEAVING STUFF:

My friend, Vonnie, sits back at home with a very interested onlooker to weave a little on the band that we started itogether.

Vonnie showed me how she makes her tablet weaving a “weave anywhere any time” craft. As always, I am happiest on the floor.

I have a stretchy hair band around my neck to which the band is attached (this is just in case you are not wearing a belt to which you can attach) and the other end is hooked to my shoe lace. It was very comfortable!

4.Reconnecting with people I met on previous visits who have now become dear friends:

That’s Annie and Barbara tackling a skein of hemp (next to Ginna). I am here to just hang out for a few days with them. We will probably see that beautiful rusty red hemp woven into one of Annie’s gorgeous one-of-a-kind inkle woven guitar straps soon.

5.Meeting lots of fun and enthusiastic people who are interested in something about which I am passionate – backstrap weaving and South American textiles – and helping them to perhaps realize a dream or simply enjoy spending some time trying something completely different:

Stephanie, Betsy and Vonnie have just made their first set of string heddles and are putting their newly acquired skills to work on a narrow band.

6.Having the opportunity to spend time with long-time online friends who have been so helpful, supportive and fun for years. If you are part of any fiber-related online weaving group, you are bound to know Franco Rios!:

7.Putting faces to my more recent online acquaintances:

Laura is a fairly new member of the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group and we look forward to seeing more of her. She and her mother, Nan, came to weave together with me.

8.Exchanging ideas and learning new skills:

Vonnie knows tatting and now…., so do I! The picture above is, of course, of Vonnie’s fine work. However, I am rather proud of the way mine is coming along in both fine cotton and wool.

Vonnie gave me a shuttle to take away and showed me how pospsicle sticks can do the trick nicely as well. When practicing with the heavier wool yarn, it is very easy to use the yarn straight off the ball rather than place it on any kind of shuttle. However, you can’t help enjoying looking elegant holding the wee shuttle daintily between thumb and forefinger.

Vonnie taught me to make cord using a lucet (the wooden instruments seen on the left) and I taught her to make a braid using a piece of cardboard and the fill-the-gap technique, something I learned thanks to the ladies of the Braid Society that I met while in the UK. Here is a close-up of my cord and Vonnie’s braid:

And, there are also surprising connections to other Ravelry group members. Vonnie showed me the sweetest homemade rigid heddle that group member Janet had made for her using a sushi mat. It is touching to see how many firm behind-the-scenes friendships form between members of the Ravelry groups.

And that is the pretty lucet that Vonnie gave me!

9.Coming to weave on a second morning and finding that people had woven at home on their own:

Laura, Caroline, Vonnie and Betsy admire bands on the morning of our second day together that had grown in length overnight. Some of the patterns the ladies wove were of their own invention without the use of charts. Seeing that skill develop makes me exceedingly happy!

10.Meeting someone new who shows me what she has managed to learn at home, either by using the free tutorials on this blog, or by following my books:

That’s Caroline with a pebble weave band she has been weaving at home.

11.The trust and support that develops among the weavers as they work together. Folks applaud and encourage each other and, with this support, are able to accept little mistakes and mishaps with good humor:

Team warping: that’s Janet on the left with Caroline in the center warping under the watchful eye of her warping partner, Stephanie. This is where I get a chance to stand right back and enjoy watching how people work and solve problems together.

12.Seeing a first-time-ever weaver being nurtured by the rest of the group, taking to it and having fun and seeing the movements used by everyone…experienced weavers and beginners alike… to open the sheds and operate the loom become increasingly automatic and relaxed:

There’s new weaver Karen working at opening the sheds. She soon learned that a sweater on her lap made a great tool tray.

Here’s “Team Backstrap” enjoying the sun. We had some spectacular spring weather for us. Many thanks to Betsy and Franco for inviting everyone. Franco kept us entertained with various bird-spottings. We were working right by a large open door and could enjoy the outdoors without being out in the harsh sunlight.

13.Understanding a little more about people’s different learning styles.

14.All the cool stuff I get to do and see and the cool people I get to hang out with. Like…

…a) roaming around the redwoods….

…b) admiring and exploring local sites such as the only building left of the mission in Santa Cruz established in 1791. That building would look very much at home in downtown Santa Cruz, Bolivia with its white adobe walls, wooden pillars and red tile roof. Many buildings where I live resemble this one although most are in a state of advanced decay with tropical greenery threatening to take them over….

…c) seeing other kinds of weaving and sometimes meeting their makers. I had the wonderful luck of being able to examine a tapestry in progress by Zapotec weaver Sergio Martinez. He weaves and shows his work in Old Folsom just down the road from Vonnie’s place. Unfortunately, Sergio had just left for the day when we arrived but I wrote to him to ask permission to show his weaving here and we have been corresponding. The piece in progress is an image from the Aztec codices. Sergio’s woven themes, as far as I could see, are very different to those used by Zenon and Jaime Hipolito whom I visited earlier in this trip. It was very interesting to see how widely the work of Zapotec weaving artists can vary.

…d) learning about other textile arts such as the art of stitched shibori at a workshop give by Rachelle Weiss at the Santa Cruz Handweavers Guild. Dyeing expert Kris Nardello assisted. It is a technique that historically was largely practiced in Japan and is a way to decorate cloth using dye-resist techniques.

The workshop was very well attended. Rachelle’s instruction and inspiring samples created a lot of excitement and chatter which made it a really fun morning. Participants learned three kinds of stitching techniques, some of which also involved folds, for creating wood grain, undulating lines and circular patterns. Everyone will return in June to complete their projects by pulling the stitiches to ruffle and pucker the cloth and then placing the pieces of fabric in the dye bath. I will have to take my kit home and play with it there….

It was fun to go on from there and find shibori-like fabric (at least to me eye!) used for a dress in one of the trendy clothing stores along the main street of downtown Santa Cruz (pictured above).

A couple of days later, I visited with Barbara and she showed me a gorgeous piece of shibori cloth that she had created and sewn into a garment.

She had used techniques that we had not seen with Rachelle. Rather than creating areas of resist and then dyeing the fabric, she applied bleach. You can see how leaves were placed on the black fabric and then bleach was sprayed around creating the reddish background. Pieces were clamped to the cloth to create the bar-like patterns which I think look like sticks of bamboo.

The fabric has been used to create a jacket with simple twisted yarn ties for closures. That was in Barbara’s pre-braiding days. Now she will be able to replace those simple ties with some kind of fabulous braided tie using her takadai or marudai skills. Here are some of her examples created on the marudai and takadai…

My day spent at Barbara’s was her regular twining get-together with Yonat. Both Yonat and Barbara weave with me on every visit and it was nice to see what they had learned when Ravenstail twining expert Cheryl Samuel visited the area. You know how much I love twining! A Google search tells me that Ravenstail is a type of twining and surface braiding that was used by native Americans along the Pacific Northwest coast to create dance aprons, blankets and robes.

Barbara had obviously been very much absorbed with this since last fall as she has already made these three adorable pouches…

I learned a few tricks while Yonat and Barbara worked for making the ending of the twining neater. The basic technique of twisting the “wefts” and changing colors is the same as the technique I use to create the twined patterns that I use on my backstrap weavings. However, there are many specialised moves involved with creating the patterns that you see above with their outlines and embellishments.

Yonat and Barbara are each working on a project to make traditional leggings. This is Yonat’s piece. The working frame alone is a thing of beauty. Barbara’s husband made hers and Peggy’s husband made a few for various members of the group.

Look at the inlay work created by Peggy’s husband! What you are seeing there is the lid of a tool box that he cleverly incorporated into the basic framework. The frame comes apart easily so that Yonat can pick up her work and take it home at the end of her study day with Barbara.

And, while the ladies were twining, I got to weave on a discontinuous-warp project that was part of a workshop given to members of the Santa Cruz guild by Nilda Callañaupa way back in 1997! This particular piece was not touched after the workshop and its owner has since passed away. Yonat has been keeping it and is now passing on to another of our backstrap group members, Dorothy. On its way to Dorothy, it fell into my lap and I just had to weave on it! I will be spending this weekend with Dorothy and we will get to play with this together.

I hadn’t taken a backstrap to Barbara’s place and so just used a piece of cord. It was pretty comfortable, believe it or not! The wool yarn was quite friendly and I got quite a bit woven before lunch. What was unusual for me to see was that this had been warped to include complementary-warp pick-up patterning. All the discontinuous-warp pieces that I have had the luck to examine so far have been either plain warp-faced weaving or patterned with supplementary warps.

The horizontal bars that you see above tell us that the piece was warped for complementary-warp pick-up. Yonat, who also took the workshop back in 1997 remembers having woven a double-faced hooked “s” pattern on her piece. Barbara was also in that workshop and neither of them have worked on their pieces since. I am happy to report that they now feel those unfinished pieces calling to them and, hopefully, they will get motivated to get back to work on them with confidence sixteen years after the original workshop. (By the way, the piece is posed on top of Yonat’s latest clasped weft project in which she used the technique to create a beautiful landscape.)

It was interesting to see how the two colored warp threads in the pattern area were carried while warping. You can see that they were wound together as one thread. They were then separated into two sheds when the heddles were installed.

So….on one short visit with a couple of my now, very dear weaving friends I learned about SO much!…shibori techniques, ravenstail techniques and a bit more about warping for discontinuous-warp projects.

…e) getting ideas from weaving friends and the fun stuff they have lying around.

I saw a bunch of very long wool tablet-woven bands overflowing from a basket in Annie’s living room. Annie acquired these after a deceased guild member’s belonging were given away at a meeting. Each band is ten feet long. Who knows what the weaver’s intention was for these but I am seeing some kind of interlaced project along the lines of the fabulous weaving bench cover I showed here some weeks ago.

The colors are so rich and appealing. What if these were laid out vertically and interlaced with sandy colored bands running horizontally….oh, yes!

Let me show you what Jennifer Williams, aka inkledpink, made by interlacng some inkle-woven bands…

So, what do I love about sharing backstrap weaving with people? What’s NOT to love?!

Backstrap Weaving – Life in the Yarn Forest

I was almost going to skip this week’s post. You see, I have been all tangled up in this stuff…This is about one-tenth of it!

I am in the throes of warp preparation and, once I get the ball rolling, I don’t want to interrupt the flow in any way. The living room is a forest of colored thread. My cat is bored with it and just walks over the top as if it is all just some kind of new flooring. There is the risk, though, that she will bring down a lizard from the upstairs terrace and decide to play hide-and-seek with it in the yarn jungle.

But, as I have been making good progress, I decided that I could part the branches and vines and step out for a bit so that I could post pictures of the finished purple scarf while I am still excited about it.

You will see that I decided not to add a few inches to start and finish. That is something that I had been pondering last week as I found myself with excess warp that I didn’t want to waste. The decision was made easier by the fact that I had just about run out of yarn for weft. That and the fact that the scarf really didn’t need any additional length, had me twining a two-color edging and cutting the circular warp apart earlier than expected. I am really happy with it.

And you can tell how excited I am as here I am playing fashion lady…(so NOT me!)

I probably won’t have time to start another project before I get on the road but I have an idea developing for the next thing…a bandanna! which I will use as a kind of neckerchief.

The bandanna will be square, and wider than most things I weave, with supplementary-weft patterns scattered over it. I haven’t decided yet on the motifs…maybe something inspired by Mexican weaving or maybe something Indian for the Sanskrit origin of the word “bandanna”: बन्धन bandhana, “to tie”. I see many pictures on Facebook of the daughter of my Godmother, who still lives in India, dressed in luscious saris. Maybe something there can inspire this next project.

I have green and red left in the Guatemalan cotton with which I have been working and have chosen the red. I wish I had a really pale lilac in the silk for one of the supplementary wefts. Maybe I can pick up something on my trip.

So, I will have that idea percolating while I am traveling. If I do really well with my trip prep, maybe I will at least wind the warp so it will be good to go when I get back. Then it will be able to fight for first place among the many ideas which I usually bring home.

Along with my trip preparation, I have this project to finish….

I won’t tell you how many warp ends there are in these three wall hanging panels that need to be twisted or braided or dealt with in some way. However, I kind of enjoy doing things like this. I like to find something that doesn’t really require my full attention on tv…like a movie or show I have seen and enjoyed before…and then sit with sweet snacks on hand and braid and twist away.

I have lots of plans to add more panels to this wall hanging series. I can’t decide which project I will tackle next. I hope to have these three hung as part of an exhibit at ANWG in June.

It will be fun to see them up on a wall as there is certainly no room around here for them. The three pieces have structural and/or design influences from South American textiles I have seen. Some aspects were inspired by experiences I have had while on the road learning to weave.

Another reason I wanted to take a break and blog this week was to tell you about a weave-along in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving group that Ghedrain is proposing starting March 1st.

Considering that the Chinese Year of the Snake has just begun, Ghedrain has suggested creating projects that are inspired by snake-skin patterns or by the shape of the snake itself and has posted a number of pictures for ideas. Here are a couple: (the image on the right comes from this site.

Such amazing patterns!

The weave-along is open to all levels although it won’t be based on a tutorial of any kind. Any weave structure can be used…pebble weave, double weave, supplementary-weft inlay, to name a few….and we are particularly encouraging people to use plain weave with some creative colored warping to create snake-like warp-faced patterns. The inkle pattern generator is very helpful for experimenting with color arrangements.

Janet is planning to do a card-woven piece using a backstrap set-up. And it is not just limited to backstrap looms. We welcome the use of inkle looms or other looms on which warp-faced pieces can be woven.

Kateri, who wove with me in Massachusetts last year, showed the group what she has been up to lately using the pebble weave structure and patterns charted in my books…

It is nice to see Kateri venturing into wider pieces. The piece on the right became a study in how warp tension affects the elongation of the motifs…the more tension applied, the more elongated the motifs will be…something of which backstrap weavers need to be aware as they go rolling up and shortening the warp. The piece on the left has a favorite motif of mine which was taught to me by my dear teacher Maxima in Cochabamba. Kateri’s band is beautifully even and the motifs are nicely balanced the entire length of the band.

Ghedrain is set up to weave a scarf for her husband which is the project that lured her to backstrap weaving in the first place. After putting in some time to get acquainted with the loom and the warping process by weaving a few items, which I showed last week, the scarf project is now underway.

Backstrap Weaving – Time

A question I am very often asked when I show my woven work is….. “How long did it take to weave that?”

I am trying very hard to think back to a time before I started weaving to see if perhaps I would have asked this question myself to a craftsperson and what might have motivated me to do so. Would it be because I was thinking of trying to make the object myself and needed to see if the time involved was worth my effort? Or perhaps I would want to know if the asking price for the object reflected the amount of time that had gone into creating it.

In any case, I find it a very difficult question to answer. How long does it take?…As long as it takes! I honestly don’t keep track. I don’t sell my work and so I need not consider time in order to fairly price an item. I am not weaving to a deadline. There is no exhibit for which the work has to be completed. I would probably have to go back to my blog posts if I wanted to give an accurate answer in terms of the number of weeks on which I worked on a project. However, I would be at a complete loss when it came to the total number of hours.

I met a craftsperson last year and witnessed his response to the question…

“How long did it take to make that?”

His response:

A l i f e t i m e

I can only imagine that he very rightly considers that a lifetime of his accumulated knowledge, experience, skill and inspiration went into this and every piece that he has completed. I love his response.

So, I am willing to pour as much time and effort as is required into every piece I weave. What I don’t like, is making silly mistakes and wasting time. Okay, I will admit that a mistake is always a learning experience and valuable for that reason but sometimes you just turn around and do the same old thing again!

Like… breaking my coil rod on my latest piece. I did it once…I learned. I did it a second time…I cursed…but then I learned some more.

You can see the coil rod in the above picture. The stick is rather thin but it looks about the same size as coil rods that I have seen in use by weavers that I have observed. In the above picture the coil rod is a fair distance from the shed rod and cross stick. As weaving progresses and the cloth gets rolled under the loom bar, the shed rod and cross sticks just naturally work their way up the loom so that they are always at a comfortable distance from my body. The string heddles also follow along. Eventually, the shed rod and cross stick will have wriggled their way all the way up to the position of the coil rod and further progress will be blocked unless the coil rod is also moved.

Above you can see how the distance between the cross and the coil rod is closing.

The problem is that it is a heck of a job trying to move the coil rod! I moved it a couple of times sucessfully. Saying that it “inched” its way up the warp is being extremely generous.I could only move it the tiniest fraction of an inch at a time.

As far as I am concerned, the main purpose of the coil rod is to clamp the warps in place and maintain consistent warp tension between it and the weaver. This very characteristic of the coil rod is what makes it so insanely difficult to move! I wouldn’t want to be able to just smoothly and easily roll it up and down the warp. Its very purpose would be defeated if that were so.

It was the third time that I came to move the rod that I got over-confident and forced it too much. Then came a sound that you don’t want to hear when you are weaving…a sharp “snap!” The warps that were so tightly coiled and bunched on the rod leaped to freedom and went cascading into space. I didn’t stop to take pictures.

Fortunately, the stick broke about an inch from one end of the warps and, as the stick is much wider than the weaving, I was able to carefully pick up all the fallen loops and get them back on the now shorter stick. Hmmm….should I replace this with a heavier stick? No, it will be okay. I learned my lesson. I will just be more gentle from now on.

Yeah, right….A day after….”snap!” And this time right in the middle. You knew that was coming, didn’t you? The more I tried to retrieve the coils on one side, the more the coils on the other side would tumble off.

Out came the stick. I am still not quite sure where it landed when I flung it.

Ikat patterned shawl weaver of Ecudor setting up his backstrap loom. Picture courtesy of Agaath Theiken. — Ikat patterned shawl weaver of Ecuador setting up his backstrap loom. Picture courtesy of Agaath Theiken.

Actually, I did learn things as a result of the second accident. I wove on without the coil rod and found that I much preferred having one in the warps. After all, this was actually supposed to be part of the coil rod experiment. Without the coil rod in place I found that I was having to hitch up certain loose warps with every single weft pass and I didn’t think that was good use of my time.

From there I went on to learn how to insert the coil rod when the warp is already off the warping stakes. Dennis Penley reports that this is how the weavers of the ikat paños in Ecuador put the rod in place.

So, I picked up each and every one of the 772 ends, twisted them one by one (rather than in groups of ten as the weavers in Ecuador do) and placed them on the new thicker rod. How long did that take? I don’t know! Don’t ask.

Maybe this is something that we don’t consider when we ask the craftsperson how long it took to complete the project. Do we want them to include the time used to fix “oopsies”? After all, the fixing of the oopsies adds to that lifetime of experience about which my craftsman friend was speaking.

Obviously there is a technique for moving the coil rod that I have yet to learn. I turned to Maria Christou’s paper on the Sa’dan Toraja weavers of To’barana’. She describes how the coil rod is loosened so that it can be replaced with a thinner stick as weaving progresses and the space within which to open the sheds becomes increasingly smaller. I imagine that the movements she describes are the same as those that are used to move the rod along the warp.

She writes…

Christou explains earlier in the paper that the sorong gesture is the act of leaning forward to release tension on the warp and is used when the weaver wishes to open the heddle shed. I am wondering if the word sorong simply translates to “lean forward” or whether it is a word specific to backstrap weaving that describes the entire motion and how it relates to the operation of the loom.

There is still warp left to weave on my scarf project and so I will try what Christou describes the next time I need to move the rod. I am not sure I quite get it, but I will experiment.

While the amount of time needed to weave a piece is not important to me, I am always interested in learning about techniques that weavers have developed to help make the whole process more efficient.

For example, the use of backstrap weavers in San Ignacio de Loyola of multiple sets of string heddles so that patterned weaving can be carried out without having to do any pick-up. Of course the pattern threads need to be picked up once, but only once, before they can be placed within the heddles.

First Araceli has to make the twenty-four sets of heddles on this fresh warp. The pattern has alreday been picked up and saved on sticks. — Araceli is making the twenty-four sets of heddles on this fresh warp. The pattern has already been picked up and saved on sticks.

I did this myself once (with only four sets of heddles) when I was making a pebble weave guitar strap. I was on a deadline for that project as it was a birthday gift and so, speed was important.

In Manabí province in coastal Ecuador, weavers on vertical looms also use multiple sets of string heddles to program the pattern so weaving can proceed without having to do pick-up. This means that that a weaving elder who knows the pattern can set up the loom while younger, more able-bodied weavers, who haven’t thoroughly learned the pattern, can carry out the more strenuous task of weaving the cloth.

In Bajo Urubamba, Peru, backstrap weavers place multiple patterning sticks in the warp which hold the warps which will float and create the patterns.

Adding heddles while warping adds time to the warping process. However, it is almost impossible to cross warps and make mistakes while installing heddles this way. This saves the weaver from having to fix the heddle-making errors that can so easily occur when making heddles while seated at the loom.

The Montagnard way of installing the coil rod while warping seems to me to be a wonderful time-saving technique. Having had the experience of installing the coil rod both ways now….on the warping stakes and off…I can tell you which way I prefer!

Even little things like the pattern warp loops that I installed on my current weaving can make a big difference.

I can simply pull on a loop which draws forward a certain group of heddles which I can then raise to lift the warps needed for my pattern. My leaf pattern is very simple and requires only five sheds…three in the shed rod shed and two in the heddle shed. I have one loop in the heddles which raises warps from which I select the ones needed for that particular shed. It was more eye strain than time that I was trying to save in this case as the warps are so fine.

This little system is simple enough and I got the basic idea from a visit with weaver Deb McClintock in Texas last year. Deb has spent a lot of time studying with weavers of Laos and she showed me the pattern storage system that is used by Tay Dam weavers on floor looms. The weavers create complex patterns with supplementary wefts using this system. Deb has adapted the system to a floor loom in her studio. She is writitng an article for the Complex Weavers Journal on the method and how she uses it on her loom.

Basically….Those vertical strings are really long heddles. The horizontal strings will be used to pull forward certain heddle strings which in turn will raise the warps needed for that pattern shed. The patterns are very complex as you can see by the large number of strings in place. This is a wonderful pattern storage system!

In this video, Deb shows her adaptation of the Laos system to her loom. She explains how each pattern string is stored below the warp until it is next called into use. This enables her to freely pull forward the next string in the sequence…

In future posts I hope to show you some of Deb’s work that has been influenced by her experiences learning about Lao weaving techniques.

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Here’s what some of my online weaving buddies have been up to….

CindyQ has created some pretty bands while working her way through the lessons in my first book Andean Pebble Weave and it looks like she has it down.

On the left is CindyQ’s current project in which she is using a pattern from the follow-up book More Adventures with Warp-faced Pick-up Patterns

On the right Helena has made a band using two-color simple warp floats with a motif from Iran. My intermediate-level tutorial on this technique is here which includes the chart for the “s” motif along the edges of Helena’s band.

Ghedrain has been following tutorials here and made her own backstrap and is currently exploring simple warp floats. She has picked this up really fast.

Betsy wove fabric on a floor loom using her own handpsun wool yarn which she will use to make bags. She just completed the straps for the bags on her backstrap loom.

And I am on the final stretch on my scarf project. I am just about to start weaving the last motif along the edge.

However, I am a bit disappointed because I could have made the scarf longer and made better use of the warp length. It was hard to figure out how long this would turn out as it is the first time I am using a circular warp for a full project and I didn’t know how far I would be able to weave before it got too difficult to open the sheds. I had to make a decision about when to start weaving the final design so that the overall pattern would be symmetric.

Now I see that I could easily add a couple of inches to this end as well as to the beginning and still have a nice long fringe. That, of course, would mean turning the loom around, swapping the position of the shed rod and heddle stick, planning a bit of extra pattern….sounds all very time consuming, doesn’t it. Worth it? Well, yes! I am not in any hurry and I have the TIME.

Backstrap Weaving – Tropical Themes and Tools

Santa Cruz, Bolivia has almost all the lovely things that the tropics typically have to offer…swaying palm trees, avenues lined with mango trees dripping with fruit, exotic plant and birdlife and tremendous afternoon downpours of cooling rain (sadly few and far between these days). Too bad there aren’t any beaches in this country to complete the picture of tropical paradise. For those of you in the wintery whiteness of the northern hemisphere, here is a bit of tropical Bolivian color to brighten your day.

And, on a similar colorful and cheery note, here is my newest scarf project still on the loom…

The main inspiration for the patterns has come from a particular Guatemalan plant motif woven using supplementary wefts. Carmen, pictured at left, taught me to weave this in her home of Santa Catarina Palopó on the shores of Lake Atitlan.

The small plant motif uses inlaid supplementary wefts for the leaves and various warp wrapping techniques to create the stem and plant base.

I took the leaf pattern, changed it a little to fit my working space, and used it in the side panels of the scarf. I also expanded it into an imaginary tropical flower. The tiny butterfly motif was adapted from one on a Mexican backstrap-woven textile that I saw online.

I love the way the turquoise and gold supplementary wefts look together in the flowers on this purple background….visions of tropical seas and golden mangoes! I have to admit that I have been dying to combine those two colors somehow ever since I saw the following shawl by Elisabeth Hill on her Flickr page…

How is that for inspiration?! And I got to meet Lisa and see this piece in person at Maryland Sheep and Wool last year where the shawl took Best of Show. Lisa has done some backstrap weaving with me so maybe that will somehow influence one of her projects. Take a look at her Flickr page to see more amazing creations in deflected double weave.

I like how my purple scarf doesn’t really scream “me” at all…at least I don’t think it does.

I once had someone on Weavolution say that she could immediately spot a project of mine before clicking on the image to see who the weaver was. It’s nice in a way to know that you have developed a sort of weaving “character and style” that can be recognised.On the other hand, it’s nice to branch out and do something completely different and I have realised that, in order for me to do so, it is helpful to have access to yarn that I have never used before. So, I think that along with my “wider, longer, finer” weaving goal for this year, I will add “new fiber”. I intend to quieten the little voice that tells me to “keep it simple and just make do with what you can get locally” and take advantage of my trips to the US to gather up new-to-me fiber and a greater range of colors.

Above you can see alpaca, wool, hemp and bamboo (?…this was a gift and I am not sure what it is) yarn from a recent US trip….much of it gifts from weaver friends.
coil rod and other tools Now, back to the current project. What about that coil rod…what has it been doing for me? I roll it along the warp as my weaving progresses and the fabric gets rolled around the loom bars. It is definitely a handy width guide. Beyond the coil rod the warp tends to spread and fan out as it stretches away toward the far loom bar.

The rod also ensures that there is always beautifully consistent tension between it and the weaving line. It locks the warps into place and gives me even tension with which to work no matter how many stretched and loosened warps may be gathering beyond it and on the lower layer of warp beyond the far loom bar. In short…I like it! It is a great little tool.

You can see the coil rod in place in the above picture. Other “tools” that I am using on this project are several ties of colored yarn along the shed rod and in the heddles. Because my patterns are not wide enough to warrant the insertion of pattern sticks to raise the warps under which the supplementary wefts pass, I am using little ties to raise the appropriate warps instead. There are some that go around the warps themselves in the shed-rod shed and others which are tied around certain heddle strings. I simply pull on these to raise the pattern warps in the heddle shed. They save time and prevent eyesight strain!

As far as tools go, sometimes the simplest are the best…

It always delights me to see that the use of simple sticks to carry the weft is common to many backstrap weavers around the globe….no fancy tool required! You have seen in my pictures that I use a specially shaped shuttle. Three of these were made for me when I lived in Chile and they have a kind of sentimental value. I enjoy using them and they double as beaters and swords sometimes so they are pretty nifty.

The Montagnard backstrap loom above has two bands in progress and you can see the two simple shuttles. The looms are so large that it quite cumbersome to balance them when only weaving one narrow band. They are designed for weaving large panels of cloth which are used for skirts, shirts and blankets.

I must admit that I have been often pulled towrad buying teeny tiny shuttles at fiber fairs purely for their cuteness factor. I have on occasion used them but had to turn my closet upside down just now to find them to photograph as they have been idle for a long time…

The long thin shuttle on the right is one that one of my Guatemalan weaving teachers used. All my other teachers have used simple sticks about which the yarn is wound or, for narrow pieces, simple “mummy”-like butterfly bundles. Below you can see two such weft bundles. The yarn feeds off the outside rather than from the center and a hitch is put in place to stop the bundle from unravelling when it hangs freely. These two examples are of handspun wool and alpaca fiber from the Cusco area.

For narrow work my Guaraní teacher uses short lengths of scrap yarn for weft. This way she never wastes a thing! The weft lengths are so short that she does not even need to wind a butterfly. For wide pieces a simple stick shuttle is used as seen below.

Permission to use this image was kindly given by Aude Rossignol.

Here is a video showing my Montagnard weaving teacher, Ju Nie, loading yarn onto her shuttle. You can see that her shin is a very useful piece of equipment as, in a previous post, I showed you how she also uses it to help twist the fringes of her woven projects. The video has two segments with a short pause between. Wait for the second part which shows a weaver from the Cusco area loading her large shuttle.

One of the most charming ways of passing the weft is one in which the weaver has her weft rolled into a ball. She places the ball within the shed and then tilts her body to angle the loom so that the ball rolls through to the other side!

And finally, here is my teacher Trini in coastal Ecuador loading one of the three shuttles for the mini hammock she is preparing to teach me to weave. It was a balanced weave using three weft colors.

In the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group, Marge and Julia showed what they have been working on lately. Marge has been trying out Tahki Cotton Classic Light. I have not tried the Light version but I did see it at WEBS when I visited and the color range is wonderful. Marge used an online inkle pattern generator to help her design the color arrangement. The result is gorgeous!

Julia used two different color ways for the same pebble weave motif (charted in my second book) on two different looms…a four-harness and a Seidel Band Loom.

I will be visiting the Mannings this summer. If you want to come and weave, maybe we can spend a little time outside hitched to some shady trees down by the creek….on the ground or on chairs..that will be up to you. How cool would that be?!