Vietnamese weaving – Page 2 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – The Weaving Melting Pot

The Weaving Melting Pot….that is what I have bubbling away here. Every time I start a new piece on my backstrap loom I am so aware of the vast array of sources from which I have drawn technique and inspiration. I have studied weaving on a variety of simple looms here in South America, in Central America and even in North America and bring a little of everything to my work when I set up to weave on my loom of choice…the backstrap loom.

I even draw inspiration from the online weavers who work on floor looms…a handy tip about how to handle the two wefts in rep weave from Tom Knisely, ideas about finishing pieces from shadow weave weave-alongs, lessons in handling floating selvedges from discussions on twill, or from card-woven and inkle loom-woven warp patterned bands…all far removed from the Bolivian weaving environment in which I live.

They all go into the pot….stir, stir, stir….add a dash of ideas I have developed from my own experiments and onto the loom it goes. Some of my ideas having nothing to do with the traditional way of doing things……..

like using cable ties to lash my warp to the loom bar and a bicycle spoke instead of a yarn header cord. I was using cassette tape to wrap my warps for ikat until I was given “proper” ikat tape which seems acceptable in place of cabuya fiber and other natural materials in many “traditional” settings these days.

Plastic and metal??? One of the weavers I met in Candelaria found using what looked like a steel railway spike far more efficient than the traditional llama bone tool for beating in her weft. PVC pipe often replaces wooden shed rods. It’s like the time I had a lovely wooden Navajo weaving loom made for me when I lived in southern Chile and used rope to tension the warp only to find that a lot of the Navajo weavers are using metal looms and turnbuckles for tensioning. After weaving for some time on that Navajo loom I found that copper pipe for the loom bars worked much better than wood anyway.

I travel from place to place and see things and bring back ideas to add to the ingredients that go into my weaving melting pot.

And now I am about to apply some Bolivian highland weaving technology to a weaving tradition on the other side of the world.

I am jumping the gun this week by sampling for the next piece in my red, black and white wall hanging series and I am concocting quiet a brew in the old melting pot.. I say jumping the gun as I am nowhere near finished the third piece which is coming along veeeeery slowly! The other two pieces while off the loom are not yet completely finished. But the temptation to put an idea into action once it develops and starts churning in my head is irresistible!

You can see the melting pot at work in the above pieces…I took a motif designed by a German weaver for tablet weaving and wove it in an Andean technique, Chilean ponchos called chamantos influenced the leaf design hanging to which I added weft twining which has nothing to do with Chilean ponchos and the piece inspired by si’ira weavings of northern Columbia and Venezuela has more than a few of my own added touches.

Some of the traditional colors of Bedouin weaving make that the perfect influence for what will be in the fourth piece in the wall hanging series… in red, black and white, of course.

It was a weird and wonderful path that led me to Bedouin weavings way back in October 2010. I was Googling weft twining techniques after having seen the twined work of Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) backstrap weavers in North Carolina in August 2010.

A book on the Taaniko twining practiced by the Maoris of New Zealand helped me to get started on my own off-loom experiments…. a Maori technique for Vietnamese patterns…straight out of the melting pot!

This piece has Montagnard designs as well as motifs found in both Bedouin weaving and twining. My Google searches led me to sites with Bedouin weaving and I was in love! I bought Joy Totah Hilden’s book on Bedouin weaving after finding her website and was pleased to be able to see images of the back of the woven pieces making the technique easy to identify as warp substitution which I already knew how to do. There is a link to a pdf on Bedouin weaving by Hilden on my RESOURCES page.

It was clear from the book that the Bedouin do their twining both on and off the loom and so I was interested in trying it on the loom…it’s so much easier when the warp is under tension, as far as I am concerned, and that enabled me to use much finer yarn than I had used for the off-loom piece.

Here is the first piece with its al’ouerjan (in which I had made a warping mistake) and shajarah patterns. The al’ouerjan pattern is the checkerboard type design on the sides.

The twined sections are sometimes worked in the middle of the woven piece as well as at both ends.

I then dove into the melting pot and added a finish of wrapped warp ends…

I enjoyed the process and I wanted to know more…both about weft twining in general and about Bedouin weaving.

I was especially curious as I found out from Betsy, who works with the Montagnard weavers in North Carolina, that their weft twining technique is done off-loom and this astonished me as the yarn they use for their designs is so very fine (Cebelia #20 or finer). I had to see and learn this! Betsy was happy to have me visit and I was able to learn from Jarai weaver, Ngach.

And in the meantime, Tracy, a member of the Backstrap Weaving Group on Ravelry, started showing us gorgeous pictures of Bedouin textiles from the souk in Doha Qatar where she currently lives and telling us about her experiences watching a Bedouin weaver at work.

From books and images on the internet to suddenly finding myself seated next to Ngach, watching her bobbins twirl as she gracefully applied weft twined patterns to her large blanket piece off the loom, listening to her stories about her desire and determination as a young girl to learn to make the traditional kteh patterns. It was a dream come true.

Once back home, I stirred the tricks and tips I had witnessed with Ngach about color changes, hiding the ”bump” and other details into the pot and made my own kteh designs on my backstrap woven piece which you can see above.

I did it on the loom as my off-loom techniques still really needed some work! The advantage with off-loom twining is that several backstrap woven pieces once off the loom can be joined together and then the weft twining can be added along the edge of the entire piece. I have yet to do that and will definitely do so one of these days. I have my bobbins and thread ready!

Much later, the following year, came a golden gift in the form of bag made from pieces of Bedouin weaving that Tracy sent to me through a friend who was visiting Bolivia.

Once again, imagine the thrill of getting to feel and smell the real thing…forgive me but that coarse handspun wool is just begging to be smelled! The bag is pictured above on the right next to the cotton piece that I made.

As you can see below, the floats that form in in the shajarah pattern area (the black and white design strip) are really very long! Some of them are even broken from possibly having gotten caught on things.

Now back to the sample I am weaving for the fourth wall hanging. I want to do a Bedouin-style piece but I do not want the long floats on the back. Tracy showed us images of pieces from a co-operative in Oman in which the weavers had found a way to tie down the floats in the al’ouerjan parts (the checkerboard patterns) of their weaving possibly to make the pieces more attractive to foreign customers. It didn’t take long for me to see that they were using a second fine weft to do so. This makes the woven cloth more practical too.

You can see the long floats that you typically get on the back of the fabric in the lower right hand corner of the image on the right and see how the appearance improves when the second fine weft is used. Unfortunately the second fine weft does not do much for improving the appearance of the shajarah patterns (the larger back and white patterns).
The solution to that is to go once more to the ingredients on the shelf and add some of the Bolivian highland weaving technology that I mentioned earlier to the mix. So I added embedded double weave to my sample, a technique I learned while studying with weavers in Potosi, Bolivia.

This technique allows you to weave sections of double weave alongside plain weave in the one piece. It is essentially the same warp substitution technique but with an extra step or two which basically insures, with the use of a second weft, that all the warps are interlaced with none left to float on either face.

The two-color center section of the band at left is double weave alongside a plain-weave single-color border.

What I sometimes don’t like about the embedded double weave technique is the obvious transition in the fabric from plain weave to double…the climb from single layer to double layer and back again which naturally has to occur….it is sometimes more obvious than at other times depending quite often on the kind of yarn used, and I have been experimenting with various things to help soften that. I don’t want to make the entire piece double weave either.(The three-color double weave that would be required to weave the al’ouerjan pattern is bulky and unattractive). And that is where I throw my very own bit of spice into the melting pot!

It is still in the experimental stage but what I am trying to do is combine double weave with plain weave, add the thin weft for tying down the al’ouerjan warp floats and make the transition from plain to double weave section as subtle as possible with a trick I am trying out.

There is my first Bedouin piece on the left and the new sample on the right. The upper surfaces of both look the same and I don’t think you can tell that the center of the new sample is double weave.

The big difference is the back side of the fabric. My embedded double weave sample is on the left and my first sample with its long floats on the right. If this goes along well, I shall use this technique for my fourth wall hanging using the deeper shade of red that I have used for the other piece and incorporating more traditional Bedouin patterns.

So, enough red, black and white for goodness sake! Bring on some other colors. Here are projects from Ravelry group members and other online friends to save the day…

Oops! My bicycling friend Anna in Australia just happens to be using the same colors in a double weave piece. This is a Mapuche design from the book in Spanish by Enrique Taranto.

A new member to the Raverly group, Rob, showed us what he has been doing with simple warp floats inspired by a Guatemalan piece that Jennifer found on the Education and More website. You may remember that Bobbie wove a very large version of this in naturally dyed Guatemalan cotton thread that she bought from Education and More. Rob has added his own twist to the pattern at left.

Here are some of his other bands with simple warp floats and supplementary wefts. He used two supplementary wefts in different colors at the same time and says that one color stands out more than the other depending on the angle at which you view the piece….

Another new member, Tracy, blew us away with her first ever piece made from her own handspun wool…we love her loom set-up!

And Xav dove straight into double weave and the llama figures that I have charted here on the blog…her first ever backstrap woven band!

Jeen used her pebble weave experiments as embellishments on a couple of bags she completed. I love what she calls her “ball bag” and I think her use of variegated yarn for the border of her plain pebble weave band is so cool.

From Sweden Camila sent me pictures of her bands….

Some fun and clever designs with simple warp floats….she wove a pattern which is traditionally woven in a complementary- warp technique in the two-color simple warp float technique instead and it looks great!! On the right she has a pebble weave design from my book on her backstrap loom.

Well, I am off to continue my small sample as I think I can make something with it, weave a few rows on the third big wall hanging piece and see what unusual combination of ingredients might inspire the next piece on the loom…..

Backstrap Weaving – Weaving Wanderings and Wonderings

The Worldwide Weaving Web brought a new book into my home last year which has inspired my third wall hanging project.

If you can’t bear to look at yet another of my red, black and white warps on the loom ready to be woven, you had better look away now because here we go again!

There isn’t a whole lot to show for a week of work, is there? What you don’t see is the reading, sampling, un-weaving, re-warping, charting, erasing and Googling. In fact, as I sit in front of this warp, I have the uneasy feeling that I may be jumping the gun and launching into the big project too early. I have actually unwoven the first line of pattern twice and made adjustments. Clearly my sampling didn’t cover all I had in mind.

I am using the work of the Wayuu people of Venezuela and Colombia as my inspiration for this project through Dutch author Mirja Wark’s book Si’ira. A lady in one of the Ravelry weaving groups posted about the existence of this book in the middle of last year and I was on a mission to get hold of it. My friend Anna in Australia, who is from The Netherlands, took care of the local payment and then offered the book to me as a birthday gift. Thank you, Anna!

It is a beautiful hard cover book full of drawings and photos of the si’ira which are worn by men, their designs, the weavers and the vertical looms that are used to make them. The skills required to make a si’ira include weaving, twining, braiding and tassel making.

This image is from Mirja Wark’s web page.

The Wayuu live on the Guajira peninsula which is the northernmost border between Colombia and Venezuela. Wark describes this area as a flat, dry semi-desert over which a continuous hot wind blows. It is always interesting to me to know more about the people, weaving and textiles of lowland regions of this continent.

Many different colors are used and I especially love the pictures of the si’ira in the book that comprise a red and black background on which yellow motifs have been woven. Other belts are black with red motifs…very striking…and so they are perfect for the color theme of my wall hanging project.

It is also interesting for me to see that the Wayuu weavers use the same style of joined loop heddles used by the Guaraní weavers, another group that inhabits lowland regions, here in Bolivia.

At left you can see my Guaraní teacher, Angela, showing me the unusual way her string heddles are chained together.

What I would like to see is how the Wayuu weavers manipulate the heddles and if it is the same method that Angela and other Guaraní weavers use.

Angela most often has three sets of string heddles on her loom which are required by the technique she employs for the kinds of structures that she weaves. Watching Angela do her pick-up work jumping between two sets of the string heddles is fascinating!

The Wayuu weavers use one set of these kinds of string heddles on their warps but I imagine that they would need to work them in a similar fashion to the way Angela does.

I can’t help but notice some small similarities in some of the motifs of the Wayuu and Guaraní people although the weaving structure employed is different.

So, this will be the basis for wall hanging number three in the red, white and black series.

Another of the many interesting things about the si’ira is that they are woven with what Wark calls a “hollow selvedge” which serves to strengthen the edge of the belt. It is funny that on a visit with my friend Pam in Massachusetts we had talked about a rolled selvedge that Harriet Tidball describes in Shuttlecraft Monograph 26. Pam was trying it out on a band of her own.

Tidball writes that it was used by the ancient Peruvians and that available evidence shows that it was used on bands and belts.

The rolled selvedge creates a thick tubular edge.

Separate tubular bands like the one on the edge of the purse pictured at left are often applied to Bolivian and Peruvian weavings for various reasons, one of them being to strengthen and reinforce the edges of the textiles.

You may be able to make out the thick edge which is the hollow selvedge on this image from the cover of the Si’ira book.

How clever to think of a way to form the tubular edging from the band itself so that it forms as weaving progresses and does not need to be added later. I wonder why this technique fell out of use in Peru.

I love seeing how these things turn up here and there, disappear here, remain there, evolve further there, are replaced by something even more ingenious somewhere else…The fact that these heddles are used by the Wayuu in their arid lowland home and also by the Guaranì here in steamy jungly lowland Bolivia, so far away, fascinates me.

The Worldwide Weaving Web, about which I often speak, means that I can have a new online weaving friend in rural Turkey asking me about backstrap weaving and telling me about the catalog of woven Turkish motifs that his mother has while a weaver and clothing designer in Bangladesh shares with me what he knows about backstrap weaving in his country. Techniques and information are shared instantly across the globe. I wonder how in ancient times designs and techniques were transported and shared and adapted among the weavers of this continent.

And then you have weavers who live along the relatively short length of Ecuadorian coastline who apply bands to strengthen the edges of their cotton saddle bags. Different techniques are used to both set up the loom to create the patterns and finish the woven pieces in different areas along the coast.. I am familiar with the way the members of one family of weavers in Manabi province finish their work by applying a woven band using a home made rigid heddle which I have shown many times here before. Yet it is worth looking at again..it is so cool!

This picture, taken by Kathleen Klumpp, shows my weaving teacher Trinidad weaving and sewing a band to the edge of a small bag.

This is how the edging looks on the fabric.

And then I see from an article in the Textile Museum Journal that further north on the Ecuadorian coast, on the Santa Elena peninsula, weavers also apply bands to the edges of their saddle bags but use a very different method which requires an extra pair of hands.

While one person sews the band to the fabric, another person manipulates the warp threads passing the warps which are looped on the fingers of their two hands from one hand to the other. The extra pair of hands would look like mine above (modeled on a drawing in the Journal article).

These are two very different ways to add a reinforcement band to the edge of a woven textile and both are being used within a relatively small area.

Do similar techniques develop independently or do they travel and get shared and eventually adopted and adapted? Why do some methods remain so different within relatively small areas? I know there are people who devote themselves to studying just this kind of thing. Me? I sit here and ponder!

Something that seems common in certain areas of Asia is the addition of string heddles to the warp while the actual warping is in progress on the stakes. Was it developed simultaneously in various areas or did it travel and get adopted? It seems like such an ingenious and time-saving thing to me. However, it is not something I have ever seen in use in my part of the world.

I know how to do it as I watched the Montagnard weavers warp when I visited them in North Carolina and, more importantly, filmed the process so I could study it over and over when I got back home….it was all happening so fast!

Even though I say it is clever and time-saving, I have not adopted this technique for my own weaving. I stubbornly cling to my favorite way of making heddles with the extra hitch which has the heddle loops held snugly on the heddle rod.

In the same way, perhaps the weavers of Manabi province in Ecuador and those on the peninsula further north are aware of each other’s techniques yet stick with their own methods believing them superior…who knows? My anthropologist friend Kathleen Klumpp no doubt can tell us that.

Here is the video I made of Ju Nie warping with two colors and making her heddles around one of the two as she goes. That is followed by a video I made in which I do it slowly and explain the process.

Angela, my Guaraní weaving teacher, certainly didn’t hesitate to ask to be taught how to make the kind of string heddles I use when she saw them on my loom and she started using them on her warp to replace one of her sets of chained string heddles straight away. She had seen string heddles on a stick before, wondered about them, but didn’t have anyone to show her how to make them.

And she was keen to learn how to do the three-color version of the technique she employs when an Aymara weaver visited from highland Chile.

And so, techniques and methods travel and get shared and then I guess one day no one will remember anymore how that particular technique managed to cross the Andean high plains and descend to the Bolivian jungle.

Well, enough pondering. Let’s see what has been happening in the Ravelry group where some weavers are still having fun with the Bedouin techniques.

Here’s Jennifer’s wall hanging which uses the al’ouerjan pattern and shajarah techniques. Many of the motifs in the central section were created and charted by Jennifer herself.

Traudi provided us with helpful pictures of her piece before and after washing. She made a placemat and had some tension issues and a bit of puckering, which didn’t all come out in the wash but, what is nice to see, is that the severe ridging that had formed in her cotton cloth disappeared with washing and pressing.

She used weft twining on both ends before leaving the fringe and her center pattern is the traditional Bedouin al’ouerjan design.

And to finish, I ‘ll just let you know that I put one more tidbit on my RESOURCES page this week. I am slowly but surely gathering up all those links.

Backstrap Weaving – Finnweave, Funweave and Finishes

FINNWEAVE, FUNWEAVE AND FINISHES

My finnweave piece is off the loom and is just the right size to make my storage bag. It will be a basic bag construction, simply folded in half and sewn together at the sides.

Then I will let it sit for a while to see what ideas I get about dressing it up….a strap will be needed, maybe some large tassels on each bottom corner and some kind of edging.

It is going to hold all the cds with photos from my recent travels. These are currently in a pile on the floor under my computer table which is on top of another pile of charts and booklets which is on top of another pile of….well, you get the idea.

Which is why I need another system. I am currently rearranging my wall hangings so I can hang my woven storage bags out of the reach of my cat.

I am hoping to have a bunch of these in different colors and structures to add to the “textile bazaar” feel of my room.

While this will be made into a usable product, I still feel that it should be filed in the category of “sample” as there are a few things about it with which I am not all together happy.

I have made a couple of other useful items from my samples such as, the two purses pictured at left, and I have all the pieces I have made here as reminders of how to chart designs or what to do and what not to do next time.

Give me some time and will probably sew all the samples up into something!

So, what am I unhappy about? Firstly, as I mentioned last week, my warps in the center of the piece were spaced wider than those along the sides so I know next time that I need to pay more attention to that.

The other thing is the separation of the layers. I know from doing warp-faced double weave that the two layers of fabric are not joined in places where there is no pick-up pattern but you really have to pinch the fabric and try to pull it apart to feel the separation of the layers in the warp-faced fabric.

However, in this balanced double weave structure, the separation of the layers is far more apparent and not something I like too much. I think it was a mistake weaving those long columns of motifs and leaving those long plain spaces between them. While, thankfully, the fabric doesn’t “billow” in the places where the layers are not attached (I have read that this is something that can happen), it does somehow feel unstable in those places.

The above sample designs have the pick-up better spaced across the width of the fabric. The narrow brown and white band, above right, is a reproduction of a pre columbian piece from Peru and you can see how the weaver has added small spots, crosses and squiggles in the negative spaces around the bird motifs in order, I would imagine, to bind the two layers of cloth.

The lattice design in black and white (from an issue of Prairie Wool Companion) holds the layers together beautifully.

So, my next piece in this technique will have an all-over design and I have already found the one I would like to do on a Huichol bag. Now to chart it…I am not yet at the point where I can read the design straight off a photo but am getting closer! I might be able to do it with the actual cloth in my hands.

Of course, the fact that the layers in plain double weave don’t bind can be used to your advantage if you are wanting to make a seamless pouch (see the eyeglass case I made in this blog post).

From here I move on to what I call in the title of this blog “Funweave”. All weaving is fun for me but Jennifer in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group reminded us all this week about how fun and satisfying it can be to weave using heavy yarn.

I wrote a post entitled Big Bang and Big Thread some time ago about this topic when I made four backstraps very quickly using 12wpi yarn – Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale together with doubled Tahki Cotton Classic.

These were fast and fun to make with their pick-up patterns: pebble weave and simple warp float patterns but, hey, who needs pick-up patterns to make beautiful designs?

Look at that bag…what a beauty! Here is what Jennifer calls an ”eight-hour project” using Tahki Cotton Classic. The checkerboard design is programmed into the warp so that once the warp is on the loom it is all plain weave. She even did some weft twining. I have to tell you that weft twining is SLOW but not so bad when you are using yarn of this weight and can work your way from one edge of the warp to the other relatively quickly.

She also made a backstrap using Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale which is heavier than the Tahki Cotton Classic.

So, I decided this week to show you a little about basic weft twining and made a couple of videos.

My interest in this technique goes back a long way starting with Cheryl Samuel’s beautiful book on Chilkat dancing blankets and I have written about this in several previous posts.

What got me out of the book pages and into the technique was seeing the twining on textiles made by the Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) backstrap weavers. They call this twining technique kteh. Some of their traditional designs can be seen above left.

On my first visit I only got to see the designs and didn’t see how they were created and so I started on some off-loom twining experiments using thick yarn as weft twined around cotton string.

I copied some of the Montagnard designs as well as woven motifs from Bedouin textiles and played with one, two and three-color twining.

I also started some one-color textured twining but got distracted when the opportunity came to actually go and learn twining with the Montagnard weavers and so I will return to the textured twining one of these days.

The Montagnard weavers twine their pieces off-loom. They twine the edges of their skirts and blankets. To make these large pieces, several panels are woven and then sewn together. Then the twining is added along the edge of the connected panels. I also understand after having spoken with Ngach that there are specialists to whom weavers take their cloth to be twined. Ju Nie often sends her skirt fabric back to her sister in Vietnam who twines the edges and returns it.

Even small pieces are twined off loom. The fabric is hung on a specially made stand or on a bar which is rests on two pieces of furniture.

Here I am learning to twine with Jarai weaver Ngach. This is a beautiful way to twine. The thread that Ngach uses is fine and she has her wefts wound on bobbins. Her movements are fluid and graceful.

There is more detail on my second visit with the Montagnard weavers in this post.

Here is a short video I made of Ngach twining. After you watch the instructional video I have made, you will better understand what she is doing in the different movements. Watch how she twists the wefts sometimes once and sometimes twice and note how tightly she holds the warps under tension. She has her woven piece sewn around the metal bar so she can pull down on the warps. This is something I couldn’t do with my off-loom lap twining.

I have tried both on and off-loom twining and find that I much prefer twining while my woven piece is still on the loom. For me, it is easier to twine around warps that are held under tension. This also allows me to twine in the middle of a weaving as the Bedouin often do.

Something I have yet to try which I have seen in Bedouin textiles is twining a design that is completely embedded in the cloth, that is, it does not travel from edge to edge but sits in the middle completely surrounded by weaving. (see here…although I can’t be sure if this is twining or in fact wrapping, soumak or some other technique that is worked in conjunction with a ground weft which would bind the whole piece of fabric together). What do you all think?

I have made two videos showing two-color twining as I do it on the loom (not as I was taught by Ngach.) The first video shows how to twine with two colors and determine which color shows on the surface to create your pattern.

I am twining in the middle of a narrow band woven with yarn that is very similar to Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale. I use the same yarn as the warp and weft for the twining and I twine around groups of six warps.

I am working sitting in my backstrap loom with the warp under tension.

I start by tying the two strands of weft in a square knot. The Montagnard weavers twine from left to right leaving the weft tails hanging decoratively at both edges. If you are planning on sewing your piece and hiding the weft tails, you may want to start with a slip knot which you can later easily undo and therefore not have a bulky knot interfering with your seam.

If you look at the large picture of Jennifer’s bag earlier in this post, you will see that the twined wefts sit on the surface of the cloth at an angle.

The next video shows how to create two rows of twining at once with the wefts lying at opposite angles creating little “v”s.

To have this show up well, this kind of twining should be separated from the rest of the two-color twining by a row or two of single color preferably in a third contrast color. You can also stack several rows of this for a very nice effect.

You can see it in red and white on this piece I made surrounded by black.

I start by hooking the two threads together. By doing this, you won’t have starting tails.

If you prefer to have tails, you can just knot the four strands together. As for the length of the wefts, I will leave that up to you to figure by trial and error. Unless you really want to avoid wasting yarn, I would go with long wefts which can be trimmed later. Having long pieces of weft to hold and work with in your hands is easier than having short ones which you can’t quite grasp.

As you can see, the weft builds up around the warps in vertical columns. This means that any motif that has been drawn on a chart that is based on columns of squares can be used…motifs designed for cross stitch or knitting, for example. I choose to hide the little “bump” at the back of the fabric. I have seen Indonesian textiles that have the bump exposed and used as part of the design almost like little beads.

In the videos I am twining up and away from the weaving line but I have also on occasion, done it the other way around. I finish my weaving and then return to the start and twine around the unwoven warp ends at the beginning of the piece. The twining grows towards me rather than away. Both ways work equally well for me.

And what’s on the other side when you twine motifs? This is how the piece in the heavy yarn looks on both sides….

And here is the finer twining I did on the Montagnard-style piece that I wove…front and back. You will notice that the twined band is slightly wavy. As I had twined around groups of four warps, the twining actually turned out wider than the woven fabric. Since then, I have twined around groups of six warps and always used the same yarn as my warp and weft for the twining wefts. That works out perfectly.

An entire piece can be made up of twining. Those off-loom pieces that I made with the chunky yarn, with a bit more practice, could be used for mug rugs or sewn into bags. You can twine around a piece of cardboard and form a tube to create a seamless bag as my friend Franco did.

I twined around single strands of cotton string for those. The close-up at left will show you the material and a first attempt at some textured twining. For the piece in this picture I have used doubled strands of #3 crochet cotton for the weft.

Twining on a woven piece adds a nice bit of decoration and can strengthen an edge. I have not seen exactly how the woven Bedouin tent dividers are hung but wonder if they are hung from the twining in the mid sections of the weaving. I imagine those tent dividers are very heavy and perhaps the stronger, more rigid twined parts can support the weight of the hung weaving (pure speculation on my part).

I used twining in a single color to edge these placemats and mug rugs just for something different.

I wanted a sturdy shoulder strap for my loom bag and so twined the whole thing with #10 cotton. I twined in the word for ”weave” in different languages. The twining was done width-wise and all the weft ends were sandwiched between the twined band and another woven one which were sewn together.

Remember the “sausage” bag I made last week? Well I finished it by sewing in the zip and am still lamenting the fact that the twining ended up on the bottom!

It really holds a lot of stuff and will make a great toiletries bag for travel. The twined motif has three colors in the center and with practice you will see that it is not any harder to twine with three colors than with two.

And speaking of decorative finishing techniques, Tracy in the Ravelry group showed us the pretty herringbone stitch that she is working along the edge of one of her Weave Along projects. Tracy lives in Doha, Qatar and has made contact with a Bedouin weaver there who uses this finish on her woven pieces.

On the left you can see a pebble weave piece she is also currently working on using her homespun yarn.

Here are other Weave Along projects from the last couple of weeks…..As you know this Weave Along is all about PLAIN WEAVE.

Peg and Cindy made their first bands. Cindy used her handspun. Ellen and Jenny made backstraps. Jenny used a semi rigid heddle on her backstrap loom.

Janet has both balanced and warp-faced projects on the go.

Marsha is doing both balanced and warp-faced double weave.

Ellen made a bookmark from her first supplementary weft band and Traudi made mug rugs charting her own design in warp-faced double weave.

Susanna is weaving her first ever backstrap piece while Dyggvi is planning a Tibetan-style bag with bands made using the simple warp floats technique.

So, I hope you use the tutorial, twine away…and show me what you have made.

Backstrap Weaving – Bag Mad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Huichol piece is slowly moving along…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s her piece pictured at left.

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

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

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

In any case I wanted to weave it.

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

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

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

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

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

After that, all I could see was diamonds!!

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

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

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

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

So that was all a bit of a fun distraction!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Backstrap Weaving – Last Stop Maryland

The last stop on this trip is Maryland but, on the way, there was Massachusetts…my first time in this state and here I enter the worlds of Uzbek, Burmese and Japanese Saori weaving.

But first let me show you the beautiful place where I got to hang out for my first week…

This is the home of Pam Massachusetts. That barn is Pam’s weaving studio where she invites local weavers and spinners to hang out. Pam and I met quite some time ago on Weavolution. Then we got to see each other at Convergence where Pam brought her backstrap loom and we got to weave together. Weaving Today even included a picture of us together in their newsletter.

Now if you are wondering where exactly this pretty place is, it is in the vicinity of Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. No kidding, that is the name it was given by the Nipmuc tribe.

Pam invited me to come out to her place and stay and weave with a group of ladies that we nicknamed the SOWs (sisters of the warp). You can see by the green grass that the spring has been quite wet. I got to enjoy a few sunny spring days before the big wet hit again. It was lovely walking through that lush deep green grass dusted with dandelions on the way to the studio each day and breathing in the scent of the apple blossoms just outside the door.

Pam’s garden includes vegetables and dye plants. Above you can see her madder and weld plants with which she will dye fiber red and yellow.

An earth loom with a weaving in progress greet the weavers. Pam is also the local loom “doctor” who is more than happy to make house calls. Her Studio is relaxed and intimate and is an open house with doors open to welcome weavers who just want to come in and use her looms. I found myself running down there one night at 9.30pm after stumbling onto something online that I simple had to try weaving right then and there!

There are something like fourteen looms in her barn studio and it is a lovely space with an antique spinning wheel, an Uzbek rug loom and weavings from many parts of the world amongst its treasures. Pam has been to Uzbekistan three times and her home and studio are decorated with fine pieces that she collected there…fine silk rugs and hangings and embroideries.

Bags in coarser wool yarns with those two-color alternating warp floats that I love…not pebble weave and therefore not double faced but just as fun to weave on the backstrap loom.

It was fun seeing these designs “in person” after having reproduced very similar ones from images of yurt bands I had seen online. The design on the piece I made at left is very similar to that on one of the bags in Pam’s collection.

Tassels, warp floats and supplementary weft patterns. It seems that the weaving was turned on its side to make the bag on the right.

And then there is this Uzbek rug loom which Pam acquired after an exhibit in the US and those marvelous tools for knotted pile rug weaving. My friend Janet in Northern California just took Sara Lamb’s class on cut pile work at CNCH and I can’t wait to see what she makes. She is using her own handspun wool.

I, on the other hand managed to get hold of ninety packets of that acrylic cut yarn that is used for rug hooking and will somehow lug all that back to Bolivia. It was all free at this cool recycle place, Wachusett Recycled Resource Center, that Pam’s friend Joan took me to. The colors are great!…terracottas and olive greens, burnt oranges…all those colors I love. At least I will have something to practice with until I figure out what is the best yarn to use and then see what I can get in Bolivia. It is not a very woolly environment where I live in the hot jungly part of Bolivia. And yes, call me crazy, but I will be doing it on my backstrap loom.

This book which Pam gave me will be one of my guides along with Noreen Roberts and Sara Lamb’s books which I have at home.

Materials are donated to the recycle center by local manufacturers and individuals and the center is open to all to take what they need or can find useful. It has all kinds of paper, fabrics, yarns, containers and various other craft supplies. It was fun going through it all. And if you go nuts and pick up stuff that you don’t really need, you can always donate it back the following week.

So, we had our SOW gathering in Pam’s studio…

We wove indoors tied up to Pam’s floor looms while Pam herself chose to weave outside on the balcony overlooking the apple blossoms with birds flitting in and out of the bird feeder.

No fear of Tony the cat upsetting the birds. He chose, as most cats seem to do, to lie on top of my weavings and snooze.

Warping and weaving. It was warm enough at least the first couple of days to break out the summer gear.

We learned four-stake warping for pebble weave with both handspun wool and weaving yarn.

And here is the entire gang of SOWs at the end of the three days.

Pam has woven on a backstrap loom before and has taken classes with Ed Franquemont. She has her own Guatemalan loom and it is nice to see her back in the backstrap and keen to get into this again. Back up at her house she tied up to one of her smaller floor looms which wasn’t working too well and has just found the perfect place hooking to the bottom of her sofa.

Jim kept us entertained with his didgeridoo skills. Shame on me the Aussie who can’t play a didgeridoo… I am not even sure if I can spell it right.

From there I was whisked off to group member Joan’s home in Worcester, the city of seven hills…now this I can spell right after thinking for some time and even writing to tell some friends that I was going to “Wooster”. (oops!)

Worcester is home to the “three-deckers”, the three-storey buildings that you see above. They were built to house three generations of families each with their own floor as a solution to a need for increased housing created by industrialization. They date from post-Civil War (pre-1895) to the 1930s. Seven major styles have emerged over the years, some being finished with cut shingles, others include rounded turrets, columns and balconies and there are currently around 4200 three-deckers still standing in the city.

Joan invited me to her home so that I could go visit with a Burmese backstrap weaver with whom her friend Naomi has been working.

But before I get into that I must show you the gorgeous house in which Joan and her husband Attila live. It once belonged to a college fraternity and is full of tales of secret alarm buttons, beer chutes and escape passages and one can only imagine the goings-on within its walls in its heyday.

I fell in love with the Florida room at right. I can just imagine backstrap weaving in there on a sunny spring day.

Even in this urban environment, their garden was filled with birds, plants, shrubs and flowers. Joan is a walking plant encyclopedia and she and her husband also grow fruit and vegetables which they pack in baskets and give to seven needy families in the area.

So off we went to visit with Burmese backstrap weaver Dar Ku.

There was some confusion about whom exactly Dar Ku was going to allow to sit and watch her weave and I was expecting someone perhaps a little shy, stern and serious with whom it may be difficult to communicate.

At first we were told that only I would be allowed to sit and watch her weave and that Naomi and Joan would have to wait in the living room.

However, we arrived to find a smiling, cheerful and entirely welcoming woman who was eager to show all of us her weaving and traditional clothes.

Dar Ku enjoyed looking at the book I made to describe my experience learning to weave in coastal Ecuador. The plants and flowers reminded her of her home in Burma and she was excited to see the cotton plants and told me about how here mother used to spin cotton. She was weaving a piece patterned with supplementary wefts which is destined to be a church altar piece. The piece is woven back side up and all the turns of the supplementary wefts are made on the back of the fabric. After several rows of patterning, Dar Ku would turn the loom over and spread the warps to reveal the motif on its right side in all its glory.

I took one of my backstraps and a pebble weave piece in progress and she was intrigued by the pebble weave pattern which appeared on both faces of the weaving. Her backstrap was made from a simple rice sack with sticks in the sides to which the straps were attached.

Dar Ku’s warp was circular, like an inkle loom warp and she clamped the fabric to stop it from slipping as she beat between the two loom bars shown above. I was in luck and was able to purchase a spare set of bars from Naomi. These bars come from Thailand where many of the Burmese immigrants in the US spent time in refugee camps. Naomi works with an organization called WRAP Weavers (Worcester Refugee Assistance Program).

These Burmese weavers, like the Montagnard weavers that I met in North Carolina, like to use a foot brace against which to push while they weave. Dar Ku did not have one and is learning to adapt and weave without it but I did notice that her beat was rather soft as a result.

Dar Ku above is working on a supplementary weft pattern. The warps under which the wefts pass are programmed into two sets of string heddles. Other designs are woven by picking up certain warp threads as you can see on the right.

Pam from Firewatch Weavers had donated several cones of white thread to the weavers and here Dar Ku is showing the dress that she wove for her daughter with this yarn. At right is a piece that she made using Thai silk thread.

Above you can see how Dar Ku spread the warps to reveal the right side of her supplementary weft patterned piece. On the right is one of her warp float patterned fabrics.

Naomi later showed us tubs and tubs of fabric made by Dar Ku and other weavers in the Burmese community which are to be sold at various fairs and events over the summer. It was surprising to see how much they use the simple warp float technique and the interesting color combinations they chose.

My hostess, Joan, was very generous and had all sorts of gallery visits and sightseeing planned for me but in the end I decided that I really just wanted hang out with her and chose simpler activities to fill our days. Besides, the weather was cold and drizzly and more suited to indoor pursuits.

Joan got me set up on her Saori loom.

She figured that she had explored my kind of weaving and that I should now explore hers.

She felt that Saori would release me from the constrictions of warp faced structured weaving.

Well, I don’t know if I really get or accept the whole philosophical business behind Saori weaving but I have to say that I did enjoy weaving on the Saori two-shaft floor loom and had fun playing with the bewildering array of yarn that Joan has collected from the recycle center.

She has bags and bags of all kinds of “novelty” yarns and I just grabbed a bit of this and that and pedaled and threw, pedaled and threw the shuttle without any plan at all.

It was the first time I had ever woven anything significant on a floor loom and I thoroughly enjoyed the novelty of it.

Joan planned a visit to Mihoko Wakabayashi’s Saori weaving studio and I cringed at the thought that she may expect me to take my “creation” (see image at left) along to show. The thing about the Saori loom is that you can take the whole project off the loom and transport it in a neat and manageable package to another place and another loom. Flick a few levers, latch some hooks and turn a few knobs and your project is set to go. Thank fully she didn’t have me take my piece!

At the studio I met owner and Saori Master Mihoko Wakabayashi. She was eager to see my backstrap weaving and it was fun meeting her students and seeing all that they have been doing with the Saori style fabric that they have been creating. While I always say “backstrap weaving isn’t for everyone”, the Saori mantra is the exact opposite.

There we are posing with Mihoko’s wall hanging which she is just about to submit to a juried exhibit. The piece she is wearing was woven by an autistic weaver in Japan.

Her students were happy to pose with caps made from Saori style fabrics and show me their work.

At right you can see the pigeon holes where students keep their projects so that the looms can be freed for others. The projects can be quickly and easily popped off a loom and stored.

Mihoko’s studio was a quiet restful place that evening which is something I kind of needed as Joan had taken me with her for her weekly stint at the Boys and Girls Club that afternoon. Well, I had had no idea about what this entailed. I knew that we were going to teach weaving and crafts to a group of kids but I was not quite prepared for the noise and the onslaught of enthusiasm. I had quite innocently offered to teach finger loop braiding while Joan got the kids going on their weaving projects. This would keep them entertained until they could get their turn at the loom.

Well it was a huge success! Unfortunately I can’t show pictures without releases from parents but there were boys and girls of all ages making braids and loving the craft and the attention. I think the high school volunteers most enjoyed the braids and were planning earrings and all sorts of things with their new fiber skill.

Now I am in Maryland with friends. My trip has reached its end and I can’t think of a nicer home and better bunch of people with whom to take a wee breather before heading back to Bolivia.

BUT…between Massachusetts and Maryland there was the Mannings, pictured above,….that wonderful weaving store and school in Pennsylvania, another backstrap group to weave with and warm folks like Carol and Ron Woolcock, Helen and all the Mannings staff to spend a peaceful three days with. But not peaceful enough to be able to get my blog post out on time! More about that part of the trip next week but in the meantime I will show you the blanket under which I slept in my cozy Mannings bedroom….

It is actually a wool/mohair shawl but I just had to drape it across the foot of my bed when Carol showed it to me. It was made by David Xenakis who is a good friend of Carol and Ron’s and was featured in an issue of the Prairie Wool Companion. Named the “Quatrefoil” shawl, Mr Xenakis wove this 34″ wide even-tied overshot project on a rigid heddle loom using two 12-dent heddles, two shuttles and two pick-up sticks.

Now there is something inspiring with which to leave you…..!