weft twining – Page 4 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – What’s on the Other Side?

I have been looking at and thinking about what is on the “other side” of woven cloth and about the different attitudes of weavers from different cultures to what can be seen on the “wrong side” of the fabric. Some weaving structures are completely reversible as is the case of most complementary warp structures.

You can see both sides of my pebble weave piece at left and can probably appreciate that sometimes it is difficult to decide which side to make the “right” one as I had to in the case of this guitar strap when putting on the length adjustment buckle. As this is being sent to friend, I have actually left the decision up to her and only pinned the fabric in place around the buckle.
I always start with what I expect to be the right side facing me as I weave and find that sometimes I completely change my mind abut which side I like best once the piece is off the loom.

The wrong side of the weaving can also reveal just the information that is needed to be able to quickly identify the weaving structure.

For a while I was scratching my head over pictures of the yurt band that my friend Lisa had bought thinking it was pebble weave until she eventually sent me a picture of what was obviously its wrong side and I was then able to see that it had been woven using what I call simple warp floats.

At that time I didn’t much care for techniques that didn’t produce two “good” sides but who could resist trying to weave these gorgeous yurt band patterns?

Then it was a matter of getting the charting paper out, searching the net for more images of these bands and getting down to weave.

I must admit that lately I have gone a little crazy about this technique as I find more and more examples of its use in places like southern Iran, Mexico and tropical lowland Peru.

This weaving structure produces a definite right side. However, even though the wrong side with its exposed wefts looks nothing like the upper face, it can still be quite appealing depending on the color weft that you choose to use.
In the case of the yurt bands, only one side of the band is visible anyway when it is wrapped around a yurt. The piece I wove above right was made into a zippered purse and so no one needs to know what the inside of the purse looks like.

I am guessing that the day will come when there is a nasty spill on one of the place mats pictured above left and that I will be wishing that I could just flip it over and have the same design on the other side…oh well.

I might mention here that I just received my copy of The Journal for Weavers. Spinners and Dyers from the UK which has a beautiful article on Kyrgyz textiles by Stephanie Bunn which includes yurt bands made in this kermé technique. She quotes a Kyrgzy person who says “Kyrgyz weavers are all mathematicians”. Bunn then goes on to say “I found that trying to make the rhythmic pattern of kermé was the kind of experience that made me want to weep, although time improved matters.” You can read that article here.

I am infinitely grateful that I was taught the base of this technique by my wonderfully patient weaving teachers in coastal Ecuador and so taking the next step to kermé was relatively easy.
The two pieces if weaving below have been woven in another technique with the same basic warp manipulations but their “back” sides are vastly different…

The motif above right is a smaller version of one of the Bedouin motifs on the belt above left.

The belt has been woven in warp-faced double weave and so the motifs are exactly the same on both faces with their colors reversed.

Unfortunately both sides will never be appreciated as only one face is ever seen! I wove this in double weave as this technique produces something sturdy enough to be used as a belt.

The camera strap I wove at left makes better use of this technique and I didn’t have to decide which face to make the “right” one.

Now look at the back of the piece above right which I show below…

This piece has been woven using the simple warp substitution technique which produces as you can see long floats. Most people do not have a good reaction to these long floats. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of them but it depends on your intended use for the piece. If this band were mounted on webbing, for example, it would make a good strap for a camera or a belt and it is a very simple weaving technique.

And this is where people in different cultures see things in different ways. While we may wrinkle our noses at the excessively long floats, the Bedouin people use this technique to weave motifs into very large pieces of fabric that are used as tent dividers. Both sides of the fabric are seen (although I have read that they are hung so that the “right” side faces the men’s living area). They are not pieces of fabric that are being continually handled and so I guess that the long floats are not impractical.

You can see the very long warp floats on the back of the Bedouin piece that Tracy in Qatar sent me. Some of the warps have even broken through age or use….hard to say which. What I do love about these particular long floats is that I get to really handle and examine the Bedouin handspun wool.

And then what about all the different kinds of supplementary weft techniques? I have only just scratched the very surface in this having learned the inlay technique on warp-faced fabrics which produces a single face of pattern and a double faced technique from Guatemala .

The double-faced technique can be seen above left on a Guatemalan weaving. This particular technique, as far as I know, is unique to San Antonio Aguas Calientes. My reproduction on the right was glued down onto the cover of my notebook in which I documented the technique so the other equally pretty face cannot be seen!

Even the weavers in Guatemala don’t get to show off the other face as they use this technique largely on their huipiles (blouses) alongside single-faced techniques.

Small babies’ caps are also made with fabric woven using only this double-faced method.

This hair sash from Jacaltenango was woven with a supplementary weft technique that produces two equally beautiful faces.

Sometimes the back of a piece patterned with supplementary wefts is left with small weft tails hanging…

They can be a merry mess while the piece is in progress…

Or they can be cut right off and hidden entirely within the sheds so one would never know by looking at the back of the cloth that the other side was a riot of supplementary weft pattern. Look at the plain red back and colorful front of this hair sash from Aguacatan…

Look how much pattern weft material is used in those tassels!

When the weft patterning is particularly profuse the resulting weft tails on the back can be quite a sight! This is an old piece of huipil from, I was told, Chichcastenango. Many years of laundering have created quite a tangle of weft ends on the back. This is all quite acceptable to the Guatemalan weavers.

I was very much taken with the following Guatemalan belt that Teyacapan has on her Flickr page and asked her to photograph the back so I could see how the pattern had been worked.

I love the blocks of pattern that the weaver has used! As I was saying in last week’s post, the supplementary weft pattern does not have to be worked on a blank canvas. It looks like this weaver has worked her weft pattern on tiny strips of fine warp float designs.

How is this for a canvas for supplementary weft patterns?

These pieces are from the areas of Nebaj and Cajul in Guatemala and again show how one face of the fabric can be completely different to the other. You can choose to show your bright stripes one day (free of any weft ends) or birds flitting about the corn plants another.

Some weavers actually work doing their supplementary weft patterns with the wrong side of the fabric facing up.

I got to visit Burmese weaver Dar Ku on my last visit to the US. She was happy to demonstrate for me while giggling and saying “It’s easy, it’s easy”. Her beat is surprisingly light and she does indeed make it look easy. Of course we all know not to fall into that trap! What fun to turn the piece over and see the right side with its neat patterns.

Franco shared a video of Lahu weavers from Thailand weaving supplementary weft patterns into tremendously long warp-faced pieces. The weaver is using a single-faced technique laying the supplementary wefts from edge to edge within the pattern sheds controlled by heddles and pattern sticks.

Here is another nice video of supplementary weft patterning from Acatenango Guatemala…one of the many videos that Red Corn Tours posts to its Facebook page every week. I watched this happily while asking myself “What’s on the other side?” and then the videographer, good chap, filmed from under the loom and I got to see the other side. What happy colors!

This is what has caught my attention most recently. I fished this out from the hundreds of photos I took on my US trip last spring when I got to photograph some gorgeous textiles from Bhutan in the collection of Betty Davenport.

I wove some motifs from one of the pieces into one of my more recent projects and now I have my eye on doing something like these zippered purses which Betty made from her samples using patterning techniques from Bhutan.

The supplementary weft pattern has been worked on a twill (on the left) and balanced plain weave (on the right) ground. Aren’t these pieces striking? There has been some talk of twills in our Ravelry backstrap weaving group which is what turned my mind to this project…that and my recent dabbling in supplementary weft patterns on interesting ‘canvases”. What’s on the other side? I don’t know…I didn’t think to look!

I wove a small twill sample a long time ago on my backstrap loom.

I don’t know a whole lot about non-warp-faced weaves (but I am slowly learning!) and so I just looked at a picture of a twill in my copy of Irene Emery’s Primary Structure of Fabrics and set up my loom with three sets of string heddles and a shed rod holding the warps in the four sheds. I am not sure if I got the sett right…it was all guess work.

Not having any kind of reed to use at that time, I spaced the warps by lashing between them on the loom bar. It worked well for this small sample using #3 crochet cotton for both warp and weft. I had just read a discussion on Weavolution about the use of floating selvedges and so decided to try one of those too. And, as usual, I used the tiny sample as a business card pouch. I learned a lot!

Another one of these non-warp-faced weaves that I find quite easy to handle on the backstrap loom without the use of a reed is finnweave. It behaves well enough for me. I have had the benefit now of seeing ”in person” the Huichol bags woven in this technique in the collections of two of my friends in the US so I know what I need to be striving for.

This is 10″ wide and is one of the storage bags I planned to make this month. Having used up pretty much all my black thread on some unexpected distractions, I chose blue and yellow for this project instead of the planned black and white. The designs are taken from Huichol and Otomi bags and belts. The flower design is actually taken from traditional Scandinavian finnweave pieces. The Otomi use a motif that is so very similar but I prefer the Scandinavian version.

I am using three sets of string heddles and a shed rod to hold the fourth shed. And what’s on the other side, you ask? This technique I am doing is not truly reversible. You could get away with showing certain motifs on both sides. They wouldn’t be mirror images but they would look okay. However, the patterns I have chosen are not really amongst those.

Now here is the other project about which I am CHOCHA!! (chocha is used here in Bolivia and Argentina to mean “exceedingly pleased”!). I guess a lot of the pleasure comes from the fact that I am not skilled with a sewing needle, don’t own a machine and have never sewn anything from my handwovens larger than cell phone pouches and eye glass cases and a couple of very box-like shoulder bags.

I just love how this all started as an experiment in ikat design with no intention whatsover to end up with a bag. I was bored with weaving the plain black piece of fabric with its two ikat strips and so added some supplementary weft patterns…motifs from a weaving from Bhutan in Betty Davenport’s collection. Then I decided I wanted to do something with it and the bag idea developed. I wove a strap and then another piece of plain black fabric for the back and finally a small piece of plain black for the flap.

How wonderful is the backstrap loom for enabling me to weave up the small pieces to put this bag together with very little waste.

Jentide from the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group showed us how she made a flat bottom for her tote bag and so I used that sewing technique and Amber had created a button hole in one of her bags so I did the same by separating the warp in the middle and weaving with two wefts. I wove a small supplementary weft motif on either side of the button hole.

I cut and shaped the flap edging it with a tubular band to cover the raw edge. The bag is still missing a zip. Zips are nice for the way they can hide raw edges.

However, I turned the fabric sideways to sew this latest bag and so have two nice clean selvedges at the top.

And if you haven’t seen enough black yet, here is the other thing that I am still working on…

Here is the supplementary weft pattern on its “spotty” canvas that I wrote about in detail last week. I added some weft twining in the middle and am still working on the weft twining at either end. I have no immediate plans for this piece but am bound to come up with something to further test and hopefully extend my meager sewing skills.

Now I am planning a tote bag in bright Guatemalan style stripes….enough black, right?!

Some progress from the third week of our backstrap plain-weave Weave-Along…

Marsha has chosen fall colors to make a piece which she says reminds her of Halloween, Thanksgiving and candy corn. Amber is making a tote bag by sewing two of her backstrap woven panels together. It is gorgeously simple and beautifully woven.

Misskineta, our newest active member, has started her first ever warp-faced piece while Tracy, fresh back from her summer vacation has jumped straight back into the loom with a lovely balanced piece which I believe is already off the loom. Janet is making progress on the panels for her indigo-dyed shawl. Her picture collages tell the story…

I dug out all my textile photos from my spring trip to get the shots of Dar Ku and Betty’s purses to post here and now have a whole lot more images and ideas swirling! Let’s see what materializes….

Backstrap Weaving – Delightful Distractions

If all had gone to plan, I would have had one and a half storage bags done by now as part of my three-bag goal for the month of September. My black bag with the supplementary weft motifs from Bhutan should have been sewn and ready to stuff and hang and my Huichol design bag in finnweave should have been at least half woven.

However, some delightful distractions came my way and had me wandering off in other directions. That Worldwide Weaving Web that I am always talking about came a-knockin’ and the Band Weavers’ Grape Vine came a-tappin’.

At left you can see a band woven by JacQueline Teller on her inkle loom. You may remember that I recently posted a picture of a bag she had made by sewing several plain-weave inkle bands to canvas which we were using in our Weave-Along group for inspiration.

Annie MacHale (ASpinnerWeaver), queen of sashes, drew my attention to the band at left on JacQueline’s blog and, apart from the gorgeous multiple tones of blue and peach that she has used, I was fascinated by the fact that she had used spots in her warp to enhance her supplementary weft pattern.

Whenever I have started a supplementary weft patterned piece I have always created a blank canvas of single color weave on which to place my patterns. It never occurred to me that the canvas doesn’t necessarily need to be blank and that colors that have been incorporated into the warp can be used to supplement the inlaid weft patterns. JacQueline has used the light blue warp spots as part of her design and I love how she used the dark blue supplementary weft to create alternating color spots between the main motifs.

So, I wanted to play with this and, again, I just have to point out what a wonderful thing the backstrap loom is for making tiny samples.

The experiment grew from one column of warp dots to three and I found that when I made samples in black, a Sharpie was very handy for making adjustments to the pattern, blacking out unwanted exposed weft to get different effects.

The three columns of warp spots grew to three columns of three and after some applications of Sharpie to the black one, I decided on the design I liked for a bigger project.

So, this is what is on the loom at the moment…(speckled with fluff and stuff)….see what you started JacQueline? This is the black thread that I had just bought for my Huichol design bag!

I have just finished adding a band of weft twining and I will twine that same design along the beginning edge when I have finished weaving.

I think I will do a single large supplementary weft motif in the very center followed by another band of twining and then repeat the beginning. What is it going to be? I have no idea but it has been fun getting back into the weft twining. This is the first time I have done three colors together in one row of twining in #10 cotton. What to do with all those weft ends?…I will try to bunch them into a nice tassel as the Bedouin weavers do. You can read about how I learned the twining technique and watch a video of my teacher Ngach at work in this blog post.

Before the distractions completely took over my weaving week, I did manage to sew up my weave-along projects into little zippered purses.

And I wove the back panel of my black Bhutan/ikat bag before my new ball of black thread got swallowed up by the distraction. And that was when I got side tracked yet again by jentide’s weave-along project which you can see at left.

She made the fabric for this fabulous mini tote bag on her backstrap loom with the strap made on her inkle loom.

I love her stripe design but, apart from that, I am completely in awe of people who can sew. Of course I had to pester her with a bunch of questions about the construction of this bag and she pointed me to this wonderful web page where you can learn how to create a flat bottom for a bag.

This has had me pulling out the Reader’s Digest sewing book, that I had just about forgotten I owned, determined to learn once and for all some basic sewing skills (without the aid of a sewing machine, that is)and pinning and folding and pulling my poor Bhutan bag into all shapes.

Here is its latest pinned form…

Meanwhile I am looking out for other suitable materials to use as supplementary weft. I have some gorgeous hand painted 10/2 tencel that my friend Lisa gave me that works beautifully and one skein goes a long way. Wool works well too as it fluffs out on the surface to give good coverage without “fattening” the shed in which it is laid.

And then I remembered the fine loosely plied and fluffy skeins of acrylic that I had bought in Guatemala.

What I would really like to do is make super fine supplementary weft pieces using sewing thread as the ground warp and weft just like the ladies do here in Bolivia to make their hat bands. Their supplementary wefts are acrylic and much the same as the Guatemalan thread that I have.

The fineness of the weave means that they can get away with having quite long weft floats.

I love how the wefts are often used to fill in the negative spaces and outline the motif in the ground weave rather than forming the motif itself.

The floats are particularly long when they do that and I have not been able to reproduce these ”negative space” designs yet as my patterning material has been too heavy and would have resulted in long and cumbersome floats. I have not yet reproduced any of the pretty Bolivian hat band designs.

One more thing I did this week was to experiment with the traditional Bedouin al’ouerjan patterns using non- traditional colors. The most common color combination I have seen is black, red and white.

Can you tell that black, terracotta and yellow is my current favorite color combination?

This warp substitution technique produces long floats on the back of the fabric which are not so bad in #10 cotton.

It is interesting to look at the many different variations of this design to see which one produces the shortest floats.

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I will finish with this week’s Weave-Along round-up…

Peg is weaving on a backstrap loom for the first time ever and using Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale mercerized cotton which I think is just perfect for first projects. See how quickly she has tamed that warped and how much she learned about laying in the weft and controlling the edges in such a short space. That yarn is so pretty. I have never woven anything with these multi-color type yarns. On the right, Janet has warped colorful stripes inspired by a piece of Guatemalan fabric that she has.

Dyggvi turned her narrow striped band into a neat zippered pouch and gave us the link to the instructions. Sylvie in France posted a picture of the making of her continuous string heddles on a gorgeous bright striped warp.

Jennifer’s homespun piece is under construction and Karri, who just completed her third ever backstrap woven piece is casting her critical eye over everything she produces and learning lots of lessons. We think her third project looks wonderful.

Both Amber and Marsha continue to turn out consistently straight, smooth, beautiful and useful pieces. Amber’s piece is one of two that will be sewn together to make a seat cushion. Marsha has hung her piece on a section of twisted vine. She has plans to modify it for its ultimate use. We’ll see about that next week.

Jennifer has taken the leap from homespun wool in natural colors to wild cotton stripes while Yonat, outside the weave-along, has been experimenting with those eye bending alternating warp float patterns.

Phew, quite a job winding all those colors! Many of us have come to know the “fun” of adding in all those strips of colors on the warping board and the special challenge all that cutting and tying makes for creating even tension. “Perfect” tension is something we all strive for and I think that we all come up with clever ways to somehow compensate for uneven tension once the warp is on the loom long before we are able to create that perfectly tensioned warp on the warping board. Unfortunately uneven tension will show up immediately in warp-faced plain weave in the form of ridging and cotton is particularly unforgiving.

All we can do is make sure that our warping stakes are firm and sturdy and then just practice, practice, practice. Some days are good warping days and some not!

Ridging will turn up unexpectedly and most annoyingly in a piece I am working on and I have found that a worn out hole and a leaning stake on my mini warping board has been the culprit on quite a few occasions. Cranking up the edge warps too tightly caused the particular ridging problem in the piece pictured at left.

Fortunately the ridging shows up in plain weave and not in float patterning which is what I mostly do. On the other hand, I know people who actually like the effect of the ridging. It’s a pesky and temperamental phenomena! I tried to weave a band specially for this blog post to show the ridging that results from crammed warps. The darn thing refused to ridge!

I suppose we could always do as my Montagnard weaving teacher, Ju Nie, does…

Many Montagnard pieces are woven with a multitude of fine stripes. Ju Nie joins the colors on the warping stakes with slip knots and then, once the warp is on the loom, she unties each and very knot, adjusts the tension and reties. It is not tedious for her. This is the way she was taught to do it and her large pieces woven in that “unforgiving” cotton are perfect!

Oh, and one more distraction to speak of before I go…one of my online friends just came back from Mexico where she bought a Huichol woven bag and is going to send me pictures. So, I am thinking it is just as well I didn’t get my bag project underway as her pictures are bound to have me changing my design plans. Thank goodness for those delightful distractions!

Backstrap Weaving – Oh, Those Sticky, Sticky Sheds.

Oh, those sticky, sticky sheds.

I am sure you all know what I am talking about if you have done warp-faced weaving with fiber like wool, llama or alpaca. I have not been heavily over-twisting my hand spun yarn and the advantage of that is a nice soft fabric but the disadvantage is hairy warps which make clearing the sheds a bit more challenging.

And it is not only the woolly stuff that can create this sticky problem. When I get into wide-ish warps with fine cotton, there is also a certain resistance, created by all those warps rubbing up closely against each other, to deal with too. I had to apply a few different strategies to get the sheds to open on the warp pictured above.

So, this week I made a very short video on the “strumming” that I employ to help open the shed rod shed.

I am quite gentle with my strumming and just use my fingers for this width of warp.

After my video segment I have added a short clip of Felicia in Candelaria using the tip of her wooden tool to strum the warps on her oblique loom. When I start working on wider warps, I will need to use my wichuña (llama bone tool) to strum. For now I just like to use the ready-made tools that I have quite literally “on hand”.

I have added this video to the FAQ page on this topic. That page already has a video I made showing how to open the heddle shed on wide and/or sticky warps. Hopefully these tips will help you to create clean sheds without any kind of heddle wrestling and the pilling and possible warp breaks that that can cause.

I also added another thing to the FAQ pages behind the scenes in response to people who were having trouble rolling up their warps. There is an FAQ page here on my blog showing how to roll up your weaving as you advance so that you can always be in easy reach of the heddles and weaving line. The method I show is dependent on two things: the second stick which you use to roll up the weaving needs to be of similar girth to the loom bar and the cords on your backstrap loom need to be chunky.

However, some people just use string or twine for their backstrap cords and so I have put together some step-by-step pictures for another, and far more common, way to roll up the warp. You can see that here.

You may be wondering about this green apple and eggplant warp that keeps appearing in this post. That is the second place mat in the set of four that I am making.

The design is based on what I am assuming was a Mexican belt that I was shown when I was traveling in the US recently. The belt was also made in purple, green and white but the tones of purple and green were completely different to those I used and were subdued and worn with age. I used the same two-color alternating warp float technique. It all looks very pebbly but it isn’t pebble weave. This is not a complementary warp structure.

What I particularly liked about the Mexican belt was the weaver’s use of supplementary weft along with the warp floats to introduce a third color. Some of the supplementary wefts had in fact deteriorated thus exposing parts of the horizontal bars and I liked the way this looked and so incorporated a little of all these features in this place mat design.

So, these two are part of a set. The first was influenced by Shipibo design of Peru. Could they be any more different?! I am looking forward to seeing a table with my four colorful and vastly different place mats and I am already planning the runner for the center. Actually, there are a few elements that tie these two pieces together. The pick-up technique in both is the same, that is, two-color alternating simple warp floats (or “warp floats galore” as I called it on my tutorials here). The little “X” design on the sides will be common to all as well as the weft-twined ends.

I have chosen the colors for the next one which are inspired by the culture from which I am taking its design…

I confess that I spent a lot more time at my loom this week than at the spindle. Maybe it’s because we have returned to our warm tropical splendor (although my Montagnard weaving teacher, Ju Nie, rolls up her warp for the summer and won’t touch it until cold winter weather once again keeps her indoors).

I did put in a bit of spinning everyday but have pretty much run out of colors in my Ashford prize package with which I would like to weave. Looks like I will need to do some dyeing which is always fun.

I don’t have access to this kind of prepared roving here in Santa Cruz and I really haven’t paid much attention to this stuff before.

I pulled out a strange blend of pink and brown from the package and was surprised to see the nice even kind of red that spinning it produced. Then there was an odd combination of what I am calling “Siamese cat brown” and “blankie blue” and that spun up into something rather nice too. Now you can see that I am into a straight yellow…a winner’s color in the Tour de Fleece. I can imagine combining all these colors in a piece.

The rest of the stuff in my bag will have to be dyed. As you may know, the Tour de Fleece is being run in conjunction with the Tour de France cycle race but there is very little interest in that over here when we have the Copa America in progress especially since I live with the Argentinean team’s number one fan.

I am very pleased about having woven this first Shipibo design in my place mat set as I would like to learn more about the textiles and the people who live in the lowland regions of South America and be able to show it all to you. Highland weaving, particularly that of the Cusco area, has been very well promoted and exposed to the world. It is a shame that not more is known by the general public about the textiles being produced by people in the lowland areas too.

Above are a few pieces I have made that have been influenced by textiles created by weavers living in the low-lying valleys, coastal regions or tropical interior of this continent.

These people include the Mapuche of central Chile and Argentina, the cotton weavers of coastal Ecuador, the Guarani of lowland Bolivia and the Huni Kuin, or Kene, of tropical lowland Brazil.

While I have used motifs of the Kene in my weavings, I have not used their technique and I give many thanks to Helena who introduced me to these people and their work.

Helena has woven pieces employing their techniques an example of which can be seen above. She also gave me a link to the following video showing the Kene at work.

I hope to be able to study one day with weavers of the Shipibo, Mapuche and other lowland cultures as I have with my weaving teachers here in lowland Bolivia and coastal Ecuador…thanks to Kathleen Klumpp who invited me to accompany her to Manabi province, Ecuador in 2007. And this is all just a tiny part of it.

And while I ponder the multitude of places to see, weavers to meet and textiles to admire here in South America, where I have barely scratched the surface, I am forever grateful to have been able to meet and study with weavers from the other side of the planet like Ju Nie and Ngach from the highlands of Vietnam and Dar Ku of Myanmar.

Betsy Renfrew, who is working with backstrap weavers from various Vietnamese hilltribes who have now settled in the USA, has just put a new video on You Tube about the Montagnard weavers in her community in North Carolina.

Please take a moment to watch the video and I will also give you a glimpse here of Ju Nie and Ngach at work during my visits and the beautiful textiles that they now have the means and motivation to continue creating thanks to the work of people like Betsy. I also met Naomi Northrop of WRAP Weavers in Massachusetts who does similar work with weavers among communities of refugees from Myanmar.

And finally, here is Colleen’s (aka Pancha on Ravelry) daughter Kira Luna showing off “this key tool in her make-believe job as a fairy messenger”. Colleen wove the body of the messenger bag using the tutorial on a yurt band border in two-color warp floats and finished it with weft twining (I am so happy that folks are trying the weft twining!) The strap was woven in double weave with a Bolivian flower motif. How cute is this?! Maybe this fairy messenger will leave me a comment.

Backstrap Weaving – Spinning Up Some Woolly Winter Warmth

It seems that I must have gone too far taunting the weather gods last week when I posted a picture of my friend Lalenya and I weaving in our summer gear in her beautiful flower-laden patio.

BAM! It got cold. Well, cold at least for here in banana land which means temperatures in the high 50s and low 60s. It’s sounds like a joke, I know, but we suffer here when the temperature drops that low in homes that are designed to stay cool rather than warm…cold ceramic floors, no hot water in the kitchen and electric shower heads that give tepid water at best unless you are willing to turn the pressure down to a dribble. And it is not only the people who are feeling it…thousands of fish turned up dead in the local Pirai River and Lalenya woke up to find her dog in a cramped up ball and had to take him to the vet.

Well, at least it has put me in a woolly frame of mind for the Tour de Fleece spinning challenge on Ravelry and it is fun reading posts from other wintry southern hemisphere folks in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and other South American countries who have been participating. And it is nice seeing the summery pictures from the northern hemisphere too.

ashford-gift — My Tour de Fleece challenge is spinning up the colors I like in this package of roving that I won from Ashford.

I got my socks on and spindle out and joined in what can only be described as a spinning frenzy. Everyday spinners post pictures of their progress. Some days have had over a thousand posts and while reading through and admiring the creativity of some of the shots, I have come to the conclusion that I am not a true spinner at heart. Again, I tell you that I don’t have a “refined palate” for spinning. All those pictures start looking the same to me after a while yet I do enjoy soaking up everyone else’s excitement and have looked at my own thread-laden spindle with a slightly more critical eye after reading a discussion on the beauty of the shape of a cop.

But the truth is…all I want to do is get this stuff spun and onto my loom!

Above you can see my progress so far…nothing compared to the majority of folks out there. On day one it was all rather novel , the cold, the wearing of socks, the spinning – that white roving was smooth as silk and so easy to spin.

On day two I really wanted to be weaving and so set myself up at the loom so I could follow online discussions and put in a turn or two on the spindle without even having to take off my backstrap.

In keeping with the Tour de France bicycling metaphor, my bike took a bumpy cross-country detour off the smooth race route with some crashes into bushes and rolls in the grass on the third day…that was a kind of rough and stubborn piece of roving. On day four I took my feet off the pedals and just coasted along… didn’t see much progress I am afraid but I was finally able to show off a fat cop on day five (very pleased with this new addition to my meager spinning vocabulary “cop”).

While others spoke eloquently of the breed of sheep and exquisite blend of fine fibers they were spinning, all I could say was that the white stuff was nice and the red was a bit tricky. (Again I can relate this to those of refined palate and taste who can make elaborate descriptions of wine while I simply know it as red or white).

I am pretty happy with the fact that I am spinning wool and can now add this to my fiber spinning experience which so far comprises llama….

and, more recently alpaca…

Although I have been spinning cotton in the way I was taught in coastal Ecuador, I need a lot more practice with that before I feel I will be able to weave with it.

In the midst of the spinning madness I was, of course, weaving and I have finished the first of what will be four placemats. This is not the first time I have made table ware and I have a few table runners and place mats, hotpads and mug rugs stashed away as gifts. I often forget I even have them.

I pulled out this one to remind myself of how to do hem stitching which is a finishing technique that I love and learned thanks to my friend Franco Rios who told me about this video. While rustling around in my gift basket, I discovered a bunch of bag projects that I had never completely finished as they are missing tabs, straps or buttons…out of sight out of mind. Some of them are now looking rather square-ish to me and I think I will try to cut and round off the flaps in the way my Guarani teacher showed me.

But, back to the new finished project, the place mat. The design is one that I saw on a woven bag made by the Shipibo people of tropical lowland Peru. I am hoping to make four placemats, each one being in a different color scheme and having a design from a different culture.

You can see that in the end I didn’t hem stitch the edges. I had originally wanted to twine the edges with a design based on the main motif much the same as I had done with this Montagnard piece…

That was the plan but when I finished the weaving I decided that I wanted to keep it simple and so twined in just plain brown instead.

I used the same yarn as I had for the warp and weft in the weaving and twined around groups of six warps.

In the past I have twined around four and the twined sections have ended up wider than the woven piece. A group of six warps seems to be the right size.

This was a nice way to protect the edges although a lot more time consuming than hem stitching. I am always happy for a chance to keep up the twining skills.

The design on the next place mat in the set will be based on a Mexican belt and these are the colors that I have chosen…

I hope to include a few small spots of supplementary weft patterning among the warp floats as I did in the small band experiment at left.

I really enjoyed this place mat project. It has been a while since I last wove a wide-ish piece and that terracotta color was such a pleasure to weave with. This is the first one I have made with #10 crochet cotton.

This was a new design for me and it is always exciting to see the pattern appearing. The designs I have planned for the next three are all new too.

Well, I hope all you northern hemisphere folks are having a lovely summer. I thought I would post a collection of pictures of backstrappers enjoying the outdoors and I hope you will feel inspired to gather up your sticks and go outside.

random posts — Sometimes you are lucky to come upon a random post or tree trunk in an unexpected place to which you can attach your warp. That’s my friend Ulla on the right with whom I traveled in Potosi.

salt lake and no tie up — There weren’t any trees on the Uyuni salt lake so Carolin used her bike. Janet has no need for such things…as a truly independent backstrapper, she uses her feet!

weaving at the lake and beach — Anna by a Chilean lake and me at the beach…Okay, so I didn’t find anything to tie up to in the sand. I inkled instead.

weaving with whatever is at hand — Bobbie has been camping at Sand Dune State Park and found something in the sand to tie onto. Sometimes you just have to get creative. Carolin’s warp is tied to a small table against which she is pushing with her feet.

It’s always nice when there is a deck rail to hitch to. Here at Lisa’s beach house we could listen to the birds and smell the ocean.

sheep and wool — Semi-outdoors. Weaving in the bunny barn and in the yurt at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. The yurt had a hole on its top through which I could look up and see the sky.

I am risking upsetting the weather gods again but if you had a patio or a view like this how could you not weave outdoors! If you have an outdoor weaving shot, please send it to me. Meanwhile those of us south of the equator will huddle indoors.

Happy weaving to all where ever you are. 🙂

Backstrap Weaving – Sleeping in Studios

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — The view from Betty’s studio (my bedroom) over rows of blueberry bushes and the forest on her tree farm.

If you believe in that sort of thing, I should be simply bursting with creative energy after having spent the last week in the homes of weavers Betty Davenport and Linda Hendrickson sleeping and soaking up inspiration in their studios.

At Betty’s I slept under her very own handwoven blankets with a spectacular piece from Bhutan directly above my head.

Above that, the wall extended to a very high ceiling and was adorned with two gorgeous ponchos from Peru.

At Linda’s I was surprised I could even sleep at all with her life’s work of tablet woven and ply-split creations filling every single wall space around my bed not to mention pieces she has acquired from such artists as Bhakti Ziek, Peter Collingwood and a master camel girth braider from India.

But then there were those soothing bands of woven words…

Anyone who has been following my blog will know that I am a big fan of Linda’s tablet woven letters and that I used her book Please Weave Me a Message recently as inspiration to twine weft into words on the strap for my loom bag.

Yes, it was something else being able to spend time with these two rock stars of weaving and I mean “rock star” in more than one sense of the words when I refer to my friend Betty Davenport.

I am guessing that few people know about some of Betty’s other pursuits and talents away from the weaving loom. I will tell you just one of them for now: Betty is a climber…a serious hard-core mountain climber. Well, she will tell you that she doesn’t climb anymore but there she has her award for having climbed the sixteen major peaks of the Cascades. As a member of Washington and Oregon climbing clubs she has traveled to many countries to hike and climb and the part that most impresses me is that she managed to combine this with weaving!

A tiny tatste of some of the dozens of meticulously labeled and catalogued fabrics and tools that Betty has collected on her trips.

You have no idea how much I wish I had had my love for backstrap weaving back in the days when all I could care about was racing up mountains and roping into canyons. Betty has so many great tales to tell of her travels in the mountainous regions of the world not only bagging peaks and hiking high trails but also meeting weavers and collecting textiles….the perfect combination of activities!

Anyone who has followed my blog will also understand how excited I was to be able to handle my first Huichol piece in balanced double weave and that bone tool on the left is a pick that Betty collected in Peru made from the bone of a condor.

Well, you can be sure that I photographed pretty much everything and still need to do some serious fact checking before I dare to put the pictures here but you will get to see all these treasures as time goes by. When I get home from this trip I will go through everything including Martha Stanley’s wonderful collection and make sure that everything is properly labeled.

more from Bettys collection — A couple more pieces from Betty’s extensive collection.

And here’s a fun thing…I wrote to Betty back in December 1995 as my Navajo weaving teacher in Colorado had sent me a copy of classified ads in a Handwoven issue. There was an ad for a weavers’ trek in Peru led by someone called Betty Davenport. I had no idea who she was.

At that time I was dying to go to Peru from my home in southern Chile to learn to weave but was quite terrified as the Shining Path had been very active and independent travel in Peru was not considered safe.

However, I was on a tight backpacker budget and, as wonderful as Betty’s itinerary sounded, I could not afford her trip at that time. So off I went on my own.

Would you believe that Betty still had my letter after all these years? She found it amongst old files and gave it to me at Convergence! We met again at the Tinkuy in Peru and now have had some quality time to spend together.

Here’s one more piece of the past to share and this is such a gem! This picture was taken at the Beka Rigid Heddle Conference in 1980. There’s Betty with Adele Cahlander looking at Betty’s then recently published book Textures and Patterns for the Rigid Heddle Loom. Again, if you have been following this blog you will know my high regard for the work of Adele Cahlander and understand why I so love this picture. Look at Adele Cahlander’s woven neck piece. Betty has recently republished a revised edition of her Textures and Patterns…. book.

Betty was with us at the backstrap weaving gathering we had in Linda Hendrickson’s studio in Portland. Linda generously offered her lovely space to the participants and gave me a place to stay.

Time just flew…it was “a whirlwind” as Linda put it and I so wish we could have spent more time to chat about Linda’s two passions…tablet weaving and ply-splitting. I was taken on a tour of her studio when all the weavers had gone home and we just scratched the surface. Years of work are on display there with each piece created by Linda or given to her having its own intriguing story. I heard about other teachers who had given workshops in that very same space… among them Ed Franquemont and Peter Collingwood…phew!

Here’s the workshop group after two days of backstrap weaving…

It was a fun and intense time together. I think everyone was pretty tired after day one. At least I didn’t have to travel and got to sleep in our very weaving space. I know of one participant who went on her way after the gathering with her backstrap string still attached to her waist, a couple of others went to dinner with name tags still in place and another went home with one of her weaving tools still “parked” in her hair just like some of the Guatemalan weavers do.

Here are a few more shots taken during the two days…

portland weavers — Banding together in Linda’s colorful space. Interesting warp color combinations and use of contrasting and matching wefts to create a simple design with warp floats, a technique used by the cotton saddlebag weavers with whom I studied in coastal Ecuador.

4 stake warping — The twins, Marie and Jeanie practice four-stake warping while Anita and Diane do the same under the watchful eyes of Betty. Peter Collingwood looks on from behind a piece of his macrogauze on a poster on the wall.

lindas collection — Amongst the treasure trove of collected and gifted items in Linda’s studio….a Huichol double weave bag from Mexico, different to Betty’s example for the finish around the upper edge….a ply-split camel girth from India.

hat and gauze — A hat from Uzbekistan. My online friend Caroline in Australia bought a similar hat and puzzled over the band on its edge and how it had been created. Linda told me that these bands are loop manipulated and that people often mistakenly assume that anything that has twined warps has been card woven. The other piece is a macro gauze by Peter Collingwood.

And then, what about this tablet woven stuff? I dabbled in it a little when I lived in southern Chile shortly before getting into backstrap weaving.

I really enjoyed it but then Andean pick-up took over even though one can easily weave with cards on a backstrap loom too.

I do enjoy picking up those warps and moving them around but I would like to get back into some card weaving if only to be able to better understand some of the woven pieces that I have been running into lately.

Weft twining became such an obsession…why not delve into warp twining?

I am guessing that most people will have seen tablet woven bands with designs similar to that pictured at left.

Just wait until you see how far Linda has pushed this weaving technique!

And then these…

Can you believe these were done with cards? So, I am into analyzing structures and all that but look what fun stuff you can do with card weaving! Too bad I don’t live in a scarf-friendly climate…same goes for socks.

And then there’s the ply-splitting. I was first attracted by the Indian camel girths made in ply-splitting but Linda has taken this technique and run with it. Here is one of her creations:

Her latest book teaches with step-by-step photos and instructions how to make the following ply-split baskets…

Ply-Split Baskets from Linda's book — Photo by Linda’s husband, John.

You can see each of these baskets on Linda’s website and click to see a larger view with detail of the structure as well as order her book.

So, I have been hanging out in the Pacific North West so it is quite natural that Chilkat and Raven’s Tail weaving has been falling into my lap. First, on the trip up from northern California, my friend Janet and husband Larry took me to a museum called “End of the Trail’ which houses several private collections of Native American crafts, clothing and tools.

Weee! My first Chilkat blanket. No doubt there was one in the museum in DC…somehow I missed it! I had a bus to catch and so we had to limit our visit and just quickly take in as much as possible. It is worth several short visits I would imagine. Janet has been there many times and never tires of it or fails to see something interesting or notice something new from baskets made from rushes, nettles, porcupine quills, beargrass, maidenhair fern, willow, horse hair and wild rye amongst other materials, hats, beadwork and tools made from wood, bone, horn and tooth.

Everything I know about Chilkat blankets comes from Cheryl Samuel’s wonderful book The Chilkat Dancing Blanket which I bought back in the 90s and have never used.

However, this is just a beautiful book to look at, stunningly illustrated and just fun to leaf through. The technique is weft twining with certain special manouvers which allow the twiner to form rounded shapes.

From what I gather, the twining which I studied used by the Montagnard weavers would be referred to in this area as Raven’s Tail.

And that is all I dare tell you lest I get it wrong.

Fortunately Sally Ishikawa came to stay at Betty’s and take my backstrap weaving class and brought with her….

a loom on which she was doing a Raven’s Tail piece plus two completed pieces of beaded and twined work to show. I asked Sally if she would be willing to write something about the techniques and her experience with them and she kindly obliged and so I will leave all further explanation to her….

Raven’s Tail and Chilkat

Three hundred years ago the people of the Western Alaskan Coast wove dramatic, twined robes that were worn around the shoulders during traditional dances. As the robes were danced the bold black and white geometric patterns were reminiscent of the feathers of the Raven as it flew in the sky. Today, these robes are called Raven’s Tail Robes. However, after the 1850s the Raven’s Tail weaving knowledge was nearly forgotten, and only eight complete Raven’s Tail Robes now exist. A weaver named Cheryl Samuel became so interested in this type of weaving that she traveled the world to examine the existing robes, and wrote a book documenting her findings called “The Raven’s Tail”. Today, there are new weavers that are carrying on the Raven’s Tail tradition.

The Ravenstail designs are very linear and geometric, but by 1850 most of the designs being woven were rounded. Perfect circles were possible because of some new developments to the twining technique. More color was also introduced…..especially yellow and blue. Whales, bear, salmon and eagles were a few of the animals that were woven into the Form Line Designs. The robes twined with these designs are called Chilkat Robes. Cheryl also wrote a book called “The Chilkat Dancing Blanket” that describes the history and techniques to weaving this type of robe.

I took a class from Cheryl in both Ravenstail and Chilkat weaving several years ago and have been weaving off and on for several years. Mostly off, I’m sorry to say, but recently I’ve been driving to Portland once a month to weave with John Beard (google him) and several others under his wing.

There is a robe in Portland, Oregon called the Transition Robe.

The upper half of this robe is woven in Ravenstail and the lower part is Chilkat. Since I live close, I’ve been lucky enough to see this robe a couple of times. A few years ago I thought it would be fun to do a little bead weaving and came up with my rendition of the Transition Robe for that.

Now I am trying to recreate that little beaded piece by twining with wool in the Ravenstail/Chilkat tradition. I am using traditional thigh spun warp and 2/12 merino wool for the weft. The loom is a vertical loom with warps that hang freely. The weaving starts at the top and the twining is pushed up to compact.

Sally at work on her Raven’s Tail piece piece based on the Transition Robe.

There are many good books on the designs of North West Coast artists and many good weavers with webs that show really, really beautiful new weavings. Enjoy the search.

I will leave you this week by showing you what my friend Anna has been up to. Remember Anna bicycling her way from Alaska to Ushuaia? Well, she is back in the Netherlands now and is not idle! She is refining her spinning skills on the drop spindle and is taking lessons on a wheel. I think I have started something here.(yay) 🙂

This pebble weave band that she was weaving on the road using my book to reinforce the lessons she had in Peru and at my place in Bolivia is now done. She just tied up to her bicycle, a convenient picnic table or chair and wove every chance she could….all the way from my home in Santa Cruz to Ushuaia!

This is what she did with the band…

Beautiful!!

Her spindle collection is going and she told me that her wheel teacher is eyeing her Bolivian spindle but she is not letting go. I will send her another if the pressure becomes too much!

She has one more warp left from those we made at my place to take on the road…a two weft double weave….I recognize those colors!

Bye bye west coast…I am now in Massachusetts. I set off to fly to Boston via Dallas. I got on the plane in Portland and got off….but not in Dallas as expected. I was seated and buckled up ready to go and then a last minute passenger came and I was removed! So back to square one in Portland. Well that’s how it goes on standby!

I spent the night in Dallas airport outside the secured area and so bedded down in the chapel and then finally made it to Boston the next morning where Pam Engberg has invited friends to come and backstrap weave in her studio. Another gorgeous rural setting!! More about that with lovely spring pictures next week. See you then.