Category: weft twining

Backstrap Weaving – Variations on a Theme and a New Tutorial

I have been all over the place this week…sewing, braiding, twining and weaving four different patterning techniques. Keeps me on my toes!

There was a lot of sewing as I finished the loom bag finally! This has been a long project mostly because I chose to twine the strap for the bag and that was slow slow slow. I decided to twine the word “weave” in different languages into the strap and, although I managed to gather a lot of words from different online buddies, I could only use a handful on the strap. I will save the others for another project.

There is some of the twining as it progressed. I used the English, Spanish, German, Quechua, Gaelic, Swedish and Nigerian words. As for putting the bag itself together, I am not much of a seamstress and so just made it up as I went along using a camera tripod bag as the model. First I made the front panel with a pebble weave design.

Then came the sides and the panels between which the zip would sit all woven in plain warp faced weave..

Once the zip was in I added a zip pull made using an Andean sling braiding technique.

Meanwhile I was still slogging away at the twining.

Then I decided it would be more practical to have pockets for all the smaller items like belt shuttles, pick up sticks and small swords and so I wove another thinner panel with the same pebble weave pattern.

The thin panel was sewn to the back of the bag. I have received two donations of large bags of assorted zips from online buddies so it was just a matter of diving into those and finding three small black zips the same size and I was set. I am getting pretty darn good at sewing these in!

Of course I couldn’t resist adding braided zip pulls. I made a square, flat-ish and round-ish braid for the the three pockets. I must do a tutorial here on that flat braid one of these days. I learned it for making straps for chuspas in Potosi.

Last of all was the strap. the last word to be twined was the Nigerian one which had been provided by a Facebook friend.The problem with twining is all the weft ends that are left hanging at the sides. I had to weave yet another plain weave band to sew to the back of the twined strap under which to hide all those ends. Actually it gives the strap quite a cushioned feel – quite appropriate for something that will be hanging off one’s shoulder.

There’s the last Nigerian word below (two words actually)…

DONE!!

I wove a bit more on the tencel supplementary warp patterned band with its Celtic knot motif…


And I played a bit with a design I got from a Central Asian woven piece.

My friend Lisa photographed this piece at a reenactment event some time ago and sent me the image.

There was not enough detail to see what technique had been employed and I decided that it would look good anyway woven with a supplementary weft. The design is charted here.

Last weekend one of my online buddies sent me this same image saying that she had found it on her desktop and had forgotten from where it had originated and that she thought I might like to weave it in pebble weave. After I reminded her that it was actually from my blog, we both had a laugh and then I thought, “Huh, I wonder how this would look in pebble weave?” And then another “huh”. How would it look in other techniques?

Hence the title of this weeks’s blog post…Variations on a Theme.

Here is how it looked when I originally wove it using a supplementary weft…

I guess I am very lucky to have been able to travel so much here in South America and learn so many different techniques and designs. I have often met weavers here in my travels who are masters at two techniques and have been weaving them all their lives and who are delighted and bubbling with curiosity when I show them motifs woven in the same technique from another region within their own country. Others see a technique in my samples that they don’t know and plead to be taught it. Sometimes I have to push back my desire to learn from them in order to teach them. They are always so happy to have an “edge” over their other weaving companions with this new knowledge.

So, just for the fun of it I celebrated the fact that I have had access to many patterning methods and I adapted the Central Asian motif to three other techniques. There are still several more to try.


From left to right…in the same supplementary weft technique but in finer yarns (35 wpi ground), in double weave, the original supplementary weft (24 wpi ground), pebble weave and supplementary warp. I love them all!

I once taught pebble weave to a weaver in Ecuador. The weavers in his community weave with tapestries and belts patterned with supplementary warps. The pebble weave technique is not known. I left him with drawings of various Bolivian and Peruvian motifs to copy if he wished as I didn’t have woven samples to give him. Eighteen months later I returned to see his band with his attempts to duplicate the drawings but there was also a rooster motif which he had adapted from the typical supplementary warp belts and embroideries of his community.

And Juan definitely wanted to have an edge over the other weavers. He wouldn’t even teach the pebble weave to his brothers!

I shared a room at the tinkuy with a weaver from Cochabamba who was dying to learn the design on one of my pebble weave amulet bags. She already knew pebble weave but not this particular design. As there simply wasn’t time to learn it at the tinkuy I swapped my amulet bag for one of her spindles. I wonder if she has woven it and if her new design is envied by the other weavers in her community.

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The Weave-Along in the backstrap group on Ravelry is coming to its end on March 6th with what we are calling the “big bang”. There seems to be a lot of weaving going on by the handful of weave-alongers and we have even been hearing from a lurker or two. Projects are still being posted…

Tracy made one of her pebble weave bands into a cell phone pouch. She edged it with a single row of cross knit looping or Van Dyke stitch as it is in known in embroidery. (See the video in this post for instructions). Check out Tracy’s latest blog post on the textiles she saw in Syria.

Marsha (PandulaArts) wove these pieces on the left patterned with simple warp floats and then dabbled in a little double weave.

Toby, who is not participating in the weave along, but who is a regular contributor to the backstrap weaving group on Weavolution, has been trying warp substitution technique (on the left) using a Bedouin motif and double weave (on the right). The warp substitution technique is a very good introduction to the basic pick up patterning method which is also used to produce patterns in double weave. It is a good idea to start with this technique before advancing to double weave. As you can see, one of the disadvantages of the warp substitution technique is that it produces long floats on the back of the piece. The length of the floats can be reduced by carefully choosing designs and spacing. Toby’s design on the right is his own invention.

Tanyabe has been making her first steps in pebble weave on the left and Tracy is now weaving a Chinchero design in pebble weave. This design is charted in my book.

Jennifer’s Sami bands are gorgeous!! She has been doing these on her rigid heddle and inkle looms and I believe that she has one going in wool on her backstrap loom too. Once again I remind you that you can access instructions and patterns for these bands on the Yahoo Bands and Braids Group or by buying Sue Foulkes’s book here.

As folks finish off their projects for big bang Sunday, a couple have asked for a tutorial on the tubular bands that are often used here as decorative edgings for finished woven pieces. These are bands that are woven and sewn simultaneously to the edge of a piece of fabric using the weft as the sewing thread. There are several kinds of bands. Some are in plain weave and this is probably the easiest place to start learning about these.

I have put together a tutorial here with photos and a short video. I have also put a video there that I shot at the Tinkuy de Tejedores in Peru of a Bolivian weaver attaching a band to the edge of one of her bags.

These bands can be used to cover the raw edge of a weaving as I did with the edge of the cell phone pouch above. However, I would not attempt to do this until you have practiced the technique many times on the selvedges of your woven fabrics. It is far easier to learn to apply these bands to edges that are not threatening to unravel!

You can see above that a narrow warp is wound and set up with simple string heddles and a shed loop. I use a tapestry needle to carry the weft and sew the band to the fabric.

The purse on the left has been edged on three sides with one of these bands. See the full tutorial here.

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Greetings come from “bicycle Anna” this week who is now down in the Chilean city where I spent my first five years in South America. Punta Arenas is the southern most city on the South American continent. From the city you can see the island of Tierra del Fuego across the Straits of Magellan.

Anna stopped by to see me at home and have some weaving lessons. She is now in the land of sheep…tens of thousands of them and her new drop spindling skills are being honed. She is carrying llama and alpaca fiber that I gave her along with a Bolivian spindle and I am sure that she will be adding Patagonian wool to her fiber stash.

And look how she is getting on with her pebble weave with her loom tied to her bike! It’s summer down there…you wouldn’t think so from the gear she has on. The days are looong and if you get one without wind it can be heavenly.

Anna has been spreading the fiber love by teaching young fellow cyclist Kate to make the six-strand finger loop braid that I learned in Potosi (one of the ones on my new loom bag).

I must warn you now that this is pretty much the end for this post of anything related to weaving or fiber as I indulge in a little nostalgia trip to the place I called home for five years…the wild Chilean Patagonia. Some of these pictures are Anna’s.

A house at left is painted with a scene depicting the famous southern Chilean lamb barbecue – asado al palo.

The Andes dip down into the sea before reaching this part of the world creating a series of islands, fjords and sounds. The land is scrubby and flat and rather colorless. Trees grow sideways with the constant winds.

Punta Arenas is a city of houses walled with corrugated sheeting. Rather than let it all run to rust residents paint with soft pastel shades, splashes of color in the bleak landscape.

This statue of an Ona indian is in the Plaza de Armas in the city center. The toe shines as visitors rub it to insure their return to Punta Arenas one day. Puerto Natales futher north is located on Ultima Esperanza Sound and is the gateway to the spectacular Torres del Paine National Park.

Craggy mountain peaks, fjords and wildlife in and around Torres del Paine…a rhea or ñandu walks with her chicks.

Herds of Guanaco roam  the park.

The hiking and scenery are superb but be prepared for a good battering by the wind! I got to go to Antarctica twice when I was there and thus add the seventh continent to my list. After all it is just across the Drake Passage! I will leave you with some shots from there.


Penguins, albatross and seals. This Albatross is in the Falkland Islands. Lots of whales too which I could never quite catch on film. And yes, I was weaving between all this!

They tell you to not to get within ten feet of the wildlife but if you just sit still on the beach long enough, the penguins all come to you!

Ah well, back to jungly steamy Santa Cruz. It’s time for coca tea and a mango!


Backstrap Weaving – Smoothing out the rough.

SMOOTHING OUT THE ROUGH.

SAMPLE! My own words are ringing in my ears….if you are using a new yarn or a new technique on your backstrap loom….sample, sample, sample. And don’t trust your first samples for making width measurements for future projects. You have yet to settle into the new technique and things are still bound to change. Keep practicing while you slowly smooth out the rough bits. Sample away happily knowing you can probably make something from the samples, no matter how small or silly! If not, put it in your notebook with lots of notes beside it…believe me, you will forget if you don’t write it all down.

Here are a couple of small samples that I managed to make into decorative and useful things. My log cabin sampler got used as the cover of a flip notepad that always goes with me on my travels. This notebook is now full and I need to get the cover off so I can somehow fix it to another notepad. My first ever shadow weave sample got pulled off the loom as I was satisfied once I saw that it was working and I didn’t really care for the color combination. It got made into a small sewing kit purse which also goes traveling with me.

And never mind if your sample ends up with wonky selvedges and you don’t know what to do with  those pesky raw edges. There is usually a way around all that. The edges of my log cabin piece were turned around the ends of the notebook cover and glued down. Another piece of fine cardboard glued to the inside covered those edges for a neat finish. The zip took care of hiding and protecting the raw edges of the shadow weave piece.

I thought I would show in this blog post some of the finishes that I have used for my pieces, uses I have found for samples and different ways that I have dealt with raw edges.

You may remember from these previous posts here and here that I have been trying out finnweave on my backstrap loom. My first samples did not prove trustworthy for calculating the dimensions of my next project and so, what I had hoped would turn out as squares, ended up being more rectangular. Here is my warp set up for my square design samples…

And here are the rectangular results…

Width needed some adjustments and I learned to beat a bit harder as I progressed. I learned a lot about how to read from the weaving rather than from the chart with the design on the left. This is from one of the Prairie Wool Companion 1982 issues. There is a Chinese lattice work design charted and then three variations provided so that one can weave a set of four placemats. The version I chose is the one furthest removed from the original Chinese design. The design on the right is one I invented using the little pre columbian birds that I wove before and gave me more practice with filled-in shapes.

I was able to make something cute from the two samples…

This is a double weave and it is particularly tricky dealing with its raw edges. Folding over two layers to hem is bulky and unsightly and so I followed the advice that I read in an article and wove the start and finish of each piece as two separate layers with open edges.


The idea is to turn both edges inward and sew them together like that. However, I didn’t do that. As I was going to sew in a zip, I cut the white layer back as far as I could and then simply turned the black layer over it. The black turned edge got sewn down and hidden under the zip so all is well and protected and nice and neat to boot.

One thing I was not so happy about was the edges…

This may just be something that I am goofing up, but to my eye, the edge is ugly as you can clearly see how both layers of contrasting colors come together. A row of single cross knit looping covered that up nicely as you can see on the right. However, my eyes just about fell out…black on black. I had to stand right by the window in good light to do this.

So that was one solution to the ugly edges. On the other little bag, I added one of those woven bands that are woven and sewn simultaneously using the weft as the sewing thread. I used it down the side and along the bottom and it broke the design up nicely between the two faces. A four-strand braid for the zipper-pull was the finishing touch.

Speaking of braids I made the zipper-pull for my loom bag project…remember? – woven bag, braided zip-pull and twined strap.


It’s a 24-strand braid worked in the hand as my Peruvian sling braiding teacher had shown me.

I had not done this kind of braid in this size yarn before and so it was a bit of a challenge.

This is the base of the Margarita braid but as, I was so focused on just keeping everything in order while muttering the moves to myself, I did not venture into doing the changes in sequence that produce the diamond designs on the Margarita-style braid.

The cross knit looping that I used to hide the ugliness on my finnweave piece can sometimes be added to perfectly good looking selvedges as an extra decorative feature or it can be used to draw attention to or hide the place where two pieces of fabric are joined. This is also known as Van Dyke stitch in embroidery (see the video embedded in this blog post).

Other things that can be used to disguise a less-than-perfect edge or brighten something that is a little too plain are braids.

A two-color stitch can look good on the edge of a very plain one-color piece or hide its wonkiness if necessary!




This was a sample I made for a plain warp-faced weave weave-along. I sewed a four-strand braid around the edges which also served as a strap. Again, the zip handily hides and protects the raw edges.

This little pouch was started with a third selvedge which you can see on the right. I sewed across the raw edge with very visible stitches as neatly as I could by hand and then sewed that edge down.


Then there’s good old hem stitching which I only learned fairly recently from this video. I got such a kick out of learning and doing this the first time, I wanted to go around and hem stitch everything!

Teeny tiny “invisible” hand stitches seem to work well at the bottom of book marks and keyfobs. Warp ends can also be braided. I like to dab the ends of the braids with diluted white glue and squeeze them into a tapered shape as they dry. I think it looks better than having knots in the ends.


Above are some bookmarks decorated with Guatemalan supplementary weft designs, a double weave key fob and a pebble weave Celtic knot pattern.

I am not so convinced about the way that I chose to deal with the raw edges on these very thick double weave mug rugs.

This came after many attempts to sew them neatly and invisibly. They are too thick for the method I suggested earlier where you weave the two layers separately and turn them in on each other.

I figured if I couldn’t make the stitches invisible I would go for very visible and decorative, and something in keeping with the ethnic nature of the design.

This is the back side. The brown thread cannot be seen on the front.

I sewed these while they were still stretched out on the loom and had to put a mirror in my lap so I could see how the stitches were being placed on the back.

I am open to suggestions for improving this!

 

Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) weavers often finish their weavings with weft twining. They then add beads and often a few more rows of weft twining. I wasn’t convinced that the weft twining would stand in place on its own and sufficiently “finish” a piece until I tried it myself. It is firm and sturdy and there is no way those twined wefts are going to work their way loose. Here is some twining I did in a traditional Jarai design on the end of a warp-faced piece…

On the Bedouin design wall hanging that I did on the right I also twined the edge and finished it off with wrapped warps.

Warp wrapping, braiding and other finishing techniques are covered in Finishes in the Ethnic Tradition by Karen Searle and Suzanne Baizerman.

My latest favorite edging which I learned at the tinkuy de tejedores in Cusco last November is the tubular woven band which is woven and sewn simultaneously to edges shown below on the right. This is another one that totally grabbed me. I had to stop myself from tubular banding everything in sight!

I decided to try a plain weave single-color band as an edging after seeing how Guarani weaver Angela edges her pieces and I used it on the cell phone pouch above. It very nicely covers and protects the raw edge where I cut and shaped the flap.

Well, enough about smoothing out the rough, brightening the plain and taming those wild warp ends. Back to finnweave. I am still enjoying the Cora and Huichol pieces and traditional Scandinavian patterns and have just learned that another Mexican group, the Otomí, also practice this technique. However, I am returning to my original goal now and am about to chart my first pre columbian design based on one of my textile fragments. This will be another sampler and I will wet finish this one.

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What have the weave-alongers been up to?

Linda wove her first band with horizontal bars getting warmed up for simple warp floats. She also made supplementary weft samples so she could learn about the scale of her charted designs against the woven fabric before launching into a project. Bobbie finished her piece with the central supplementary weft pattern. The chart for this design is here. I really like the effect of the different colored horizontal bars design that she used on the edges.

After finishing another pebble weave piece, Jennifer shifted to double weave and enjoyed sampling the technique in #3 crochet cotton. The llamas are charted here.


Tracy is back from her trip and back at the loom doing pebble weave.

Tracy’s latest band is on the left and Jennifer’s finished piece is on the right. You can see that her knitting needle is not standing up to the task of creating her third selvedge. You can read some tips about starting with a third selvedge here.


Both Marsha and Jennifer tried double weave in #10 thread but decided it was too fine to tackle yet. Marsha is doing a double weave band, her first with a pattern, in #3 thread. She is writing the name of her roommate on what will be the strap for a camera bag. Jennifer made a keyfob as her first attempt with #10 thread and is happy to continue sampling with #3.

And just wait until you see this…

Helena in Brazil finished her pouch and has attached an adjustable band with buckle for her sister to use on her trip to Australia. I love that orange! There are ideas here for fun ways to combine colors, right?

The central design is one I invented and include in my book. I made it to go in a wall hanging along with the adaptation I made of a Huichol motif. This design includes the diamonds, spokes and curls that were also elements in the Huichol pattern.

I will leave you with our Weave-Along group’s learning mantra:

Short, Narrow Warps and Sample, Sample, Sample!









 




 

 

 

Backstrap Weaving – In the Mood for Finnweave

I am back into fabulous Finnweave after a very long break.

I was trying to think back to when this Finnweave adventure all started and I believe it was in the early part of 2008. I wanted to try and reproduce the structure and motifs on some pre columbian textile fragments that I have which were woven in what Suzanne Baizerman calls balanced double cloth.

Here are some of the fragments that I have collected….

All these pieces were attached to Chancay doll replicas like the one you see above that I have bought in various markets here in South America. I wrote a lot more about these and other textile fragments in this previous blog post.

In  Double Woven Treasures from Old Peru (by Adele Cahlander with Suzanne Baizerman) instructions are given for weaving this technique on a treadle loom rather than on a backstrap loom. I have had this book for over fifteen years and had always skimmed those instructions without paying much attention because I had never used or even touched a treadle loom and I assumed I would never be able to understand them. The notation and charts meant nothing to me. However, something made me go back in 2008 to open the book again at that page and take another look. Nope, nothing new had appeared… it all still looked like a mind numbing maze…so frustrating!

Who else did I know who knew about backstrap weaving and these kinds of structures who might have a clue? I had just made contact with Carol Ventura online through WARP. I had her book on Jacaltenango hair sashes and so I wrote to her. She hadn’t tried this particular structure herself, but she suggested I join a thing called Ravelry where there was a backstrap weaving group where I could ask. Ravelry? What in the world was that?!

I also wrote to Ann Rowe as I had met her on a trip to the Textile Museum in DC and she sent me a picture of a Huichol loom saying that I may be able to figure it out from that. The Huichol people of Mexico still weave this technique. It is no longer woven in Peru.

I don’t know what it was in the end that suddenly turned the light bulb on but the next time I went to the book…click!…and I was able to weave the above band. I have to say that the technique is not that difficult. You need to use three sets of string heddles and a shed rod which holds the warps for the fourth shed. That is not as bad as it sounds as it is a balanced weave which means that the heddles can be raised easily and cleanly. What I was having difficulty wrapping my head around was the charting system which takes some getting used to.

It is a technique for those who love pick-up. It uses two different colored wefts and has more steps than warp faced double weave…two weft passes for each layer… but I love the result!

So what happened? Where are all the lovely pre-columbian textile replicas that I had wanted to weave?

“Ravelry” is what happened! But even more importantly, I joined Weavolution, where I started my own backstrap weaving group, and was hit with a tsunami of weaving ideas!

Thanks to Ann Rowe I have two goals now for this structure… to reproduce the motifs on my fragments and to weave traditional Huichol patterns. Actually, the picture that Ann Rowe sent me was not my first encounter with Huichol weaving. It is a funny coincidence that back in 2007 while visiting the National Museum of the North American Indian in DC my eye was caught by a beautiful textile piece. I had no idea what the structure was and did not retain what the label had said but I roughly adapted the motif to pebble weave and used it in a hanging.

And again here…

Well, you probably have guessed that I now know that that is a Huichol weaving. That will be number one on my list of reproductions.

I was feeling uncomfortable by the end of 2008 about this abandoned project and so made it a resolution for 2009 and there it sat for another year as I wandered off on all sorts of weaving paths. Now I have returned but not with the pressure of a resolution weighing on me. I am simply in the mood for Finnweave! What put me there?….THIS!….

Last week Ane Lisbet posted the above image on Weavolution of a wall hanging she made in Finnweave using a floor loom. How beautiful!

And if that wasn’t enough I was inspired to return to a discussion we had had on Weavolution last year about Finnweave and was able to get reacquainted with this amazing piece at left woven by Manicgirl on a floor loom.

Hans Christensson also participated in that discussion and was very helpful. At that time he was taking part in a project to find new designs, usage and materials for Finnweave. The project concluded with an exhibition at the Museum of Bohuslan in Sweden and now I see that he has written a book on the future of Finnweave with his new computerized way of designing and interpreting patterns. He has plans to translate it to English.

I will have to be patient waiting for the translation. So, out came the instructions from Double Woven Treasures again, the pages now covered with my scribbled notes and, you know what?, it looked like a mind numbing maze all over again only messier this time with all my notes!

Back to square one. Well, not really. I warped up to make the same design as last time and after one repeat, remembered, and  felt confident enough to move onto something else.

I wove it this time in a heavier yarn and it should be much wider. You can see that the brown areas are more warp predominant than balanced but it helped to refresh my memory and got cut off the loom very quickly.

Thanks to some kind Weavolution buddies I got an article from the Prairie Wool Companion April 1982 issue which introduced me to the wonderful world of weaver and author A. David Xenakis. His article is not a project, not a lesson, he calls it an “Etude”. I love this! Only the other day in one of the forums someone compared sampling to the scales one has to practice when learning the piano and so we can go back to the music lesson metaphor now. I love Mr Xenakis’s writing style…so very proper! He amuses me by saying please when he gives his instructions…please wind the warp…please wind two stick shuttles.

He shows the same charting system as that used by the authors of Double Woven Treasures from Old Peru. Thank goodness, I didn’t feel like learning another! After giving detailed instructions for one half of the motif, we are given this piece of advice…

Take a deep breath, stand up, pace around a bit and relax. Nothing in finnweave will ever be as hard as this first small woven figure. New things always take a bit, do they not? But if you’ll persevere, I truly believe you’ll be rewarded with a sense of accomplishment second to none you’ve ever derived from your weaving.

I am sure the folks in the backstrap weave-along on Ravelry will smile if they read that! The result…

He then gives pattern charts for some lovely traditional Scandinavian designs. So, I am doing my warm-up, my scales and my etudes for the final goal…finding myself comfortable enough with the charting system to be able to chart directly from a textile and reproduce the motifs. I need to experiment a bit with how I turn the two colored wefts at the edges. As always, one edge is neater than the other.

It wasn’t long ago that I knew of only one pick-up technique that enabled one to produce a motif on a solid color background, that is, a background without pebbles, speckles or horizontal bars and with no long floats on the back. Now I know three…

I also finished the warp faced double weave cell phone pouch with the Guarani designs…

And managed to twine most of another word…

There’s an “h” yet to be twined and that will be the Gaelic word for “weave”.  I received the Navajo word from DY and  the Slovak one from Alexis. This is the strap for my woven loom bag. I am planning the zipper pull. As I have a woven bag and a twined strap I am probably going to braid the zip pull…maybe I’ll do the Margarita braid.

I remembered after finishing Xenakis’s Etude that, on a whim, I had bought his book on weaving four harness textiles on a rigid heddle loom a long time ago. I had done nothing more than flip through it and admire the Finnweave cat on one of the first pages. Here, once more is the very proper writing style. I flipped through it again the other day and his amusing description of string heddles caught my eye. I am a big fan of string heddles. He is obviously not. He says…

“I find the sight of this stringy paraphenalia unappetizing.”

But he goes on to say that if you don’t have a third rigid heddle, you should use a string heddle “without hesitation and appetizing be damned.”

Cracks me up!

So, what’s been happening in the backstrap weave-along this week?

Warping arrangements have been designed and built…

This one was designed by Jennifer and built by her husband.

New places to tie up looms have been found and wool has been prepared…

Phil has moved to his sunny kitchen to weave and has spun a good amount of wool for his next project. He has placed a snake motif on his woven band using a supplementary weft.

New structures have been learned to make thicker, sturdier fabric and a backstrap has been made…

That’s Barry. He finished his backstrap with a five-strand braid.

Pieces were started and finished…

Marsha has started her widest piece ever on her Wave loom. Linda, who is not in the weave-along, has been sharing pictures of her projects with me by email (thanks Linda). She has finished her backstrap.

Jennifer also made a backstrap using a pebble weave motif from The Art of Bolivian Highland Weaving.

Jenny has been very much inspired by all the beautiful things that Marsha has been producing on her Mini Wave loom so, she ordered one and has just joined us to make her first warp faced project.


Another week of progress with encouragement from all when things went wrong…the reminder that mistakes are learning opportunities…the fun of seeing Anja’s “mistake” turn into a new pretty pattern.

I will leave you here with Mr Xenakis’s take on mistakes…(which comes in the middle of an explanation of tie-ups and sequences)…

Probably nothing is ever truly an error.  …….it is worthwhile to note that an error – in the words of America’s premier knitter-designer Elizabeth Zimmerman – when repeated, becomes a pattern. Which, were we of a philosophical turn of mind, might be the key to whole new vistas of thought. Think about it: at the very least, the regular repetition of an error indicates persistence.

Your pardon, a freely associative mind hath led us astray.

I think that I will have to drag out my rigid heddle loom just so I can enjoy this author more!

Backstrap Weaving – A Little Product Amongst the Processes

I haven’t wandered off too much around the globe this week but people from around the world, via this blog, Facebook and my online weaving groups, did drop by to help me with my latest twining project…the strap for my proposed loom bag on which I am twining the word “weave” in different languages and fonts.

Here is where I am at so far…

And, if you are thinking that I haven’t advanced very far since last week, you are right! I am used to doing patterns on my backstrap woven pieces in pick up techniques…picking or dropping every single  thread across the width of my warp and I don’t find that slow. However, I have to tell you that twining is SLOW! Reeaaaly slow! But, as you know, I am a process driven gal and what keeps me going on this project is the varying fonts. It is interesting to chart one and then see how it works out on the band. I have, in fact, finished the last word shown above which is “away” or “aguay” (I have seen it spelled both ways) which is the Quechua word for “weave” here in Bolivia.

The next word will be the Gaelic one, sent to me from a Facebook friend in Ireland. I am designing my own lettering form for this one….a cursive hand…and am a bit unsure about how it will look.

Here are the words I have …

Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed so far. I doubt that I will be able to fit all these in and so another project will have to be created. The next one will be in double weave and I will make it all my own lettering style. Double weave will be way faster. See how many languages you can identify. Someone remarked on Facebook that I could just use an online translator. True, but this is more fun. This way I will always remember the person who gave me the word and “carry” them around with me. 😉

While on this multi-lingual topic, I thought I would tell you that an online weaving friend in Germany took on the heavy task of translating my Andean Pebble Weave book to German. How cool is she, and how grateful am I?! I am in the process now of redoing the layout as it seems that German folk are more wordy than English speakers 😉 and hopefully that will be available soon as a pdf.

Amongst the processes, there are some real products emerging. The twined band above is going to be a strap for a loom bag which I am modeling on my camera tripod bag.

I discovered that this backstrap that I made ages ago with a 13wpi mercerized cotton, (the same stuff I used in the WeaveZine article), is exactly the right width for the front panel of the bag and so I was easily able to calculate how many warps I needed to get started on the body of the bag. I wanted to keep it relatively simple as the strap will be quite busy with all its woven words.

So, here it is…black with just a strip of pebble weave pattern down the middle. These are two of the 8-rev designs that I have in my Andean Pebble Weave book and they look gigantic in this 13wpi thread. What fun it was to weave this up in one sitting in this chunky-ish yarn!

A couple of shots on the loom…

I just managed to get the length I need from my standard 36″ warp. It is wonderful how little waste there is when using backstrap looms. I will make the other large panel and sides in plain black and will then edge it with a tubular band in black and white. There is also a zipper to go in.

Another product to show…yes this is something that I will keep and use myself…

I finished my double weave belt with the Bedouin designs. I had to get an extra wide buckle for it and there weren’t many choices. Fortunately there is a market stall, just down the street from where I live, called “Hebilandia” or, “Buckle Land”! (hebilla being the Spanish word for buckle). Who knew there were so many people out there in want of buckles! The three belts on the left and the one bottom right are patterned in pebble weave. The other one has a design in simple alternating warp floats.

And the final product and my favorite for the week is my cell phone pouch. Yes, my cell phone pouch –  not to be given away or traded.

I finally own a cell phone but it is not for use here in Bolivia. I am happier having my answering machine take the calls here. The cell phone was actually given to me by a friend in the US for use there. As I travel on standby tickets, I really need one in order to let folks know if I have gotten on my flight and am about to arrive. No more begging kind strangers for change for the pay phone or to use their cell phone.

I modeled my cell phone pouch on that made by Guarani weaver, Angela. I bought two of her pouches some time ago, gave one to a friend in the US, and am saving the other for my friend Lisa.

That’s mine above left modeled on Angela’s blue and black one. It is woven in the technique that the Guarnai weavers call Moisy which produces quite a dense fabric.

You may remember that this was the sample piece that I had made to see if I understood what Angela had shown me. I copied her designs with some adaptations, for example, I rounded the flower head and used one of her leaf designs as a butterfly. Angela’s patterns reflect the abundance of lush vegetation here in the Bolivian lowlands. The designs that the Guarani women use on their Moisy pieces are not like any you will see elsewhere in Bolivia. You can read more about my visits with Angela here and here.

Angela had finished her pouch with a plain band which she had woven and sewn simultaneously to the edges using the weft as the sewing thread. I did the same except I used this edging only around the flap. You can see the band with its heddles and shed loop above left. Then came the scary part…

I really loved the shaped flap that Angela had created but couldn’t bring myself to cut the fabric. I was imagining the whole thing fraying away in a jagged mess while I tried to sew on the band and that is precisely what started to happen.

So I sealed all the way around the cut with diluted white glue, waited for it to dry and that did the trick. I will never make a cell phone pouch with a square flap again! This was fun!

I also copied her idea of making a striped band for the sides and strap. A tab of velcro for the flap finished it off.

Something else that has made me smile this week has been following the Weave Along in the Backstrap Weaving Group on Ravelry. There is a lot of enthusiastic participation and sharing, cheers and, sometimes, commiserations. People have been having their successes and frustrations and I think that everyone pretty much agrees that “baby steps” are required…stay with the heavier and friendlier yarns and narrow projects until you really feel that you have the hang of it. There are so many things to think about and get under control before one is ready to move on to new challenges.

Here are a few works-in-progress and finished objects from, from left to right, Firecracker8 (who found that beating harder made her supplementary weft pattern look much nicer and her pebble motif less elongated), Jennifer (who found that size number 3 crochet cotton makes a pretty band and is easy to handle) and Marsha (who used a Gilmore Wave Loom for her first attempt at double weave). We are waiting to see pictures from other participants who can only weave on weekends. No hurry! We will be around 🙂

Lots of cool ideas have been appearing in the forum and I have some more warping options to show you from himalaya and wanderingskopos…

We just had a new member from the UK join the group and the Weave Along. He is a rope and canvas craftsman and net maker. Well, I was curious about this as I had no idea what that entailed and invited him to post pictures of some of his work and he totally blew us all away! I immediately checked out his website. I love the hammocks and rope mats.

In my inbox I found images from Julia who made a band with a bunch of pebble weave motifs using my book. I love the way she has hung it with all the loom parts in place. She did a good job weaving as close to the end as possible which is not easy with cross sticks and two sets of heddles.

I also asked Steve Pretty if I could show the frame loom on which he has been weaving warp faced bands and, most recently, an Andean pebble weave band using my book.

Steve got the idea for this frame loom with its nifty tensioning system from the web site of Dr Carol Ventura. This page on Toba weaving of Argentina on Carol Ventura’s site shows the loom and the technique to produce the band above left. The technique is similar to that which I call Simple Warp Floats.  On the right is Steve’s pebble weave band.

It really puts a big smile on my face to see people in the online groups jumping in enthusiastically to learn these techniques and weave stuff.

I have had the benefit of spending days and, most often, weeks at a time face-to-face with my weaving teachers here.  Not everyone reaches their weaving goals without having that personal contact with a teacher and besides, we all have our different learning styles.

So, I would like to tell you that there are still a few more places available in the Andean Backstrap Weaving class called “Beginning and Beyond” that Abby Franquemont is giving at Beth Smith’s The Spinning Loft in Howell, Michigan from January 28th to 30th, 2011.

Beth tells me that Abby Franquemont first went to Peru around the age of five and was there on and off throughout her teenage years travelling with her anthropologist parents Ed and Christine Franquemont.
She began spinning and weaving immediately upon arriving in the Cusco Region of Peru and, although she is best known as a spindle spinner in the US, she is also a fantastic weaver on the backstrap loom.

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In the post box this week…some inspiration from Turkey. My brother went to Istanbul and got me this locally published book (in Turkish) on Hakkari Kilims. It has lots of luscious photos.

Now to figure out which word from the text is the one for “weave” to add to my band.

And what about those videos that were giving me grief last week?

In the end I had to whittle them down to under ninety seconds so I could load them to my Flickr page and link from there.

So, there is a short video showing warping for one-weft double weave and another on heddle making on the tutorial page.

Nothing new – they are just meant to give further clarification for those who might have doubts.  I also added a video on adding a second cross to stabilize your shed rod to this FAQ page.

What I am planning next for the tutorial pages here is a full project  – Making a Key fob in Double Weave – from start to finish with a few videos.

But for now…the products are done so it’s back to the process…














 






Backstrap Weaving – The ‘Tis-Done and the To-Do

I bought myself a good old fashioned acrylic board last year to write my “To-Do” list and hung it on the bedroom wall. It is not that old fashioned when I remind myself that my teaching colleagues are still using blackboards and chalk where I used to teach English here but it is indeed old fashioned in the world of IPads and such gadgets. I really need to have that To-Do list up there in front of me with a list made in brightly colored marker pens. It is so satisfying erasing something and saying ‘Tis done! What I really wanted to do was start the year with a fresh gleaming clean white board instead of one still covered with colorful scribbled lists.

These two weaving “To-Do”s were still hanging there from 2010 and I am pleased to say that one of them is about to be erased…well almost.

The double weave belt at left went on a nice trip with me to the US recently. It came out once for a weaving demonstration with a group of Bhutanese weavers in North Carolina and then went back into its bag for the rest of the trip. So, I was determined to at least get this off the loom. You may remember that this belt is a result of my twining investigations with Montagnard weavers which led me to Bedouin twining and then Bedouin warp substitution designs which I then decided to reproduce in double weave on this belt…quite a journey!

You can see the Bedouin design piece I wove above right. The warp substitution technique (see the tutorial here) produces crisp designs on a background of solid color with long floats on the back. The same designs can be produced in warp faced double weave (see the tutorial here) without the visible floats and with the patterns reversed on the back of the band. I have all the hardware ready for the belt and just have to put it together now. I need to thread one end of the belt through the buckle which means having to cut a slot in the band. What I usually do is paint the area to be cut with diluted white glue which acts as “stop fray” and then go ahead and cut.

The finished belt, with buckle in place, in the picture has been woven with simple alternating warp floats using a design from a yurt band (see the tutorial here). So, I am just about to erase this 2010 project from the board.

The other unfinished project that you saw photographed above is the sample I made after visiting Guarani weaver Angela. I had just wanted to see if I could get my head around the Moisy technique she was using so, basically, that was a mission accomplished, but I still think that I could make something useful from this piece and don’t feel like discarding it. So, that is next.

Of course I still won’t be able to wipe the board completely clean as it is now filled up with 2011 stuff. And that is the way it should be!

While I was immersed in double weave finishing off my belt, I decided I would make a video showing how to warp for this technique to add to the existing tutorial. Those of you who subscribe to Handwoven may recognize these double weave keyfobs which are shown in the Jan/Feb issue…

This will probably sound completely ridiculous to those of you who are used to winding warps of several yards or meters for multiple projects on your large looms…I wind a tiny warp for each and every keyfob. Warping for double weave and making string heddles across such a narrow warp is such a breeze for me that it doesn’t bother me at all to have to repeat the process for each and every fob. I love the opportunity to play with colors and not have any two fobs the same. I can create a third selvedge for every fob and save time not having to deal with hemming a raw edge which is tricky and often unsightly in double weave. I did weave thirteen identical fobs on an inkle loom once and won’t do that again.

And, as I always say, the only trouble with double weave is deciding which side you prefer…

Decisions, decisons…which side do I prefer? Here are the backs of some of the keyfobs shown above.

The big problem for those learning double weave is that it can be painfully slow. There are a lot of steps and, until you understand why you are making the moves, it all seems like a terrible amount to have to memorize.

It is easy to miss a step and make a mess or lose your way if you have to leave it for a moment…just part of the learning process.

I have been told several different versions of what this little design represents by weavers here in Bolivia and I wrote a little about this here. In any case it is a simple neat design, easy to memorize and fun to weave.

The pattern chart is on the left.

I made several pieces of video covering warping, creating the third selvedge, making string heddles and putting in a second cross to stabilize the shed rod. This week I am trying to just post the warping and third selvedge segments. These videos take so long to upload and my internet connection is not cooperating today. I will add others each week and have them stored on the double weave tutorial page. I hope you find them helpful (once I get them up there).

While on the topic of warping, we have started the Weave Along in the Backstrap Group on Ravelry and, hopefully, participants have read my three little tips from last week’s post particularly the one about the importance of having a good stable set up for warping. Some photos of improvised warping have been posted in the online weaving groups in the meantime…

This is from backstrap weaver Fliegenpilz in Germany, whose idea it was to have this Weave Along in the first place. She has warped for a pebble weave band following the instructions in my book.

Phil has himself nicely set up to weave in his rocker. Check out how he wound his warp with stakes lodged in kitchen drawers.

I caught the next picture in another weaving group on Ravelry…


Pancha says that her idea for warping, pictured above, originally sprang from her desire to try backstrap weaving. She has used it for other looms too but is now fed up with bending and walking up and down and has ordered a warping board.

Other weavers from Weavolution have shared their finished projects with me…

Deanna wove these bands decorated with Andean pebble weave designs on her Leclerc Dorothy 15″ table loom following the draft in my book. She also backstrap weaves and ties up her loom to her 40″ sixteen-shaft Macomber loom…a nice sturdy place to attach a loom bar.

Speaking of which, here is Jennifer’s pebble weave warp tied to the castle of her floor loom…

She has it angled  steeply upward which means that she has the warp threads quite close to her for doing pick up and does not need to bend. Each weaver will find their own way. I prefer a gentler angle.

Marsh Knox of PandulaArts has been following the tutorial on simple warps floats and weaves on a Gilmore Mini Wave loom. I have shown many of her finished bands here. Recently she had some of her bands, which she made with alternating floats, sewn into a mini tote bag for a friend…She calls this the “one-skein project” bag.

I had a few things going on this week. Firstly we got a short reprieve from the heat and humidity and were able to turn off the a/c and have the windows open for a whole day. This gave me the chance to boil up the nasty llama bones I have had lying around since my friend Anna brought them to me from the highlands a few months ago. These are the wichuñas, the bone tools used by weavers here to beat in the weft and pick up warp threads for patterning. They are also used in Peru where they are called rukis.

Several boilings and changes of water were needed to get them cleaned up. The smell!! There they are on the right –  white and gleaming. The tips could do with a bit of refining but otherwise they are good to go. Several years of use will have them take on the lovely hue of old ivory and I have seen some very old ones that have the tone and shine of polished wood.

That was another 2010 task to gladly erase from the board.

As for the ongoing twining obsession, I started a loom bag project and am twining its strap with letters. Just when I started thinking that I was taking the twining obsession a little too far with this lettering fad, I was shown these fabulous images of Batak twining…The Batak people live in northern Sumatra in the hilly region of Lake Toba.

These amazing textiles are part of the collection of Pamela Cross and she has allowed me to show them to you here on my blog. She describes the above piece as a Toba Batak sadum (a woman’s shoulder cloth). Twined lettering! This twining is so very different to that done by the Jarai and Rhade weavers with whom I studied. How beautiful.

Here are some more images that Pamela shared of the twined bands on other Batak textiles…The following one is a ragi hotang which I understand is a shoulder wrap.

Gasp!

The following is a surisuri. Pamela says that the surisuri is one of three types of indigo-dyed textiles used for Toba Batak rituals.

Here are twined bands from several different types of Batak textiles. The design on the second one from the top is so Andean-looking don’t you think?!

It is exciting to know that there is a book available now by writer/researcher Sandra Niessen, PhD on  Batak textiles:

“Legacy in cloth: Batak textiles of Indonesia offers the first definitive study of the woven heritage of the Toba, Simalungun, and Karo Batak.


The most complete analysis of Batak textiles ever published, it provides a record of more than 100 different design types, including archival and contemporary photographs showing how the textiles are woven and how they are used in Batak culture.


Legacy benefits from fieldwork conducted over two decades and consultation of all major European collections of Batak textiles and private collections in Indonesia.”


Even more exciting for me was being able to make contact with Sandra.

She kindly shared some pictures taken by MJA Nashir of a Batak woman twining. The process is not at all like that practiced by my Montagnard friends.

The weft appears to be tensioned between the toes and a small stick seems to be used to aid in the twisting of the two wefts. No doubt Sandra’s book thoroughly discusses the process and I am itching to get the book and have my curiosity satisfied and learn more about the Btak people and their textiles.

Sandra tells wonderful stories on her blog of how she has been returning to the villages where she conducted her research to present copies of her book to the weavers.

Well…after all that eye candy here is the humble twined bag strap I have been making with twined letters.

The idea is to twine the word “weave” in several languages. I have just begun the German version. I hope to do French, Portuguese, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani, Russian, Jarai and many more, if they will fit, with each word in a different font. I would love to hear from blog readers around the world who can tell me how to say “weave” in their language.

The letters are a munched version of those in Linda Hendrickson’s book Please Weave a Message. Remember that Linda’s letters have been designed for card weaving,  not twining, and are far prettier than the ones I have used here. Check out Linda’s page to see her gorgeous lettered bands.

So this will be the strap for the loom bag in which I will carry my backstrap on future trips. The shape will be based on the camera tripod bag which I have been using until now. I haven’t put much thought yet into the body of the bag but I will weave it on my backstrap loom using a heavy-ish black mercerized cotton and some of my new Tahki Cotton Classic thread for patterns and embellishments.

And continuing on the lettering theme,  weaving friend and blog visitor Sharon Kersten completed the chart of letters for the Montagnard warp float lettering tutorial that I did last week and has sent it to me to pass on to all of you. She saw my photo below of various bag straps woven with letters and used it to chart what she thinks the missing letters could look like as well as the numbers. Many thanks!

I will leave you here for this week with this new Bolivian beverage…

Peru has its Inka Kola and now we have”Coca Colla”! It’s a play on words, not bad spelling…”colla” being the word to describe people of indigenous origins here in Bolivia (pronounced coya- the oy sounds like the oy in “boy”). It is made with coca leaf extract, is heavy in caffeine and slightly carbonated. All I can say is that…weeeel…. it tastes as good as it looks. 😉 Cheers!