Andean pebble weave – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – The Long-awaited Book Update!

At last I’ve made a decision about what I’m going to do about selling my publications. At first, I was planning to set up a shop on my blog. That involved updating the blog template that I’ve been using for the last sixteen years to a new one that works smoothly with all the WordPress e-commerce tools. (My old template had been retired by WordPress and although it allowed me to continue blogging, it was no longer compatible with current e-commerce tools). I updated the template and you may have noticed a slightly different look. It’s not a huge change on the surface but behind the scenes it created a bit of havoc! Not fun! One bit of the havoc was that I actually wrote and published this post a whole week ago only to discover that many of my subscribers (possibly none) were never notified. So here we go again.

If you happen to notice any old posts in which the images have disappeared, do let me know. It’s actually an easy fix but it’s been impossible for me to go back and check every single post from the last sixteen years!!

There’s a lot of text coming so let me toss in a photo or two along the way of some of the things I’ve been up to when not on my laptop trying to get my blog back to normal:

Rugged up for winter hiking with my Wednesday Walking Women’s Group at Wentworth Falls. Spinning wool for a lap blanket project at the Springwood Spinners and Weavers Group. We meet weekly! Attending a Jane Austen Tea Dance in Sydney…yes, I’m doing English Country Dancing and am quite obsessed! It’s good to add some non-hand activities. as my poor wrist and hand will probably never fully recover from my accident.

SO, HERE’S THE UPDATE….

My books (in PDF form) on South American pick-up weaving techniques and patterns can be purchased directly from me by leaving a comment on this post. Your comment will not be published. Only I will see it and I will then contact you to explain how it works to purchase my PDFs. Basically, I will send you a Paypal invoice and use Dropbox to deliver the file/s. If you prefer, you can contact me via Facebook Messenger (my account name is Laverne Waddington) or by DM on Instagram where my account is lavernewaddington.

**Demonstrating weaving and spinning at Winterfest Medieval Fair while making new fiber friends.**

You don’t need a Paypal account in order to be able to pay the Paypal invoice that I send you. You don’t need to already have a Dropbox account when you place your order. You will, however, be prompted to open a Dropbox account, if you don’t already have one, when you click on the link in the Dropbox invitation that gives you access to the PDFs. The Dropbox account is free of charge.

I’ve been selling my PDFs in this way via Facebook Messenger for about four weeks now and the process has been smooth and efficient. The bonus for me is that I get to have a little chat (only if you like) with each and every one of you! Just be aware that I’m in Australia and due to time zone differences there may sometimes be a delay in my response due to my being asleep while you’re awake. I was thrilled just last weekend to meet by chance one of my newest customers at a weaving event in Sydney after having chatted with her while arranging her purchases. You just don’t get to do that when selling on a third party website.

Fortunately, the current pace of sales is something I can easily handle. When the time comes for me to launch a new publication (I have three in mind), I’ll sell them via a shop on this blog as the sales volume (hopefully?) will be more than I can handle on a person-to-person basis.

I chose to weave a pattern that I had transposed to the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave from a historic tablet-woven band for the demo at the Medieval Fair. It has a little dragon-like figure which I thought appropriate. It is charted in the More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns book.

I have written descriptions below with prices to help you decide which book would be most suitable for your kind of loom, weaving style and experience level. I have not listed them here in the order in which they should be purchased. Read the descriptions and if in doubt about the best place for you to start, leave me a comment and we can chat about it. And, before you ask, I’ll tell you that no, there aren’t printed copies available any more. These are all PDFs.

Andean Pebble Weave (US$19), published in 2010, is the first book I published in the growing collection on South American weaving techniques and patterns for weavers. It isn’t necessarily the first one you should buy. It is aimed at experienced weavers and particularly those who prefer a more grass-roots approach. It shows how to wind the warp, create the warp-cross and prepare it for weaving leaving it up to the reader to then decide which kind of loom or what method they will use to hold the warp under tension. The two beams of the ”loom” could be as simple as the weaver’s waist and big toe!

The simplest method has the weaver picking up threads to form patterns by hand. The book then goes on to show how the addition of additional sets of string heddles can make the process partly loom-controlled.

The draft and instructions are also given for four-shaft looms.

Not sure what this structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave is? Here are some bands that have been woven using this technique.

**Some of these patterns are charted in this first book.**

(More suitable starter books for those who use inkle or other band looms are Complementary-warp Pick-up for all kinds of looms that allow you to weave bands or Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms specifically for inkle looms. See their descriptions below).

The follow-up book, More Adventures with Warp-faced Pick-up Patterns (US$25) was published in 2012 and takes weavers who have used the aforementioned Andean Pebble Weave book further into the world of techniques used in the South American highlands and lowlands to produce intricately patterned cloth. A new structure commonly known as ”intermesh” is also covered in detail.

There are one hundred and fifty new Andean Pebble Weave patterns in this book which draw on inspiration from both South American highlands and lowlands as well as adaptations to the pebble weave structure of patterns from textiles around the world. A new charting system of spots and lines is introduced with accompanying tutorials which will help weavers go beyond charted patterns to create their own designs.

Teaching backstrap loom weaving at the Blackheath Arts Society here in the Blue Mountains. All those serious focused faces turned into smiling ones once they’d settled and started to feel comfortable with the techniques. Some had never ever wove before and can now call themselves weavers!

Complementary-warp Pick-up (US$19)was published in 2017 and is recommended as an introduction to these techniques for weavers who can already warp and set-up their looms and confidently weave warp-faced plain-weave bands. That’s all I mean when I say that the book is for “experienced band weavers”.

With a focus on narrow pieces and the very simplest of looms and tools, this book provides step-by-step instruction and forty-two pattern charts for band weavers to use on their inkle looms and other band looms, with rigid heddles, or simple backstrap set-ups. The structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave falls into the category of structures known as Complementary-warp. Many of the patterns in this book are in fact Andean Pebble Weave ones.

Any loom that can produce warp-faced cloth and two basic sheds can be used. The patterns are drawn on the conventional block-style chart.

Here are examples of some of the patterns:

The Complementary-warp Pattern Book (US$25) was published in 2018 and is a beautiful collection of one hundred patterns for those who have learned the techniques from any one of the preceding publications. Several readers of the other publications contributed their own original patterns to this collection. Those who have learned the techniques from the 2019 publication Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms will also be able to enjoy this book.

The patterns are charted on the conventional block-style charts. In the Appendix the same patterns are also charted on the spotted charts that were introduced in the More Adventures…. book. Both styles of charting have their fans and so I have provided both.

Note that while most of the patterns in this book are of a width that can be managed on inkle looms, some will be too wide and will be more suitable for those who use larger looms like the Gilmore Wave series of looms or other two-sided inkle looms that allow greater widths.

A second book of 132 patterns was published in 2019…More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns. See the description further down.

The colors I’ve been achieving lately in my natural dye experiments perfectly matched the Autumn colors here in my Blue Mountains home. The most recent color came from lichen which gave me the lovely lavender.

The year 2019 brought two more books to the collection. The Eye-pattern Tubular Band and Other Decorative Finishing Techniques (US$22) shows how taking a piece of fabric off the loom signals the start of a whole new process in which the piece can be strengthened and decorated using tubular edgings and other woven and sewn embellishments.

The tubular band with its distinctive eye pattern can also be woven independently and used in jewelry and accessories. A loom is not required. One end of the warp is attached to the weaver’s waist with the other end tied to a fixed point. Weaving the bands is not dependent on the use of heddles and all the sheds are created by hand. Detailed instructions on how to set up the warp and weave the tubular band on an inkle loom are also provided.

Two versions of the book were published. One includes the sewing techniques as well as instructions for weaving the patterned tubular band. The other only teaches the tubular band. (US$16)

Both include instruction via supplemental video clips as well as instructions on how to set up and weave the tubular bands on inkle looms. These books are aimed at weavers but can be used by those who don’t have any previous band-weaving experience.

2019 also brought Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms (US$22). It is aimed at weavers who like to use the standard inkle loom and who, after being able to competently weave plain-weave bands, are ready to take their first steps in one of the many possible patterning techniques.

Two beginner methods are taught with the use of dozens of step-by-step photos, detailed text and video clips. Weavers can decide which method best suits their particular loom and weaving style. A third intermediate-level method shows an optional faster way of achieving the same results by using additional sets of heddles on the inkle loom. This is probably my favourite book so far!

In late 2019 I decided to re-publish all the Andean Pebble Weave patterns from the 2012 publication More Adventures with Warp-faced Pick-up Patterns. All 126 patterns plus 6 brand new ones appear in this publication on the more conventional block-style chart. They were previously drawn using charts of spots and lines in 2012. Many weavers enjoy the spotted charts and have used them to design their very own patterns. Others, who haven’t had time to study the tutorial which explains how the spotted charts are read, have often asked me if the patterns could be re-published on the more commonly used block-style chart.

More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns (US$22) is for them but it will also be welcomed by those who don’t own the 2012 book and who have learned the techniques from my more recent publications Complementary-warp Pick-up and Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms. This pattern book provides 132 charts with patterns that have been adapted from textiles produced in various regions around the world….Kuba cloth of Central Africa, Komi knitwear, belts with patterns of Russian origin, yurt bands and satchels from Central Asia, historic and contemporary tablet-woven motifs, as well as patterns from textiles woven in the highlands and lowlands of Peru and Bolivia.

Some of the patterns are too wide for the average inkle loom and will be better suited to wider band looms like the Gilmore Wave series of looms or two-sided inkle looms that allow greater widths.

Published in April 2020…Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms (US$22)

This is an advanced-level technique aimed at weavers who use a standard inkle loom. By that, I mean the kind of inkle loom that uses individual string heddles and which requires the weaver to lift and lower one layer of threads with the hands to create the two basic sheds. I use an Ashford Inklette in this book to teach and demonstrate the technique using its two basic sheds. There is a bit more work involved in setting up the loom and weaving requires extra care and attention (hence the advanced-level rating). It would be helpful to know before you attempt this technique that you enjoy doing pick-up as it is one of the slower techniques that I have learned in South America. However, it is one of the easiest structures for designing and I liken it to doodling on plain weave.

The structure does not use warp-floats and so the surface of the band is perfectly smooth. The motifs are identical on the two faces with colors reversed. Angular, curve-like, solid and delicately outlined figures can be produced. The book has 45 pattern charts. Chapters on designing take you through the steps for sketching, charting and planning the layout of patterns. You are also shown how easy it is to chart a motif from an image of a woven textile.

Video clips supplement the instructions and are accessed via links throughout the text.

A section is dedicated to Finishing and includes tutorials on a braiding technique and weft twining.

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I look forward to hearing from you if you would like to purchase any of these publications. I apologise for the long wait but I hope it will be worth it. Just leave a comment here or contact me via the Facebook or Instagram options that I mentioned at the start of this post.

And yes, I have been weaving and doing other fiber related things in these recent months here in Australia where I’m still in the process of settling in. I’ve been more active talking about all that in my Facebook posts lately while I try to sort out the change-of-template issues on this blog but I am planning a catch-up post here on this blog very soon. Promise! It will also take me a long long long time to change every single link I ever posted to Taproot Video on this blog! Thank you for your patience and continued support.

**Being King of the World on Ruined Castle deep in the Jamison Valley, Blue Mountains NSW Australia.** **Day 3 of my three-day birthday celebration a couple of weeks ago…haha. No it wasn’t one of the milestone birthdays but the Beatles thought the age important enough to write a song about!**

Backstrap Weaving – Finding Joy

Here’s just a quick hello and update (as I’m typing with one finger of my left hand)…

I’m still in transition mode living on the mid-north coast with my brother and sister-in-law (and loving it!) while working on rehabilitating my hand. I did end up having a second surgery because it was all pretty messed up….tendons and a very irritated nerve were encased in scar tissue and stuck together. Another tendon had become adhered to the bone, plus the plate that was too bulky for my small frame was removed. I had been expecting a minor miracle after that but it was, in fact, a move back to square one rehabilitation-wise. Expectations were adjusted and I’m back to work exercising.

In the meantime, there have been several textile-related exhibits to visit at Port Macquarie’s fabulous Glasshouse. I was drawn to this piece by Hannah Garside called Book of Hands because of the hand theme. These well-used and worn gloves **“darkened with age and use gently interlace evoking touch, intimacy and the presence of former wearers “**

I managed to get one more key fob gift woven before being advised to stop weaving until I’ve recovered wrist rotation. It’s quite limited right now. I was kidding myself thinking I could manage weaving with my injured hand. I was, in fact, compensating with my shoulder and ended up injuring it.

This fob is for my hand therapist, an occupational rather than physio therapist, and has the name of her business. The name will only make sense if you understand that the last two letters are capitals and are pronounced Oh-tee.

So, weaving is on the back-burner once again and I am entertaining myself by designing a hand-themed triptych which will be a story of my Indian roots, my 32 years in South America and the new possibilities that will come to me now that I’m back in Australia.

I’ve joined an organisation here called the Fibre Artisans Network and am excited about being able to exchange ideas and share skills and perhaps exhibit some of my work alongside that of the other members one day. We’ve met up twice already and will do so again tomorrow. The first thing I’d love to learn more about is dyeing with eucalypts.

I’m going to leave you with something I’ve posted before but which brings me joy and makes me want to share it again. I hope the melody isn’t an ear-worm for you. I’ve added some bits since I last showed it to you.

MY FAVORITE THINGS (a few of)

Intricate patterns on bamboo and gourd,
A beater, a shuttle, a small weaving sword,
Plant fibers twisted and woven like string,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Bone tools and wooden ones shaped just for picking,
Others to strum across threads that are sticking,
Laid out before me the pleasure they bring,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Books that tell stories of teachers I’ve known,
Covered with fabric and carefully sewn,
They hold the memories to which I will cling,
These are a few of my favorite things.

Spindles a-whirring turn fleece into thread,
Dipped in a dye pot of cochineal red,
Patterns of summer, fall, winter and spring,
**These are a few of my favorite things.**

When I must wait,
Cannot cre-ate,
And I’m feeling sad.
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don’t feel
So bad.

Spring has sprung here and it’s glorious! The air is drenched with the aroma of jasmine and the sound of bees. An increasing number of surfers can be spotted bobbing about in the waves and it’s time to make friends with all the magpies I encounter on my walks lest they start swooping me at nesting time.

Until next time when maybe I can reveal some of my hand-themed patterns. I’ve made some good thrift store purchases of cotton (I love how thrift stores here in Australia are called “op shops”) which I’ll dye for this project…..or maybe I’ll use eucalypt-dyed wool. It’s exciting to think about.

Backstrap Weaving – Bye-bye Traddy

And so continues the journey of my Ashford Traditional spinning wheel….and I never once took a photo of it 🙁 I got it in the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) back in the 90s and had it in my home in southern Chile. I wished I’d asked how it had made its way to the Falklands in the first place…directly from the manufacturer in New Zealand or perhaps via the UK or perhaps by some other more exotic and convoluted route?

Whie living in Chile and before I got the wheel, I had brought some alpaca back from my first trip to Peru to spin with a drop spindle that I’d also bought there. My inexperience meant that I made a mess of it and so, discouraged, I put spinning aside for a while!

Later, I turned to sheep. There were sheep galore down there in Patagonia and I was given a fleece. So, I got experience washing and carding it and my first project was knitting! I can hardy believe it as I can barely knit. But I designed a pattern, based on the shape of a cotton vest that I owned, and fumbled my way through knitting the front of a vest using wool that I had spun on the spindle.

By this time, I’d acquired the Traddy and I wove the back panel using my first wheel-spun yarn which I dyed brown in a balanced plain weave on my Navajo-style vertical loom…without a reed. I probably didn’t even know that reeds existed back then (you can just get a glimpse of the brown back on the far right in the photo above). Spinning yarn that worked well for this knitting and weaving was a complete fluke. I really had very little idea about what I was doing. The vest is edged with a triple cross-knit-looping stitch that I’d learned both from my sling-braiding teacher in Peru and one of my weaving teachers in Bolivia. And I also used a band I’d woven as an edging.

I used left-over scraps of that wheel-spun wool along with some of the wool I used for my Navajo-style weaving in natural dye experiments in Chile. They were wrapped around rolls of paper and coiled into what you see here which I used as the lid for a basket.

And that was all the action the poor Traddy got to see in my hands. I brought it up to Bolivia with me and it gathered dust in a corner for a while before I eventually dismantled it (my cat was finding it way too interesting) and it sat in the closet while I continued to spin on drop spindles. Now it’s gone to the Brazilian owners of my local yarn store. Maybe it will make a trip to Brazil one day.

Bye-bye Traddy. Enjoy your world travels. The rest of this post on spinning includes some sections that I’ve posted before and so you may find some parts familiar.

I am a “cheap spindler” in much the same way as I am a cheap drunk…it doesn’t take much to make me happy! Don’t waste the good wine on me. I do not have a refined palate. So, it is little wonder that I am content to use my humble Cusco drop spindle when I get the urge to spin. I just don’t have a refined palate for spinning tools.

The Cusco spindle was the second one I ever got, the first being from San Pedro de Atacama in northern Chile. The Cusco one that I got in 1996, being more robust, became my constant travel companion. It was practical. Although I have collected many more spindles on my weaving safaris since then, this Cusco one is the one I always use while the others hang on the wall behind the sofa as souvenirs of places I have been and people I have met.

**Some of the whorls from the spindles on the wall fell down behind the sofa only to be retrieved later when a friend helped me move it. Here are three that I found there among the cat toys.** **It’s so interesting seeing the various styles of whorl.**

The very first spinning that I did for weaving on my backstrap loom was with some extremely dry, brittle, and filthy llama fiber that I had bought from a farmer while wandering about the back roads of Uyuni in the Bolivian highlands. I cleaned and prepared it. The dust and dirt would have me wheezing and my skin would crawl and eyes run every time I opened the bags to get more. It made for good spinning training. I gave the fiber a tremendous amount of twist because at that time I believed that this was the only way hand-spun yarn could possibly stand up to the abrasion of warp-faced weaving. I have since learned that this is not so. That kind of yarn produces durable, hard wearing cloth and in a tight warp-faced weave can make a garment highly water-resistant. Of course, that isn’t always the kind of cloth I want.

**The natural colors of the llama I spun. I was always amazed at how nice it looked when woven. Warp-faced structures are very forgiving in that way.**

When I was given a large bag of spearmint leaves by a friend, I decided to use it it to dye some of the llama yarn. One batch gave me a nice neutral taupe color. The second lot my friend gave me produced green. I also had some cochineal for red.

I was able to buy a lovely fine commercial yarn in Chile that was a blend of alpaca and wool and came in earthy colors. I would use my drop spindle to add extra twist as, again, I’d thought that yarn for warp-faced weaving simply must have that tightly spun characteristic. The green in this band I wove with this yarn is actually cotton.

The first time I was given prepared alpaca to spin by my friend Janet, I decided that I simply couldn’t put all that heavy amount of twist into that beautiful fiber. With a bit of extra care in the way I handled it on my backstrap loom, **it made lovely warp. The yarn was quite balanced and didn’t kink up on itself.**

**You can see that this alpaca yarn that I spun lies flat and relaxed when not under tension.**

You can see how my teacher Maxima’s handspun wool yarn behaves when not under tension. All the energy from the twist causes the warp lying on the ground to tightly spiral. The yarn will produce hard-wearing cloth.

After that experience with the alpaca, I never added extra twist to industrially-spun yarn again. Of course I had to choose yarn that had certain characteristics. I used the soft Knit Picks Palette straight out of the cake for this next piece. It was actually just a stash-busting exercise to use up odds and ends and I wasn’t convinced that it would work for warp-faced weaving in string heddles. It did with a little extra care. I wove this piece with four-selvedges and only had to be very careful when needle-weaving the end so as not to split the loose ply with the needle.

I really enjoy reading the online group forums about spinners and their spindles. The participants’ love and enthusiasm for their tools is wonderful….I totally get it but I just don’t share it. Some of the spindles they show are beautiful pieces of craftsmanship and I love seeing them. But when it comes down to it, I just want to get the job done. If you like your tools to be uniquely hand-carved pieces of art, take a look at Allen Berry’s work on Instagram (allenrberry). All his fiber tools are amazing.

It seems that when it comes to spinning I am totally product oriented which is kind of strange as it is quite the opposite when I weave. I just want to get this stuff done so I can go weave with it. In weaving I am all about enjoying the process. I probably would not have been willing to devote any great amount of time to spinning if not for the pandemic. The combination of needing to keep my hands busy during Zoom sessions as well as a dwindling stash had me happily spinning up all the wool I could find in my closet.

Weaving a small tubular band as a test for my handspun wool yarn to see if a) it would be suitable for my warp-faced weaving and b) if there was enough contrast between the three colors for use in a three-color pebble project.

It was strange that after all these years this would be my first time weaving on my backstrap loom with my own drop-spindle-spun sheep wool. Was I nervous about it? Yes!

**The warp for a three-color pebble project with my handspun “pandemic” wool in purple, pale yellow and a rust.**

And then I took on a new adventure…spinning cotton. As with my favored Cusco spindle for wool, I have taken the takli that Elizabeth gave me in Australia as my one and only tool for cotton. It is all I feel the need for right now. It makes for quiet, comfortable, and fuss-free Zoom spinning.

My first lot of Sea Island cotton and the gifted takli spindle. I was pleased with this first attempt but hadn’t known at the time that Sea Island cotton has a longer staple length than other varieties and is therefore easier to spin.

My collection of spindles that I have gathered in my travels includes a few that are used for cotton. Here are two from Guatemala and one that I bought from my Guaraní teacher here in Santa Cruz. The whorl on that one is a piece cut from the sole of a sandal.

**Two spindles from Guatemala flank the Guaraní one.**

I couldn’t believe my luck when one of the local museums here offered a workshop given by two Guaraní ladies on spinning cotton. We didn’t get to keep the spindles but the whorls on the ones we used were also made from pieces of rubber sole.

I love the way we are all so focused on our teacher’s demonstration. As it turned out, she is left-handed and we were all righties. She got us all started one by one turning the spindle in one direction and we then proceeded to unspin what she had started for us!

I came up with some unconventional ways of my own for handling the spinning and processing, like using this wooden mortar as the support for the takli. I like that I can grip its neck between my knees while I’m seated to spin. It works really well and the sound of the metal spindle tip against the wood is quieter than when I used to use a ceramic dish.

And I found these mesh pencil cups useful as a way to hold my singles under tension when they were being boiled to set the twist.

It was fun seeing how the colored cottons deepened in tone when they were boiled.

**The color called Mahogany in the center after being boiled. The pre-boil color is below to the right.**

And of course, there is the horizontally-held spindle for cotton spinning that is used by my teachers in coastal Ecuador.

The cotton is draped on a wooden stand called the “rueca” for spinning. It has a notch cut into its top which grabs the cotton and allows the spinner to draw out the fibers under tension. A small basket is woven from plantain fiber underneath on which the spindle sits when not in use. This is a miniature version of the rueca which I made with my teachers’ help so that I could take an example back with me to Bolivia. I need to place something in the little basket to weigh it down because it is so small and light. The typical spindle can be seen at right with its wooden whorl. More often now you will see people using yo-yo halves and metal wheels as whorls.

Here are some tiny whorls from coastal Ecuador that the family had found while ploughing their fields. There were close to forty of them sitting in a bowl on a shelf, just like that.

My very first experience with spinning cotton had been in coastal Ecuador where I got to work almost from scratch, de-seeding, teasing apart, and fluffing up the cotton. It was difficult spinning it on the horizontally-held spindles compared to what I do now with the takli. Unfortunately, I didn’t spend much time on it while there, being much more interested in the weaving part of the process. My teachers already had plenty of spun singles that they doubled for warp so that I could learn how they weave their double-pocket saddle bags and hammocks. We would pass time in the evenings on cotton preparation.

**My first attempts with the horizontally-held spindle in Ecuador** **with my teacher Trini and her mother Luz (rip).**

I put in a little practice when I got back home but the loom soon called me away…

**My cat got to the point eventually where she paid no attention to my fiber-y pursuits.**

I may have never gone back to cotton if not for the pandemic. The loom was always pulling me one way yet my stash of gifted sliver in the closet was growing. Thank you to all those, especially Betty, who were so kind with their gifts when I was visiting in the States.

I have woven with my singles thread. It was an even freakier experience than the first time weaving with my handspun llama yarn all those years ago.I was surprised to see how well it tolerated the string heddles and the close sett on my backstrap loom.

**I love the look of all these handspun cotton singles lined up on my backstrap loom.**

I’ve used it in plain weave for ikat pieces as well as for pieces decorated with pick-up patterns that I’ve used in small purse and wallet projects.

**Wallet project with pick-up patterning in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave.**

Right now I’m spinning some more brown sliver that I just uncovered in the closet. I’ve yet to use the brown in a project.

**Ikat projects in my handspun cotton singles. The lower one uses some of the natural green cotton in both its boiled and not-boiled versions. Most of what you see there is the not-boiled green.**

No doubt when I return to Australia I’ll have lots of access to sheep fleeces and will wonder about my Traddy and how it’s being used on this side of the world. I won’t be buying another wheel though, and will slowly work my way through, as is my habit, with my drop spindle. I won’t be displaying my other spindles on the wall either and that might lead me to picking up one of the others for a spin and giving the Cusco one a rest.

See you all next time…

Backstrap Weaving – One Method doesn’t Fit All.

Does one backstrap loom operating method fit all? Definitely not, especially when working with sticky, sticky, mill-spun singles wool. Give it a shot of hairspray some people will say, or coat it in sizing. My reaction is “yuck” (mind you, I’ve never tried it!). My hands are right in there in amongst the threads in the kind of pick-up patterning I do and I like to feel the natural fiber rather than a starchy stiffness or chemical coating.

The process is more meaningful to me than the finished product and I would rather slow down and adapt my method for operating the loom than coat the threads with stuff. (I’m quite sure I’ll try it one of these days, though, as I get further along with weaving with my own handspun cotton singles and will then take all this back).

I don’t want to limit myself to only the smoothest and friendliest of materials that are deemed suitable for warp-faced weaving on a backstrap loom. And so I will occasionally jump in and make the sticky stuff work. I guess in a way I enjoy the challenge as well as the feel of the finished product. Of course much depends on the intended use of the finished product.

**This is the mill-spun wool singles yarn that I bought from a farmer while weaving with friends in Petaluma, California**.

I have used this wool in three small projects in plain warp-faced weaving so far. It has stood up well in the weaving process and with use. I had yet to use it in any kind of denser warp-float structures, let alone in the three-color structure that I was planning. I figured that I could weave a sample to see how it behaved and then decide if I wanted to take it on for a larger project. I was confident that I could make it work. It just depended on how much work I had to put into making it work. Working with yarn like this usually involves slowing down and gently coaxing unwilling threads to release their sticky hairy grip on their neighbors so that you can get something that resembles a clear shed without damaging the yarn.

**Two of the plain-weave projects that I’ve completed with this wool….a travel documents pouch on the left and mobile phone case on the right.**

What made things a little trickier was the fact that I dyed some of the yarn. In the hot water the singles sort of poofed up (surely there’s a technical term for this) and didn’t recover when they dried. The un-dyed yarn looked thin and wiry next to it.

I wove a narrow sample in the three-color structure and decided that it would be doable in a wider project. Surprisingly, the threads in the tiny plain-weave borders were ones that complained most with that alarming rasping and tearing sound that they make as their entwined hairy fingers are torn apart. It all sounds very violent, doesn’t it?! But in reality it all has to be done very gently. In the warp-float section, there were far fewer complaints but I still had to work to clear sheds.

I sampled both the reversible and non-reversible versions of the three-color technique and also played with different weights of wool weft. Using the same yarn as weft gave me the best result.

There was a lot of pick-up to be done in my much larger planned pattern flanked by a lot more plain weave. Because operating the loom for the wide plain-weave borders required slower more gentle operation of the loom, I decided to just weave the pattern on its own and to add the sides as separate pieces. That way I could just place all my focus on the pick-up.

**Taming the mill-spun singles into a three-color pattern in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave.**

I’ve woven this three-color structure several times before using Tencel, tapestry wool and my own plied handspun wool and have achieved nice crisp images. The hairiness of the singles yarn gives a much more rustic look to the figures. It grows on you and I love the way it feels.

**Using 8/2 Tencel in the same structure.**

I had set up my warp with two sets of string heddles and once I had figured out my method for working them with this extra sticky stuff, I was on my way and enjoying seeing the pattern emerge. It’s always good to have multiple ways of adjusting basic methods to suit the kind of material with which you are working.

I didn’t do a whole lot of color flipping on this one, unlike the hummingbird camera strap that I wove in my own handspun. I just flipped to outline some leaves in red rather than white in one part. This wasn’t the kind of design in which I could regularly flip the background color.

**The camera strap in which I could play with changing the background color, the hummingbird outline color and filler color. It was a bit brain bending but fun.**

**A little further along with some cloth already rolled up.**

One thing that I always try to do when weaving with wool is advance the warp as often as possible so that the heddles and rods are not abrading one spot for too long.

And here it is finished….

Next came the grey side pieces….

**Now to decide on whether to join the three pieces without overlapping them using one of the decorative stitches that I’ve learned from my teachers here, or join them with the tiniest of seams.**

**The heddles from the two warps remained pretty much fluff-free.** **The one on the left is from the pattern warp and is discolored. I’m guessing that a fine film of fluff has discolored it.**

This little pouch for my pin loom is made up of three pieces joined together with a tiny seam. The center is a piece I wove from my own handspun llama yarn that I was rescuing from an old project. I added sides made from the mill-spun wool singles.

A subtle joining stitch in cotton connecting two panels that don’t overlap. I’d woven a very long band on a circular warp and Karen-style backstrap loom that had been given to me. I cut the band into five pieces and joined them to make a table square.

**The stitch can be decorative as well as functional when worked in a contrasting color. I used it to join the panels of this wool lap blanket that I wove.**

**Another kind of stitch that my Vietnamese backstrap weaving teachers use. I used it to connect two bands and make a tool bag**.

Sometimes the joining stitch can be one of the main features. I used this stitch which was shown to me by one of my teachers in the Bolivian highlands to join two cotton panels that I had woven. Maxima stitches it in many bright and lively colors.

**Picture courtesy of PAZA Bolivia shows Maxima’s carrying cloth with its colorful joining stitches.**

So, what is this project supposed to be? It will hopefully be the cover for a folder that holds my pattern charts. I just have to figure out how to construct the folder. I want it to have multiple pockets for the various categories of structures and it may need to be expandable.

While I figure that out, I’ll start washing my handspun cotton singles as I have a project in mind for them and I might start preparing the handspun wool I recently got in the market for some cochineal dyeing. We have a run of really high temperatures coming up and I can’t say that I’m keen on having the stove on for these tasks. I don’t have air conditioning. But never mind, there’s always plenty of other fiber-y things to do.

**Natural brown handspun cotton singles waiting to be washed. I use these metal mesh pencil cups to hold the thread under tension in the pot.**

I’ll just pop in a photo here of the box purse that I was making in my last post. I didn’t show a photo of the open box with its contents. It’s so handy…I love it.

I’m going to leave you with a couple of short videos I took of weavers in Peru working with wide wool warps on their backstrap looms. You will see that some time and effort needs to put into opening the shed-rod shed with the particular kind of warp material they are using. Its not just a matter of drawing the shed rod forward to the heddles and then sliding the two together. The threads don’t smoothly rise and pop through to the other side as you often see happening in the hands of some backstrap loom weavers on Youtube who are using other kinds of friendlier warp material. Those of us who are privileged to be able to work with all kinds of warp materials soon find out that there isn’t just one single method that fits all.

Backstrap Weaving – The Big Bag Theory

In my last post I left you with the fabric that I had woven for pockets for my new tote bag. It’s part of a stash-busting project using the small balls of Omega Sinfonia cotton that I’ve accumulated over the years.

**Fabric for two pockets that I wove using the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave. My backstrap loom enables me to create a nice neat third selvedge at the start of the fabric.**

Then came the task of weaving the fabric for the body of the bag. Again, I wanted to be able to use up as much of that stash of Omega Sinfonia as possible. I knew that I could over-dye the lighter colors dark blue. But the dark colors would have to be dyed black. There weren’t enough lighter colors to allow me to create entirely blue fabric but I didn’t want the bag to be completely black either. I decided the cloth would be both blue and black. Oh my gosh, I had so many doubts about what this was going to look like!

The fact that each color that I overdyed would give me a different tone of blue and black was another thing to consider. This could be a mess. The differences in tone were not fully apparent until the warp had been wound and spread out before me. I suppose I could have taken the time to arrange the stripes in some sort of clever Fibonacci sequence of widths but once the warp was wound and on the loom beams, I wasn’t keen on fiddling around with it.

You might notice the absence of a coil rod on this warp. I’m in the habit of using one when I do warp-faced plain weave using material that has little to no stretch. Inserting one locks the two layers of threads together and stops them from see-sawing back and forth around the warp beam as I operate the loom. That see-sawing can cause the cloth to form a corrugated look. This time, I wove a inch or so at the far end of the warp to lock the two layers together instead before turning the loom around to start weaving at the knot-less “good” end.

I planned the cloth to be 19 inches wide. That’s a fair bit wider than what I usually have on my backstrap loom but certainly not as wide as the cloth I have seen on the backstrap looms of weavers in Indonesia and other parts of SE Asia. The widest cloth that I have seen on a backstrap loom in my travels in South America was 39 inches. It was light cotton cloth and the weaver had to stand to weave it.

**This weaver in Peru stands weaves a wide, light, cotton ikat warp.**

I had to get out the long sticks and swords.

**The sword on the right was just right for this project.**

**Laying the pocket fabric on top to see if I could imagine what the end product would look like**.

Omega Sinfonia is quite hefty thread compared with what I have become used to using over recent years and so it was quite a work-out operating the loom and beating. My longest sword is not a particularly hefty one.

Before and after wet-finishing and pressing. The straps in the picture on the right don’t belong to this bag. I had just placed the cloth on top of another tote that I own to get an idea of strap placement.

The original idea had been to have two outer pockets, one on each side, showing the two faces of the Andean Pebble Weave pattern. In the end I went with one outside and one inside pocket instead. It was a fairly basic sewing project. I created box corners and then set about weaving the straps.

It has already been on its first grocery-shopping outing….

Its a winner. I’m really pleased with it. Well, that took care of about a third of the Omega Sinfonia scraps. What’s next? I have two kinds of reds and three kinds of browns left, none of which look good together, and a bunch of other odds and ends. I have in fact used red and brown together before but I guess that they just have to be the right kinds of red and brown in order to work…

**Two wool panels that I wove and later sewed together to make a lap blanket.**

People often ask me how I go about weaving wider pieces. For me, it’s all about the warping. Once a good evenly tensioned warp has been created and you are seated at the loom, there’s not a whole lot of difference in the process of dressing the warp and weaving. Additional sticks and other tools might be needed but operating the backstrap loom with a wide warp works on the same body-movement principles as with a narrow warp. It just requires more physical effort.

I have a few tips for creating and managing wider warps. I stress that this is just the way I do it. There are many different ways and of course, no one single correct way. This isn’t a step-by-step description…just some tips that I can share after perhaps having made every possible mistake over the years.

Tip 1: Make sure you have a stable warping set-up with stakes that aren’t going to shift or bend:

I always warp in sections and won’t pile up any more than two inches of threads on my warping stakes to avoid having them lean. I tie off and remove each section from the stakes and place them on beams and cross sticks that are waiting on the floor. Always use safety strings in case there’s an accident along the way!

**First of several sections of a silk warp I created some time ago removed from the warping stakes and placed on beams and cross sticks on the floor.**

This is the second warp that I created after returning from my first weaving lessons in Peru in 1996. I was in a big hurry to create a wide piece using both the Andean Pebble Weave and supplementary-warp structures that I had been taught but I didn’t yet have a good warping set-up. Take a look at the disaster on the warp beam!

Tip 2: Know your yarn, know your width, know your technique:

What I am saying is, don’t go wide with a yarn you have never used before. First weave a decent-sized sample.

I know that some people don’t bother with sampling but I like to know the width I am aiming for rather than just warping up and seeing what turns out. So, there is a lot of measuring and calculating that goes on based on samples that I have woven, preferably fairly recently, with the yarn I plan to use. I had a sample using the Omega Sinfonia thread for my bag project in both warp-faced plain weave and Andean Pebble Weave and used it to make my calculations. That way I knew exactly the number of ends I would need for each of the two structures to create my 9-inch-wide pocket fabric. The plain weave sections in the pocket actually came out slightly wider than expected (perhaps my sample had been too old and I have since then unconsciously changed the way I handle the weft). I was able to use that updated information to plan the warp-faced plain-weave cloth for the body of the bag.

One of my sampling warps. This one was more about sampling a motif that I was designing but it also gave me a chance to update the ends-per-inch information that I have for this 20/2 cotton warp as I plan to use this thread as part of my next project. It turned out that my epi info hasn’t changed since the last time I worked with this thread.

My brother still has the wedge-shaped wall hanging that I had gifted to my mum back in the early days. I had woven it with new-to-me yarn, so no sampling had been done, and I started off too narrow. It started to widen and didn’t stop widening all the way to the end. There’s an inch difference in width from start to finish. But because it never settled down into a consistent width, the gradual widening almost looks intentional.

Another thing worth mentioning that applies to wide warps more than narrow ones, is that I find it best to set up my loom in one place at one angle and then keep it there for the duration of the project. I had started my mum’s wall hanging in Bolivia and taken it unfinished to Australia. It got set up in a few different places at various angles while I struggled to finish it in time. I even had to work on the short warp with the warp beam awkwardly lodged behind my feet for a while (I didn’t have another rod or cord handy to extend its length). That awkwardness accounts for the fact that the cloth isn’t straight.

**Many lessons were learned from this one project from back in the day.**

I wouldn’t attempt a wide piece with a technique that I had just recently learned either. (Obviously I hadn’t added this to my advice list on that red warp back in 1996!)

Tip 3: Warp undisturbed and don’t disturb the warp:

Have everything you need for warping close at hand including the loom bars and cross sticks….scissors, rubber bands or tape, lashing string, string for tying off groups of warps for counting etc.

Try to warp in one uninterrupted session…turn off the kettle, put the cat out, ignore the phone, forget that cup of coffee! It’s amazing how things can change from one day to the next. I never leave a warp half-done until the next day.

Once you have wound that beautifully-tensioned warp, do your very best not to disturb it. When I slide a section of warp off the warping board I try to keep my hand under the ends so that they are all lying flat across my fingers and not bunching up. Then I place them very carefully onto the beams. This saves a lot of tugging and rearranging later when I’m seated with the warp and tension and getting ready to weave. A lot of tugging can mess up your tension. Below right, you can see how I place my hand to lift the threads off the warping stake. Another thing you can do is chain thread around groups of threads as I’ve done on the red warp. It can help stop threads in a larger section of warp from shifting and climbing on top of each other, which all means less work and less time spent straightening things out later. One of my Guatemalan teachers did this.

Tip 4: Slow and steady…take the time to set-up and start well:

If necessary, settle the threads one by one along the cloth beam untwisting any that have overlapped. I learned to love doing this from my teacher in Guatemala. She so calmly and patiently lifted each thread on the tip of her pointed sick and placed it on the beam and I’ve learned to do the same. This is not entirely necessary if you are starting with a fringe and using waste yarn or cardboard strips as weft for your first few inches, but if you’re going for a third selvedge, this exercise will give you the neatest possible start.

Learning the patterning technique with supplementary weft with my weaving teacher in Guatemala. The cloth did not have a third selvedge. She carefully arranged the threads along her cloth beam which enabled her to press her first shots of weft hard against the beam for the least possible amount of loom waste.

Then I measure sections so that I know that my sett is consistent the whole way across the warp. There are varying degrees of “warp-facedness”. In some sections your threads might be crammed up tightly next to each other. In others they might be just a hair’s breadth apart. Mine tend to be the latter and I want that to be consistent. It’s especially hard to tell when you are working with dark colors or very fine threads. The overall width might be correct but the warp threads may still not be evenly distributed across that width.

I calculate the width that each of those sections that I removed from my warping stakes should be and make sure that the threads in each section are settled at that width. I can sometimes use up a whole morning fiddling around with this! However, with the right amount of prep, once I have thrown the first shots of weft and measured once again, I know that all will be smooth sailing from there on…just pure fun!

I’m going to finish with the The Big Bag again because after spending so much time doubting the success of this project, I now love it so much!