backstrap looms – Page 4 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Looking Forward, Looking Back

These days I get a little taken aback when an email arrives asking me if I am able to attend an event in July 2021 or consider contributing a piece of writing with an October 2020 deadline. Who are these people who are able to think so far in the future? I am glad that someone can, because I most certainly can’t. I am sure that it is those who are determined to keep looking forward who will come out of this whole thing hitting the ground running. I need to make that effort. It seems everything I do these days takes my mind back to the past. I am finding it hard to think beyond the next date when the current lock down situation is assessed. That will be May 17. I am sure that many of you feel the same way.

Meanwhile, the days march onward, the seasons change and the glorious toborochi tress here in Santa Cruz break into full bloom.

I have been working on my next ikat experiment. I think this is number eight and might be the last in 60/2 silk as my supply of un-dyed 60/2 is running low. I didn’t want to start a new experiment unless it involved a new challenge and something new to be learned. So, I decided to try a motif with finer lines than I have been using until now and with lines that lie at different angles. I have to say that I have been dithering and dithering over this. First of all because I think I needed a break after having finished my latest book on Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms. I goofed off for about 5 days, I think. But, mixed in with the need for a break was the uneasy feeling that I had bitten off more than I could chew for my next planned ikat project and that disaster was looming. Some of this had to do with the fact that I might be wasting the last of my un-dyed 60/2 silk and couldn’t have a do-over if things didn’t work out. I wasn’t entering into it with a great deal of enthusiasm.

This is the leaf-like motif that I came up with. It was easy enough to sketch on paper but would I be able to tie those lines? I wanted to place two identical motifs side by side with some other kind of motif between them, possibly also in ikat, but maybe in supplementary weft. You can see the sketch for my last ikat project in the background. For that one, all the steps in the diagonal lines were equal in width and length which made them relatively easy to measure and tie onto the warp.

I am so used to winding these silk warps now. That process is hazard-free. I wound 1640 ends in 100-end sections. I never completely trust my warping stakes not to lean and so I wind small sections low on the stakes and then remove them and place them on beams that are waiting on the floor. What I love about warping for backstrap weaving this way is that it feels like a full body work out…..standing, swaying, stretching, bending. I do it in silence and find it very relaxing.

Then came the task of dividing the warp into the sections that would be wrapped in ikat tape. This is the part where I can listen to music and even sing. I chose Even in the Quietest Moments by Supertramp because the most wonderful thing about this lock down has been the absence of sound. That music sent my mind back to 1998, the year I arrived in Bolivia from Chile. Roger Hodgson, the lead singer of Supertramp, had brought a band and played an evening outdoor concert at the football stadium a few weeks after my arrival. The ticket was $9! It was a gorgeous balmy tropical evening. After five years of living in howling winds in Punta Arenas in Chile, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It is a sweet memory.

I divided the warp into 10-end sections and chained a thread around them. In my experience with ikat so far, I have found slim bundles harder to wrap than thick ones. My plan was to fold the warp in half, halving its width, and wrap around two layers at once. That meant that I would be wrapping around bundles of 20-ends which would be much easier to handle.

Once the warp was divided into sections, I was ready to remove it from the frame so that I could fold it in half. It would then be placed back on the frame. The next step was to align the bundles from the top layer with the bottom layer and create new bundles. With that all taken care of, it was time to start wrapping. However, suddenly, there was a multitude of other things that needed doing. Yes, I was dithering again! (procrastinating, is probably the more appropriate word for it.) This was the point of no return. I could modify my motif to something easier or dive in and risk making a mess.

Then came what I am going to call the game-changer.

I usually use plastic zip-ties to hold the warp under tension on my wooden frame. They are okay except that sometimes I would pull one too tightly and it would be a nuisance trying to loosen it off without bending the plastic too much and destroying it. This time, I happened to remember the turn buckles that I had bought last year and decided to try them out as a new way to hold the warp under tension. Oh my gosh, they are awesome! I cranked up the tension and was able to make fine adjustments so easily. In the picture, I have yet to get the set-up squared off. I also added a third turn buckle to the center. I managed to get an amount of tension that I haven’t been able to in the past and suddenly this project seemed all the more doable.

With this amount of tension, I can actually draw very fine and precise lines onto the warp with my charcoal pencil. I have been using charcoal all along to mark my patterns, but every time I would touch the tip of the pencil to the warp, the threads would fan out and slightly sag and the best I could achieve was a smudge. That worked well enough as a guide because I could also rely on a ruler to show me where the next step in the stepped diagonal needed to be. I can’t trust my eyes to judge the spacing accurately. That’s never been a talent of mine.

I can look at dozens of photos online of ikat warps stretched on their frames but until I actually get to touch one, I can never know just how tightly the have been stretched. I had always marveled at videos showing ikat artisans drawing entire fine and detailed patterns onto warps using pencils of different colors. There was a limit to the amount I could tighten the plastic zip-ties when I used them on their own. I can go beyond that limit now with the turn buckles.

The artisans that I have seen working with ikat don’t use turn buckles. Sometimes the warp is secured to a frame with nothing more than torn strips of cloth. I don’t have their skill or expertise! The first time I saw turn buckles in use in weaving was on the Navajo reservation back in 1995. The weavers were using them on their metal looms to tension the warp instead of using rope.

I once read about a gentleman who was studying knotted pile weaving with a Master from Afghanistan. He said that he knew that his warp had enough tension on it, when he was at home weaving and away from his teacher, by the sound the threads would make when he plucked them. Imagine trying to gain that kind of knowledge from an image on the computer screen!

And what about the actual wrapping? Well, I just wrap. If there is some special way of doing it, I haven’t yet found it. I did see a video where the bundles were somehow twirled very quickly with the aid of what I am guessing was a kind of electric drill. The artisan simply stood there holding a piece of black rubber wrapping material and the spinning warp wrapped itself! These were very long warps that were destined for floor looms. Even if I had a way of doing that, I wouldn’t. I’ll go as far as turn buckles, but not electric drills!

This is all I do…

I start at the center and wrap to one end, turn back, go past the center to the other end, return to the center and tie. I like tying off in the center rather than at the end. I find that I am less likely to accidentally snip the warp threads when I later come to cut off the ties if I am cutting at the center of the wrap.

This is where I am at…The warp looks narrower here because it is folded in half. But it also looks narrower because there was an unfortunate incident in which I accidentally cut about 50 ends at one edge! That’s all I want to say about that! It could have been worse. I hadn’t started wrapping the pattern yet and it hasn’t meant having to modify the motif. Once I am done getting this sort of leaf motif done, I’ll decided on the motif I want to use between the two.

So….I have to tell you how grateful and excited I am about the response that I have had to my latest book Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms. This is the first time I have released a book on a new technique where both PDF and spiral-bound book have been available at the same time. Being part of Taproot Video allows this to be so. Patternfish only dealt with digital products. It was exciting and just a touch stressful to find that the books sold out very quickly. I think they were only out-of-stock for 24 hours, though. The printing service was again very quick to get production underway and we were back in business quickly.

I have had a lot of really nice feedback. People are very sweet to write and tell me that they bought the PDF or have received the book and are pleased with what they see.

Of course, the most exciting feedback of all comes in the form of woven work. And that has started to trickle in…

This is Joan Near’s learning band. I have provided several patterns in the book that fit on the 11/12-thread learning band. Joan has taken the little alpaca figure and used it to practice color changes.

Barbara Hoffman’s learning band shows examples of both angular and curve-like patterns. The interlocking diamonds were contributed by an Australian student of mine, Patrick Castle. The leaf is a smaller version of the “signature” leaf pattern that I like to use. The large version is also charted in the book. You can see it on the left of the cover image above.

I have also seen some first attempts at designing…a little animal figure has been woven by one lady and I’ll show you that in my next post. A nice way to ease yourself into designing is to take one of the charted patterns in the book and perhaps tweak it a little to give it your own personal touch. As I say in the book, I find this structure one of the easiest ones for designing and I hope that the shapes and figures that I have provided in the book can be used as stepping stones to the creation of your own unique patterns.

And while there has been a lot of focus on my latest book, those who bought some of my other publications some time ago have been fishing them out to use while following advice to stay at home.

Susan, who has woven with me before on my visits to the States, shared her hatband project with me with a picture that was taken on a gorgeous Californian spring day. She uses a backstrap loom to weave her Andean Pebble Weave bands.

Carlos Vargas in France had been away from the loom for a while and is also taking advantage of time at home to get back into it. He uses a backstrap loom. If you own my Complementary-warp Pattern Book you will know that Carlos contributed a beautiful bee pattern of his own design to that book. In this piece he is weaving a bee pattern that was contributed by Julia Toft in the same book.

Stacy Holder is using her inkle loom and working with some of my original books on Andean Pebble Weave from 8-10 years ago. Those first books did not include specific instructions for setting up on an inkle loom but Stacy has been able to adapt my instructions and get to work on the several models of inkle loom that she likes to use. I love her band with its S-hook pattern in which she has used variegated thread as the background color. The other face is just as stunning with a colorful S-hook shape on a black background. My 2019 publication Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms is aimed at the standard inkle loom and includes video clips.

Wendy Garrity lives in Western Australia where movement away from one’s home is not as restricted as in many other places. She has come up with a clever way to be able to use a backstrap loom anywhere. She is working on a Andean Pebble Weave pattern while on a camping trip.

Erika in Michigan isn’t enjoying that much freedom of movement yet, but is still able to enjoy the outdoors with a view of her garden while she sets up her backstrap loom for a new project.

I have become fully absorbed in my ikat now that I feel more confident about my ability to tie my latest pattern. However, I do have a couple of unfinished projects lying about. The flower band below needs finishing. This pattern was designed and contributed to the double weave book by Gerbelien Cocx-Wilschut.

I have also been planning a new double-wave strap for my camera bag for the next time I go traveling…There! I have caught myself thinking about the future!

Another little experiment that is awaiting completion is my dabble in double width. It seemed to be a natural thing to do after having worked so long on double weave on my little Inklette. I was curious to see how much width I could crank out this small loom. I have started with only a very narrow warp just to get the moves down and to see if it really is something worth bothering with. It was fun. Now I would like to try for maximum width. I don’t believe I can get double the loom’s capacity…perhaps one-and-a-half times that or a little bit more.

In the pictures below, you can see the warp on the loom. Then I have taken the band off the loom and am unfolding it. Finally, you see it opened to its full width and lying flat. Of course, I can always go to my backstrap loom for wider bands but I thought that this would be a interesting experiment while I was still in “double” mode.

And, finally, a grey-hair update…THE LAST! I said farewell to my Grey Hair group on Facebook with this collage (yes, grey-hair groups are a thing and the one I joined was fun and helpful):

Some group members asked me to stay and give advice to others but, to be honest, the only advice I have is to be be patient and put on your thick skin! I would like to acknowledge those who truly went grey gracefully by never dyeing their hair in the first place. They have no need to make all this fuss about it!

I think I only have one more cut to be rid of the last of the dark tips. I figured that would take place this month….ain’t gonna happen, but that’s fine. I quite like those dark tips!

Here’s a throwback to 2009 during the time of the N1H1 virus.

I was teaching English at that time at the Centro Boliviano Americano and teachers had to wear masks at all times while in the classroom. Every twenty minutes or so we had to squirt disinfectant gel onto all the students’ hands. The gels were colored and our hands would be stained either bright orange or blue by the end of the day! We got shut down three times because teachers were caught not wearing masks. No one objected to my home-made one.

When the first case of corona virus was confirmed here in Bolivia on March 10, I posted this photo on Facebook as a memory. I removed it a couple of hours later as I thought that it might be irresponsible to show people that wearing inferior home-made cloth masks was acceptable. Well, as we all know now, it turns out that it is in fact acceptable to wear one. I’ll be downloading a pattern so that I can hand-sew a couple for myself this weekend. It had better be an easy pattern!

Stay safe all of you, please.

Backstrap Weaving – Color Challenges

I have finished another ikat project/experiment. This one will be a wall hanging for, most likely, some future home as there isn’t a good space to hang it here. As with most of my weaving projects, I didn’t start out wanting to weave a wall hanging. I simply wanted to continue my experiments in ikat. The experiment was largely successful and so I now get to give the product a name….in this case, a wall hanging.

My goals for this one were to…

…try tying patterns into 60/2 silk. I hadn’t used 60/2 silk for ikat before.

…place one layer of warp threads on top of the other, so that the warp was half its original intended width, and tie the pattern onto both layers at once.

…dye with multiple colors.

…include patterns woven with supplementary weft.

…weave a band along the end of the piece using the fringe of the finished piece as the weft.

The dyeing itself was successful in that there weren’t any leaks or other mishaps. However, none of colors turned out the way I had expected! The first green was way brighter than expected. I thought that it would turn out a lot “dirtier” because I wasn’t dyeing over white. I had hoped that it would look like the typical “swampy” greens that one gets from using plants. Later, I remembered having received some good advice about these particular dyes when I was buying them. I was told that the colors were bright and that it was a good idea to add a tiny bit of slate-color dye to dull them a bit. I even bought a pot of the slate dye so I could do just that and then completely forgot to follow the advice. But, there were some things about the dyeing process that pleased me: as I was dyeing one color on top of another, then on top of yet another, I managed to create an unexpected reddish-brown that I loved. The thing is, I know I will never be able to replicate it!

I thought that I would end up with a black or almost-black background color after all the layering of colors. But, as you can see, it’s a very dark green with interesting shimmers of reddish-brown and teal that appear when light hits it a certain way.

This is a view looking down from my bed first thing in the morning. The warp in this picture has been set up for weaving on a backstrap loom with heddles in place and some weaving started. My bed base is the anchor point for the far end of my loom. I have to be careful if I get up in the darkness not to stumble and get myself entangled in warp!

As weaving progressed and the warp threads jiggled about with the movement of opening and closing sheds, they began to loosen their grip on each other and fan out. The ikat patterns slowly took on a more solid appearance. At this point, I paused to choose a color in my stash of 120/2 silk so that I could weave some motifs into the broad band of reddish-brown. I had a kind of wheat color that I thought would be a good match. Out came the charting paper and I drew a pattern with hooks and arrow-head shapes that would go well with the main ikat pattern. You can also see a thin horizontal stripe of teal lying on top of the one of the wooden rods which I had decided that I hated! So, I designed another fairly solid pattern for continuous supplementary weft to weave over and hopefully conceal it.

Discontinuous and continuous supplementary weft patterns.

This discontinuous pattern was fun to weave. I love this technique where two strands of patterning weft are passed at once. My little cardboard bobbins kept everything orderly. In the lower left part of the picture with the bobbins, you can just make out the one and only warp thread that broke. I had nicked and weakened it with the tip of my scissors when I was cutting out the ikat tape. It didn’t take long for it to break once I started weaving. Replacing a section of broken thread that has been dyed multiple colors along its length can be a problem. I had some green 60/2 silk that wasn’t a bad match for the dark green but some of it had to creep into the brown section where the warp thread had torn.

The second continuous supplementary-weft pattern that I had designed to cover the teal stripe wasn’t so much fun to weave…at least not to get started. There were 882 warp ends to count in the shed to lay in the first shot of supplementary weft and I had to count it six times before I got it right! I kept ending up with one extra thread. Was I miscounting or had I actually wound 1766 ends of 60/2 silk instead of 1764? It was maddening! Conclusion…I was miscounting. Once the first row was in, it was pretty smooth sailing. I think the pattern does a pretty good job of hiding the stripe.

The threads in the main ikat section behaved pretty well. There wasn’t a great deal of shift except for the very center. I think that had something to do with the way I had lashed the warp to the frame for tying the ikat tape. It has the typical out-of-focus look of ikat.

After that, I had to go through laying in the pattern again for the strip of supplementary weft over the second teal stripe. It was slightly less painful the second time around. And how is this for crazy? I got about 20 rows in on the set of supplementary-weft motifs on the second brown section before I realized I was weaving the wrong pattern! I had designed two patterns. The first had been too fine for this weight of silk but worth keeping for perhaps another project in heavier thread. That was the chart I had grabbed. Grrr! Un-weaving this silk is no fun at all. There is a surprising amount of fluff build-up that binds the threads and means that the sheds don’t want to pop open cleanly to release the weft that you need to remove.. I literally had to tear the threads apart.And here it is finished and still on the loom. I tried to squeeze as much dark green out of it as I could at the end but warp tension was starting to get a bit wonky at that point and it was time to stop.

Once off the loom and after the usual finishing process, I wove a band along the bottom edge of the fabric using groups of warp threads from the fringe as the weft. I designed a double-faced pebble weave pattern that would suit the motifs on the cloth….hooks, diamonds, arrow heads. The piece certainly did not need any more added pattern but weaving a band like this is something I have been wanting to try and this was a good opportunity.

I suppose I shouldn’t have used this piece for my first attempt at this technique but I am quite pleased with the result nevertheless. It takes a while to figure out the number of threads to include in each warp bundle and how hard to beat. If either one of those two factors is not quite right, the fabric will pucker. And mine did a little. My first motif is more elongated than the other two. This is the result of having to adjust my beat as I went along.

I had been admiring ikat fabric from Sumba and had noticed that the weavers there join two panels of ikat cloth together side by side and then weave a band along the two ends of the joined panels using the threads in the fringe as the weft. The vast majority of examples that I have seen so far have been warp-faced plain-weave bands with some warp stripes. It makes me wonder if the weavers recognize that there is already enough pattern in the cloth itself and that the bands, therefore, should be quite plain. This is where I got the idea to weave such a band…but I wanted pattern in mine!

One of the many gifts that Kay Faulkner left to the weaving world was a set of video clips that she had taken while traveling in Indonesia. This will show you the process of weaving one of these bands in Sumba if you are curious….

My Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) weaving teachers taught me to create a twined finish on unwoven warp ends. Like the Sumba weavers, they also join panels together to make their clothing. A pattern is then twined around the unwoven warp threads on the edge of the combined panels. You can see this at the two ends of a piece I made after studying with these teachers. The Montagnard kteh edging is twined and highly patterned while the Sumba edging is woven and is normally quite plain, as far as I have seen so far. Sometimes a Montagnard weaver will hand over her cloth to a kteh expert who will finish off her woven work with the twined patterns. Here is a video (unfortunately shot by me in quite low light conditions) of one of my Montagnard teachers twining part of a row with two colors. You can appreciate that it is quite a slow process compared to weaving a band along the edge. I find the movements very calming and graceful. I like the smooth, solid colors this technique produces. The twined band has only one “good” face.

Some day, my latest ikat experiment will find its place on a wall. This experiment is over, notes have been taken, and it’s time to start thinking about the next project. I am thinking about using cochineal to dye my next ikat attempt. I have only ever used it to dye llama fiber so far. It will be interesting to see how it goes on silk. Perhaps I’ll make some dye samples this time before I go and dive into the deep end. In the meantime, the unexpected colors that I created in this latest piece have grown on me…good and earthy….as the colors I had expected to get fade from my memory.

And, I continue the challenge of removing all color from my hair. Let me sneak in an update here of my color-free challenge…18 months in and probably only two more trims to go to be rid of all the old dyed hair!

Backstrap Weaving – Into the Deep End

When I sit here deciding on the title of my blog post, it’s amazing the number of times that the title “Lessons Learned” immediately comes to mind. But then I think…Nope, I’ve used that one before. It’s lovely to weave structures and follow methods that I have used dozens and dozens of times over. The lessons have been learned from multiple mishaps. There’s no risk. It’s all fun. The results are guaranteed.

My current project doesn’t fall into that category. I broke my rules about sampling which left me with a large-ish project with a number of firsts and, therefore, many risks. And, I am still not done, so who knows whether this will a mess or success? Many lessons are being learned along the way while I splash around in the deep end.

I am still in ikat mode. You might be thoroughly bored with this topic by now. I certainly am not! There has been plenty to keep me on my toes.

It was time to move on from 30/2 silk to the finer 60/2 silk. If I had been sensible, I would have woven a small sample to see how well I could handle keeping the pattern aligned in 60/2 silk, test the new methods that I have been hoping to use, as well as sample the dye colors.

Problem number 1: I decided that I should re-use the pattern that I had created some years ago in an ikat project in black-and-white in 20/2 cotton. I felt that I could double the pattern and still not end up with anything too wide in the finer silk. Well, it turns out that 60/2 silk is not all that much finer than 20/2 cotton. I drew out my pattern and calculated the number of threads I would need without fully realizing just how wide the project would end up being. Once I realized how wide it would be, there was the opportunity to scrap it and start over with something smaller but I was too carried away by the pattern at that point! I couldn’t wait to see how it would turn out.

Problem number 2: I didn’t check my calculations and, therefore, didn’t dye enough thread in the base “rye” color that I like. I prefer the more subdued rye color over white. Once I had measured out the rye-color dye, there was only a tiny bit left in the jar. I thought ….What the heck…and threw it all in. Then I discovered the mistake in my calculations. So, I was short on yarn, with no dye left. I was in a position where I could have changed my pattern to a smaller one in order to suit the amount of thread that I had dyed. But no, I had my heart set on that pattern and wasn’t giving up. I dyed more thread in a color called “wheat” and figured out a way to work it in so that it looked like it had been planned.

Problem number 3: While I had placed the wheat-colored thread in the warp in what seemed like a nicely balanced way, I forgot to take into account the distribution of the threads into the bundles that would be tied with ikat tape and the placement of the wheat color in the pattern itself. It turns out the the wheat color wasn’t so well positioned after all. But…..I was beyond caring at that point!

Problem number 4: This wasn’t so much of a problem as a challenge. I wanted to divide the warp in two so that I could tie my pattern onto two layers of thread at once and create an instant mirror reflection. I divided it so that it was half its width, placing one half on top of the other, and checked countless times that I had the two layers aligned correctly so that I could start tying the pattern. This was my first time doing this and I dithered over it for a long time! I did something similar in another ikat project. That time I halved the warp so that it was half its length and, for some reason, it was easier.

Problem number 5: After all that dithering, I measured incorrectly and started tying the pattern in the wrong position. Never mind, I had only just started, I cut out the ties and happily started again, very pleased with myself for having done so. Then, when I was well into it, I discovered that I had made another mistake and was off in the pattern by one bundle. Urgh. I wasn’t going to start over. I adjusted the pattern and I think I can get away with it!

Here’s most of the main pattern tied…

I am usually very particular about sampling before I launch into a large project. It never occurred to me to sample the dye colors. In terms of color, this project has not turned out ANYTHING like I what I had originally envisioned! Fortunately, I still love it! Of course the colors in the paper chart that I have are based on dyeing over white. I had to expect that dyeing over rye and wheat would produce tones that did not match the chart. In fact, I was hoping that they would be duller colors. I dyed several layers of color in this project and now I know that I really can’t expect any color, no matter how strong it is, to completely cover and cancel out the underlying color. I was just lucky that I didn’t end up with a muddy mess!

A discussion online had me thinking about weavers that work with natural dyes from plants that they grow themselves.. I am sure that they often get unexpected variations in the colors as rainfall and other conditions vary from year to year and must affect the quality, strength and tone of the colors that the plants produce.

This is the first color I dyed. It wasn’t what I had been expecting. I then tied some more sections on the green, adding some small motifs like the three you see here, to preserve this first color.

Below, you can see the result of the second layer of color. If I had been wanting teal, this would have been perfect. However, I had been expecting something VERY different. I tied off a few sections to preserve this color and unwrapped others ready for the third dyeing. Goodness knows what the third color will look like! At this point I was already contemplating Plan B: if this project was a disaster, I would take off all the ikat tape and dye the whole thing black. Then I would be able to save it by weaving some colorful patterns into it in supplementary weft. It would still be a nice “something”…just not an ikat “something”.

Deep breath….here comes color number three…again, not what I was expecting!

Above, you can see it with all the ikat tape removed from the two combined layers. The two remaining strips of tape are preserving the teal color and are tied to the two layers separately. This means that I can now open the warp to its full width and leave those strips of tape in place while I start the weaving. I always feel more comfortable weaving with some ties still in place as I believe that they help minimize the amount that the threads shift. I am not crazy about having the teal there and I will probably weave some motifs in supplementary weft on those strips to almost completely cover them.

Now to get the cross sticks in and make heddles…882 of them! It was fun peeling the two layers apart to see the completed pattern.

The threads are still sitting together in their little bundles, somewhat stuck together after having been tightly wrapped for so long. I try to leave them that way as much as I can as I think that this also helps stop them from shifting too much out of alignment (although it is really tempting to strum and fan the whole thing out to get the full effect of the pattern).

In other news, I am moving along with my latest book project even though this ikat project has been occupying a lot of time. Sitting at the frame and tying patterns is very relaxing after typing away on the book project but it also opens my mind up to thinking about the current instability here in Bolivia and also the dreadful bush fires in my other home, Australia. Many people have written to me with their concerns about the situation in Bolivia as well as for my family, friends and property in Australia. I am always grateful to receive those messages and I reply to them in as much detail as possible. I hope you will understand if I don’t feel like talking about any of that here.

I’ll leave you with a picture taken by my brother, Wayne, of little bit of re-growth in the blackened bush at the back of his home on the mid north coast of NSW.

Backstrap Weaving – Moody Blues and Greens

I have had a frustrating time trying to photograph my most recent ikat piece in a way that captures its true colors. I haven’t succeeded. The piece either looks a pale and washed-out green or takes on a blue resembling turquoise. So, you will see that the colors of my latest finished silk ikat project in the following pictures are ridiculously different. This piece has its moods!

This is the ikat warp that I dyed with a color called Teal by the manufacturer only to find that much of the blue component of the dye mixture simply would not take. The dye bath water turned a turquoise-ish blue at the end of the process and I had to rinse the yarn very well to stop it from continuing to release blue. What was left behind was a green that I ended up loving. I suppose this color could in fact be called teal. I have completely lost track now of the color my mind’s eye had been expecting.

Below, you can see the first band of patterning with supplementary weft and the ikat pattern stretching away in the distance. You can see the “holes”, or spaces, that I left in the ikat pattern which I planned to fill with motifs using supplementary weft.

I scattered some more motifs using silk supplementary weft before reaching the start of the ikat section…

I used the same motif and designed an elongated version to fill the spaces I had left between the lines of ikat…

Here it is in a blue mood. It is off the loom before being washed and pressed and feeling rather stiff…not like silk at all. I know not to be disappointed by this. The wet-finishing process produces magical results!

I washed it and gave it the typical hard press so that the silk relaxed and shone…Now it’s in a green mood on the black background.

A different background, a different mood…(I love this version!: the colors are pretty true for the motifs but that’s not the real color of the warp).

One of the things I like about this particular technique of patterning using supplementary weft is that the motif does not show on the back of the cloth. Instead, you see a sort of “reverse embossing” (my made-up name for it!). If you look closely you can make out the diamond shapes and even the pattern that sits within the diamonds.

You can read more, if you like, about this single-face technique in a basic tutorial that I wrote some time ago. It includes some pattern charts.

As for the true color, I guess the closest shot would be the one with the black background. The real color is a richer version of that. I did the wet-finishing before dealing with the fringe as I wasn’t sure to what use this piece would be put. One end is a selvedge so there was nothing to bother with there. I wanted to avoid having the unwoven warp ends collapse into a tangled mess in the wash and so, while at the loom, I stopped weaving and then inserted a piece of cardboard in a shed that was the width of the warp and about three inches long. Then I wove another inch and cut the piece off the loom and removed the cardboard. That was enough to keep the unwoven warp ends in good shape until I decided what to do with them.

I had been planning to move onward from this project to a balanced weave in which the ikat pattern is in the weft or perhaps in both warp and weft. However, I can see from the samples that I have woven with the 30/2 silk in balanced plain-weave that I need more experience with getting a consistent beat and achieving the desired number of picks per inch.

I haven’t quite settled into that yet and I think I need to have developed a good rhythm before I attempt tying and dyeing and trying to get dyed threads to align. I did weave another balanced-weave sample in 30/2 silk using a finer bamboo reed that I have….28epi this time instead of 24epi and am much happier with this sample.

So, next up is an ikat project with 60/2 silk. I have been scratching around all week trying to come up with a pattern in which I can combine several of the elements I have been working with so far….creating shapes with a bit more curve (with limited success), dyeing with multiple colors (two, so far) and folding the warp to create an instant repeat when I wrap it with tape. This time I am going to fold the warp to halve its width rather than its length and tie the pattern on those two layers of threads at once.

I’ve decided to try having four colors in the pattern after looking at gorgeous pieces from Indonesia that have been dyed with morinda and indigo. The patterns include a very dark blue-black, a paler blue from the first dipping in indigo, morinda-red and the raw white original color of the cotton warp. Hopefully, I am not pushing this too far in my limited experience!

I’ll leave you here with my best wishes for a joyful Christmas and all the best for whichever holidays you celebrate at this time of year. I added a few more Andean Pebble Weave Christmas tree ornaments to my collection because I was itching to do some pick-up. All these colors are true!

Backstrap Weaving – From Experiment to Project

Just when I am at the point when I feel that I have learned enough about the behavior of the naturally-dyed silk that I was given to be able to move on to real projects rather than experiments and samples, I find that I don’t really have enough of this yarn left to be able to make anything decent!

These are the skeins of silk that had been used in natural dye experiments and given to me. I have used them to weave journal covers using a variety of warp-faced pick-up structures and, more recently, to experiment with ikat. If you have been following my most recent posts you will have seen and read a lot about my experiments in which I use multi-colored base warps for ikat. I wrap the warp in ikat tape to create a pattern. The taped areas resist the color in a dye bath and, when the tape is removed, a multi-colored pattern is revealed ready to weave.

Sadly, I am almost at the end of my supply of this naturally-dyed silk. There is just about enough to make one more small warp but I think that it is time to move on and try out the 30/2 silk that I got from my weaving friend Deanna in a swap.

The fourth in my recent ikat experiments with the multi-colored silk has happily changed its role from experiment to project. I warped up a wider and slightly longer piece and decided not to create stripes of random color and width this time. All the stripes were twelve ends wide and I used symmetry in the arrangement of the colors.

I divided the groups of warp threads to be wrapped in tape into twelve-end sections. This was going to be a very orderly warp. I didn’t challenge myself to creating the impression of curves or to create nice even horizontal lines. I went with bold diagonals instead.

Here it is out of the black dye bath and almost dry enough to place on my backstrap loom beams.

As soon as the first few inches I had been woven, I knew that this one was going to be my favorite so far.

A little further along and feeling really pleased with it :-).

And, finally, off the loom…a close-up.

One more picture (can you tell I am loving this one?!)

How would it behave once wet finished? I had high hopes that this would work as a cowl. I had used 60/2 silk as weft. Would it have enough drape? I love the wet-finishing part of working with silk. The fabric relaxes and almost oozes under the iron as I give it a good hard press.

I am trying to show the sheen after wet finishing in this next picture. It was really hard to capture.

And, yes! It works as a cowl. I am so happy that I can wear this piece! (This is what fifteen months of cold turkey grey-hair grow-out looks like, by the way).

It is just draped around my neck in this picture. I have yet to finish it. I have three selvedges and need only deal with one raw edge. I’ll cover that edge with fabric and use three buttons and loops to close the cowl. I need to make the closure decorative as I am pretty sure that the cowl will swivel at will around my neck as I wear it. The buttons could end up in any position and they need to be pretty. Once again, I’ll have to put my meager sewing skills to the test.

Another project that got almost finished is the silk ribbon that I made for my Koru pendant:

I have washed some of the 30/2 silk so that it can be dyed. The first ikat project with this new material will be a narrow one while I get acquainted with the way it behaves. I want to focus on a much longer warp which will be folded in two on the ikat frame. In that way I can tie the ikat tape in multiple layers at the same time and achieve a repeat.

My weaving friend Pam shared pictures with me of her visit to Uzbekistan many years ago in which you can see a warp of many meters length folded and placed on the ikat frame where the young ladies sit ready to tie the pattern. The beams that hold the warp under tension are tied to bolts in the floor.

I am absolutely in love with this piece below from Timor. Kinga Lauren who collected the piece, kindly allowed me to show it here in my blog post.

I love those curvy irregular patterns. You can see how the irregularities in the pattern in the lower half of the fabric are perfectly replicated in the upper half. The warp was obviously folded with ikat tape wrapped around both layers at once.

A close-up of part of the ikat section and the fringe shows the number of beautiful subtle colors that were used in the stripes. This is naturally-dyed cotton.

Wrapping multiple layers will be one new challenge for me. The other will be attempting to dye with more than one color. I tried a very simple version of this many years ago on a rather carelessly tied pattern. I really liked the effect and was able to use the piece as a book cover. I had some mishaps with this cotton warp. This was back in the days when I was using cassette tape for wrapping cotton warp. I made one of the dye solutions too hot and the cassette tape simply did not deal well with the heat.

So, on the heels of my happy cowl project/ikat experiment, let’s see what kind of mess (or success) I can make with 30/2 silk!

To finish, I have some nice work to show you from my inbox from new and old online weaving friends…

Shilpa Nagarkar Rao is weaving Andean Pebble Weave patterns using my Complementary-warp Pattern Book (after having learned the technique in my Complementary-warp Pick-up book). She uses an inkle loom to weave bands and then combines them to make beautiful bags. (See her Facebook page).

Bag made from several bands woven on an inkle loom by Shilpa Nagarkar Rao

Cynthia has been working with supplementary weft creating motifs in several colors along the length of the band. This ability to change color at will is one of the many nice things about this technique and is why Guatemalan clothing can be so colorful.

I love how Vanessa De Columna made what I believe to be her very first Andean Pebble Weave band into a headband.

In book news, my latest pattern book, which ended up with 132 charted patterns, is in the hands of Taproot Video and I am just waiting for it to go live on the website. The Taproot folk are currently busy shooting a new spinning class with Joan Ruane…exciting news!