backstrap looms – Page 6 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – A Pocket-Guide to Pockets

Happy 2019 to you all! New Year’s Day for me was more about celebrating finishing my latest e-book. And now that that project has been put aside , I am back at my loom and working on a large piece of fabric. This will be sewn into a shoulder bag. Don’t ask me what shape or form that will take. I am not skilled at sewing and I’ll have to figure that out later! I have worked on this for more hours than you might imagine. If you compare the first and second pictures, you might notice that the green stripes that flank the center pattern are missing in the second picture. They were begging to be removed and so I spent one evening un-weaving back to the start and cutting them out so that I could get up the next morning to a fresh warp and pretend it never happened! That left me much happier with the project. Ofcourse, I will be finishing the cloth with decorative stitches and tubular band edgings. How could I not after finally getting the instructions down in my latest e-book, The Eye-pattern Tubular Band and Other Decorative Finishing Techniques.

This bag will have a built-in pocket. If you look closely at the picture above, you will notice that I began by weaving across the whole width of the cloth. Now I am only weaving the center section. You can see that the weaving there has advanced far beyond the side sections. In that center section the warp is longer than the two side sections and this is what will form the pocket.

This is the warp for the black pocket bag that I recently wove. You can see how the center section of warp extends all the way to bottom of my bed, which is my usual anchoring spot for my warps. The two side sections don’t extend that far. They are suspended on a separate beam which is extended on rope (my lovely braided llama-fiber rope from Peru :-)) away from the bed. I guess for me that is the trickiest part of the set-up….having the two shorter parts of the warp sitting at just the right distance from the bed so that tension is exactly equal the whole way across the three sections.

That involves a lot of sitting in my backstrap to feel the tension across the warp and then laying the warp down so I can go to the far end and guess how much the rope needs to be adjusted…back to my backstrap….back to the far end, another minute adjustment…and so on! You can try to feel for tension differences all day and night but they will only really show up once you start weaving. Ridging, or corrugation, in the plain weave is the warp’s way of telling me that it is unhappy!

It was a lot easier to equalize the tension when I learned this technique in Potosí, Bolivia back in 1997. We used a horizontal ground loom and wove a very small piece. Adjustments were made by simply shifting a stake within easy reach that had been whacked into the ground.

My teachers Julia and Hilda discussing how to create the warp that includes the pocket. It had been many years since either of them had woven one of these bags.

I wanted the pocket on my current project to be 10cm deep. That means that the center section of warp is 20cm longer than the rest of the warp. I wove the center section, as I am doing in the second photo in this post, for 20 cm. Then I placed the entire warp together on just one back beam, put the llama rope aside, and anchored the beam directly to my bed as I normally do. The long piece of pocket fabric then gets pulled toward me and folded back and out of the way so that I can continue weaving across the entire width of the warp once again.

The next challenge is folding the pocket and somehow securing it so that I can once again put tension on the warp.

That was easy in Potosí when I was learning and relatively easy on the small pocket pouches that I have been weaving lately. In Potosí we just used a long needle and pinned it to the rest of the cloth. We were weaving with re-spun acrylic. It had a lot of twist added to it and it was tight and firm. Added to that was the hard beat on which my teacher always insisted. My cloth, like the yarn, was stiff and firm. I could just pin something to it and it would not budge.

The 20/2 wool that I am using, on the other hand, has a bit of stretch to it and the cloth that I am weaving is not stiff. After trying many ways to secure it, none of which were satisfactory, I ended up using crochet cotton to sew the folded pocket down. The stitches can be removed once I have finished weaving.

It’s a quirky little pocket. It sits on the outside of the bag and is accessed from the inside. I have been wanting to weave a large piece with one of these pockets for years. Now that the exciting pocket part is done, the rest of the weaving will be less technically challenging. Maybe some warp threads will break to provide some additional challenges…ha ha. Actually, that’s quite unlikely. I am not needing to do any strumming on this piece to get sheds to open and so the 20/2 wool should remain in excellent shape. The bag will be 30cm long and so I am quite near the half-way point where I can start working on what will be the back.

These patterns, by the way, are all charted in my Complementary-warp Pattern Book.

I am also working a bit on another book while I weave this piece (I have a lot of started book projects on my laptop!). I am actually always working on something like that when I am not at my loom.

I have seen a few eye-pattern tubular bands being woven in my online groups since I launched my latest e-book on the topic earlier this month. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Nancy, aka yarndragon, was the first to post a picture of hers which she made on her inkle loom..

I wonder who will be the first to post a picture of one they have sewn to cloth. I am pretty sure I know who it will be but I won’t reveal that here!

But, you don’t need to wait until you have woven a piece of fabric to which you can attach an eye-pattern band. One of the happy discoveries I made while writing the book was that the tubular band can be attached very nicely to store-bought cotton cloth. I had actually planned this to be a sample that showed how light cotton cloth cannot support the spiraling energy of the tubular band when it is simultaneously woven and sewn to the edge using the weft as the sewing thread. Light cloth can buckle and get distorted with all that spiraling energy.

The eye-pattern tubular band used to dress up a simple pouch made with commercial cotton fabric.

However, after having folded the cloth to make a little pouch and seaming the sides, I was actually sewing to four layers of fabric and that was more than enough to support the tubular band. I had bought interfacing to use but didn’t need it in the end. I am very tempted to make a bunch of little pouches now as gifts using lovely Japanese cloth pieces that I bought at the indigo exhibit we visited as part of BRAIDS 2016. Tubular bands along the sides and cross-knit-loop stitching along the top are nice finishing techniques. The legs of the cross-knit-loop stitches completely cover the hem at the mouth of the pouch. The strap is braided ( a 4-strand round braid) and there is a simple snap closure in the center. The button, or rather, pendant, is just decorative.

I pulled out examples of my eye-pattern tubular bands used as edging so that I could photograph them for my book. I completely forgot this quirky piece that I wove some years ago. It lives with my travel bags as I only use it as slip-cover for my laptop when I am traveling. Hence , it was forgotten and didn’t make it into the book.

I made the circle shapes in ikat and then filled them in with pick-up patterning. The piece is edged with the tubular band as are the circles. My ikat circles which were quite round (I was very proud of them) got slightly flattened as I wove because silly me forgot to consider take-up!

I am very fond of this piece because of its quirkiness and the somewhat unconventional application of the techniques I have learned to do while living here in South America. I love that I have created something that can travel with me everywhere.

Knowing how to turn corners while attaching the tubular band is something that will open up even more possibilities for adding decorative finishes to bags and pouches. I have covered the various ways that the bands can be placed on these kinds of projects in the e-book and there is a tutorial and supplemental video clip on turning corners.

Now I am thinking….wouldn’t it be nice to have a laptop bag with a pocket for the cable….hmmmm.

Until next time I will leave you with a reminder of my new e-book….

Backstrap Weaving – The Plan

Spinning cotton had certainly not been part of The Plan for how I was going to spend my time during this Bolivian summer. I spend a fair bit of time when I am away sitting in airports, or on planes, trains and buses, and that is when I like to get out my notebook and create sketches and notes on the projects I would like to attack when I get home. Cotton spinning was not one of them. However, the seed had kind of been planted, although it had not quite taken hold, when I was in Australia. Elizabeth, who came to weave with me, gave me a lovely gift of prepared cotton, a tahkli and a pretty dish in which to place the spindle tip. She had taken classes with Joan Ruane earlier that year and gave me a little demonstration one lunch break. We were so absorbed and I was so swept up in her enthusiasm that we forget to eat!

I had learned to spin cotton in 2007 in coastal Ecuador when I stayed with a family of spinners and weavers along with anthropologist Kathleen Klumpp, but had not taken it much further. I practiced a little when I got home but never spun any useful kind of amount. I certainly couldn’t imagine using the clunky kind of thread I was producing in my weaving and I didn’t have the will to practice more in order to refine and perfect the skill.

Photo by Kathleen Klumpp.

I had brought back some of Trini’s prepared cotton and still have it sitting in the closet. Now there is a good chance that I will spin it.

This cotton had passed through the hands of the many grandchildren in the family who would sit on the floor after dinner and pluck out the seeds. Mariana, Trini and I had taken turns in pounding it. I had even made myself a miniature stand from a tree on their property on which to drape the cotton while spinning it.

I simply couldn’t see any reason to spin my own cotton. I didn’t feel that the cotton I was buying was lacking in any qualities that I needed for my weaving….until now. I want cotton singles that can come somewhere close to the fine thread that the weavers in Guatemala use for their sheer cloth. They are able to buy skeins of the commercially-spun cotton singles that they use.. Some weavers in Mexico, who also create this kind of sheer cloth, go to the trouble of splitting the ply of commercially produced cotton if they want to weave the finest pieces. Can you imagine? The seed of interest that Elizabeth had planted in me in Australia started to sprout when Deb in North Carolina showed me the amazing piece of sheer white cloth that she had bought in Guatemala. I actually own a small sample of this cloth. I have taken it out of the closet many times to admire.

There is a wonderful article by Cherri M Pancake and Suzanne Baizerman in the 1980-81 issue of the Textile Museum Journal on the production of Guatemalan gauze textiles. The article states that Handspun single-ply (Z-spun) cotton of varying fineness and degree of twist was used to produce some of the historical textiles. This is referring to textiles that were produced prior to the last decades of the nineteenth century. It seems that the weavers now only use commercially-spun thread.

Kathleen Vitale of Endangered Threads has produced a video on these sheer textiles that are being produced in both Guatemala and Mexico. If your mind boggles at the idea of splitting the ply of your already fine two-ply cotton, take a look at the technique used by the ladies in Mexico in this video!

I brought back a big ball of hand spun doubled cotton singles from Guatemala. I don’t know for what style of weaving that thread had been intended. I separated the strands and used the singles in my experiments in weaving the sheer cloth. My cloth is heavy next to the Guatemalan work! So far my own attempts at spinning cotton is producing thread that is only ever so slightly finer than the Guatemalan thread I bought but, even so, I know that I will enjoy weaving with it.

In the meantime, I decided to try weaving a small sample without a reed. I only wish I had used my own hand spun for this experiment. If I had done so, I could have killed two birds with one stone…testing the strength and suitability of my own thread as well as experiencing the difficulties of maintaining consistent sett without a reed. The sample was very small….just over four-and-a-half inches wide.

After all my talk of temples in my last blog post, I didn’t end up using one. I did find it very useful to use the comb, pictured above, to beat rather than my usual sword/beater. I used a coil rod at the start to help establish the sett. I took measurements from the scarf I had woven. If you are familiar with the ”twisty sticks” that I like to use in my backstrap loom set-up, you will understand what I mean when I tell you that I also used a coil rod in place of the far stick in the twisty stick pair. I think that was helpful. There was much time spent keeping a close eye on warp threads that might be threatening to wander out of position, probably way more time than was necessary. I was happy with the way the width remained consistent but won’t get too carried away with happiness. This was, after all, a really small sample.

And then, I wove a sample with the same number of ends using the reed. It takes time to thread the reed but then you can just relax and weave.

These experiments are preparing me for the time when I can either get hold of much finer singles, or spin my own.

Do I then abandon my 24dpi reed which won’t be fine enough, or thread multiple ends in each dent?

I have been asking some online weaving friends about the very common practice of threading reeds with multiple threads per dent to achieve a finer sett on their floor looms and have been hearing about their experiences with the ”reed marks” which can sometimes result. Apparently, they quite often disappear in the wash and one needs to sample to see if they will do so according to the material and structure that is being used. I think that reed marks would annoy the heck out of me! However, it’s good to know that these marks sometimes do remain in the cloth even after washing and that their occurrence is pretty much normal. I need to get over that if I am to going to be able to enjoy the ease of weaving this kind of cloth in fine thread with a reed. What about you…do you have any thoughts on how having multiple threads in the reed dents will affect the kind of open cloth I am weaving?

So, I have been spinning. I have a surprising amount of prepared cotton to spin in a big box in my closet. Back in 2009 and 2010, I was swapping llama bone tools and Bolivian drop spindles by mail with folks in Australia, the USA and Europe for various bits and pieces. Quite often I was sent cotton as a swap from generous people…way, way more than I had initially bargained for! I have natural green and brown cotton ready to spin and all sorts of other natural tones as well as dyed stuff. The picture above shows just a small sampling. And then, there’s the Indian charka that my friend Lisa gave me in 2010 and all kinds of useful tips in the book that Stephanie Gaustad gave me when she came to weave with me on one of my U.S visits a couple of years ago.

I can’t spend my time only spinning. I need to be weaving too. So, I prepared a warp for anther bag with built-in pocket. Both this new bag and its pocket are bigger than the green example I recently wove and decorated.

And, this latest example is far less colorful…black and white and that’s it. I am working my way up to a shoulder bag that will will have a large built-in pocket and pick-up patterns. I am done with sampling for this larger project now. I think I have remembered and put into practice all I need to review for the creation of the pocket and am ready to move on to the real project.

Here’s the warp set up with its longer pocket section. I actually remembered to take a photo of this part of the process.

I edged the pocket with a patterned tubular band this time instead of cross-knit looping. And then, I edged the entire bag, including the mouth, with the same kind of patterned tubular band. The pocket is just the right size for my Bolivian ID card.

I added a snap to close the pouch, rather than a zipper, as well as a decorative button.

It looks a little dull in the picture above and so I stuffed the pouch and the wee pocket with bits and pieces to give it some life.

It needs a strap and I’ll most likely weave a pebble pattern into it as the bag itself is so plain. The back of it is pretty unusual. I wove the back with a window so that I could place my little sheer woven cotton sample within. I even lined that side of the bag. That’s a big deal for me with my limited sewing skills! It’s a quirky combination 🙂

Now, I would like to show you what a couple of my weaving friends have been doing with the bamboo reeds that they made with Bryan Whitehead at the ANWG conference in 2017. I will show just one project from each of Tracy and Kristin for now (so hard to choose) so as not to overload you with all that beauty! I’ll show more in future posts as the reed topic continues….

Here’s Tracy’s work using the 22dpi reed that she made herself with natural 10/2 cotton from Lunatic Fringe. It looks so awesome on the loom with that lovely roll of finished cloth on the front beams!

Here she is working on it during my visit earlier this year…

And here’s the finished cloth…so gorgeous!

You can read Tracy’s blog post about the making of her reed at the ANWG pre-conference workshop with instructor Bryan Whitehead here.

One of the reeds that Kristin made in the same workshop is 25dpi. She used it on her backstrap loom with natural and blue 16/2 hemp from Hemp Traders that she combined to weave fabric for several towels….

The finished cloth…

These ladies also do some awesome work on their backstrap looms with their hand spun yarn and reeds. I’ll be showing you more from time to time.

Here are a couple of cool warp-faced projects from online weaving friends…

This if from Penelope in the UK. She says that the hat is nalbinded in Oslo stitch using some unknown chunky grey wool…..Felted down to size. I created the chart for the pick-up pattern for her. It is based on a motif that is often seen in tablet-woven bands. Penelope says that the pattern is based on a 10thC viking find from Dublin that many call ‘Little Dragons’.

Marie Paule in France is weaving Andean Pebble Weave patterns on her inkle loom using the two-heddle technique that I teach in my first book, Andean Pebble Weave…

The same pebbly patterns can be created without the use of the additional heddles as Marsha is doing here….

Marsha is using the technique that I teach in my third book, Complementary-warp Pick-up. If you don’t think you would like to deal with the additional heddles that Marie Paule is using, or if you don’t think that your particular loom will comfortably accommodate them, my third book teaches a method that does not use them. It is a slower method, but it suits a very wide range of looms and can be used for other complementary-warp structures besides Andean Pebble Weave..

And here’s some of Bradie’s work. I wove with her in Vermont a few months ago. She was using an inkle loom but is already wondering about going on to weave wider pieces. I feel a backstrap loom coming on! This and other Andean Pebble Weave patterns can be woven with two sets of heddles, as Marie Paule does, or without them, as Marsha does.

So, it’s back to my spinning and maybe I will get the silk on the loom this week. I have already put together my pre-warping project notes and all is set to go unless I decide to go with the wool pocket shoulder bag instead. And there’s always a chance that something else will come along to have me throwing The Plan out the window…..

Until next time………..

Backstrap Weaving – Time for a new Tool

One weaving tool which hasn’t really made its way into my kit is the temple, an instrument that helps weavers maintain consistent width in the cloth they are producing. I have never really felt the need to use a temple and that’s most likely because I haven’t used my backstrap loom to create the kind of cloth that I felt required one. The ladies with whom I studied in Guatemala used temples. They were wonderfully simple tools….a piece of bamboo that sat underneath the cloth with a couple of small nails holding it in place.

I have to admit that I would cringe every time we pushed those nails into the edges of the woven cloth. When I took the pieces that I had started weaving with my teachers in Guatemala back to Bolivia to finish, I continued using the temples for a while. However, I soon abandoned them as I really felt that they weren’t doing anything for me. I have seen some fine Bhutanese textiles with horrible holes gouged at intervals into the edges from the sharp ends of the temples and that, more than anything, has really put me off using them.

But, now as I am typing, I am remembering that there has actually been one piece of cloth that I wove where I could see a clear need for a temple. It was a wide silk piece that I wove some time ago. I did manage to get away without using a temple because I couldn’t bear the thought of pushing nails or even pins into the edges of the silk.

When weaving this wide piece, I was finding that the cloth would ripple slightly as I propped the shed open ready to pass the shuttle. I had to try and grab the edges of the cloth, first one side and then the other, to straighten and smooth the cloth so that I could be sure that I was laying in the right amount of weft. A third hand would have been handy! It was clumsy and slowed me down but I was willing to do it to avoid using the ”dreaded” temple.

My Montagnard (Vietnamese hill tribe) weaving teachers used wooden temples with carved pointed tips for the cloth they wove on their backstrap looms. They even used them for narrow bands…

And, my weaving teachers in coastal Ecuador who wove on vertical looms rather than backstrap looms, used a similar style of temple cut from a large tube of bamboo that they attach to the upper face of the cotton cloth on the loom. I remember really struggling to bend that slat of bamboo into place each time it had to be re-positioned on the cloth. This heavy-ish sturdy cotton did not suffer at all from the pointed tips of the temple.

Why all this talk of temples? Well, I would like to weave another sheer cotton piece like the one I just wove but using much finer cotton. I don’t have a reed that is fine or wide enough for the piece I have in mind and so I will have to resort to trying to maintain the sett and width by other means just like the Guatemalan weavers in Alta Verapaz do. The temple will help with the width. Maintaining the sett will be another story! What tool do the ladies in Guatemala use?….skill and lifetimes of experience and know-how passed down through generations!

Until I get the fine cotton singles that I would like to use, I will practice with the little bit of hand spun cotton that I have left over from my most recent project. For that project I used a reed and so I have a sample from which to take calculations for width and something to guide me to determine and try to maintain the spacing between warp threads. I have wound a short warp with half the number of ends that I used for my scarf. Wish me luck!

Here are some bits and pieces I have gathered together for possible temples…

The piece at the bottom of the picture is the temple that came with a Karen loom that a friend gave me. Pins have been taped to a piece of wood and the temple was sitting on the back side of the warp-faced cloth. The bamboo pieces are the temples I was using with my teachers in Guatemala. The nails that pierced the cloth and then turned into the open ends of the bamboo, are sitting on top of the tongue depressor. I was wondering if cutting points into a piece of heavy cardboard like the black stuff you see there and reinforcing it with a tongue depressor would also work.

Or, there’s this….contributed by friend Franco to the backstrap weaving group on Ravelry many years ago…

It was working well for Franco. I would love it if I could get something like this to work for me. It measures and maintains width all at once!

As for my current project…it is finished! Except for the very first part which I un-wove and turned into fringe, I got a consistent 9 1/8 inches of width.

After finishing the hem-stitching the far end, I slowly unrolled the cloth and worked my way back to the start, burying weft ends as I went. Then I cut the weft out of the first wider part of the cloth and hemstitched that end.

Here it is off the loom waiting to have its fringe twisted before being washed and pressed.

Procrastinating! Enjoying the cloth and taking pictures because I was nervous about what was going to happen to it when it was washed!

Moe procrastination…yes, it’s sheer now but will it lose this translucency when it has been washed?

A whole day has gone by. Tomorrow I’ll wash this thing.

Post-wash and press: it lost between 1/8” and 1/4” in width and the warp threads moved closer together ever so slightly. It feels so soft!

Post-wash verdict: I love this super soft supple cloth that is so unlike anything I have woven before!

Now I am thinking about dyeing it. Should I?

During all the pre-wash dithering, I decided to take a sample that I had woven before my last trip away and make it into something. You might remember that I wanted to make a wool shoulder bag with a built-in pocket in the style of the ch’uspas (coca-leaf bags) that the Bolivian weavers make. I learned how to set up the warp and weave the pocket back in 1997 with my teachers in Potosí. This small green piece is the wool sample that I most recently wove to refresh my memory of the technique. I edged the little pocket with triple cross-knit looping.

I decided to go ahead and make this into a little zippered pouch. I edged it with a tubular band style that is woven in Chahuaytire, Peru which also served as the strap. The bottom is decorated with coil stitches and the pocket is edged with single cross-knit looping. A four-strand braid makes a nice zipper tab.

The wool surface loved to attract the stray bits of cotton that I have had flying around during my latest project.

I had started gathering materials for this project before I had finished weaving the cotton scarf. I thought about what I could possibly fit into the tiny pocket and found that my door key sat within it perfectly. Two days later when I wanted to go out, I turned my apartment upside down looking for my door key. I was locked in and had completely forgotten about having placed the key in the little pocket. I had to call a friend who keeps a spare for me to come and let me out. Another two days went by before I picked up the little green bag once more to work on it and discovered the secret contents of the little pocket. Duh!

So….I guess the hand spun-cotton-with-temple experiment is next. I have also wound my skeined silk into balls ready for warping. I am thinking about weaving a silk cowl….just a simple tube to drape around my neck instead of a whole scarf. At three-and-a-half months into the grey hair transition I am still thinking about wearing color around my face to brighten things up a bit. Until next time……..

Backstrap Weaving – Summery Cloth

With the temperature around 91 F and a broken air conditioner, it’s just as well that I have decided to weave something light and airy as my first big project for this season. I usually find myself at this hotter time of year weaving something totally inappropriate, like a wool lap blanket. Silk thread is not pleasant stuff either in sweaty fingers. I do, in fact, have plans for both wool and silk projects for the next few months but hopefully my a/c will be up and running again by the time I get around to them.

I threaded the reed for the project for which I am using some hand spun cotton that I picked up from this lady in Guatemala in 2008.

It was a little worrying while re-tying the cotton ends to have some of them untwist and break as I attempted to pull and tighten the knot. Breakages?! I hadn’t even started weaving yet! I did not want to have to size this warp and I am glad I didn’t panic and do so as, so far, I have only had one thread break while weaving. This same thread has broken multiple times and so I guess and hope that it was just one section of this particular strand that was more loosely twisted than the rest.

Of course, I first wove a small sample for this open and airy balanced-weave that I want to do. You can just catch of glimpse of it at bottom right in the picture above.

I am trying to replicate the structure used by weavers in the Alta Verapaz region of Guatemala…a base of open balanced weave into which they place patterns using supplementary weft. The thread they use is much much finer than the cotton singles that I have. I was told that in some communities in Chiapas, Mexico where this kind of cloth is also produced, some of the weavers divide 20/2 commercially-spun cotton into singles and use that as their warp threads. What a job! Not everyone can manage it and those who can’t will pay someone to convert a cone of thread into singles. In the Alta Verapaz region, some weavers use commercially-spun 20/1 cotton thread is used which perhaps explains why the thread in the sample piece that I bought at the International Folk Art Market in Santa Fe a few years ago is so incredibly white. This information comes from Kathleen Vitale. I also read that other weavers use a 30/2 mercerized cotton which isn’t split and which is available in local markets. The hand spun cotton that I am using is off-white (and much thicker!) as you can see below.

But, I am happy to have this piece of fabric from Guatemala and these balls of hand spun singles so that I can at least try this out and practice creating the patterns. The finer thread can come later!

Here’s a look at the little piece I bought in Santa Fe still on its loom. I would love to know how it changes after washing but I don’t want to cut it off its little loom. Or…did they somehow wash it in order to sell it?

Here’s my tiny sample on the loom, and then after washing (sitting on top of my latest knitted cowl…still very excited about picking up knitting again!)

The more open sett at the start of the sample is what I was aiming for but I unconsciously allowed the piece to narrow and deepened my beat which gave me consistent width and neater selvedges. However, in doing so, I almost lost the translucent quality that I had been wanting.

So, here is the large piece underway. I was so doubtful about the success of this project that I very uncharacteristically did not bother to plan out and chart a pattern. I just started winging it. So, I have to say that I am not entirely pleased with the layout of the figures. I am just practicing various basic lines and shapes. It’s another ”sample”, albeit a very large one!

I would call it successful because I have only broken one thread so far. That had been my biggest concern.

Un-weaving is quite the thing. The fluffy warp and weft threads meet and grab hold and do not want to let go! However, it is this ”gripping”quality that seems to allow the Guatemalan weavers to simply cut off the start and end tails of supplementary weft right at the edges of the pattern rather than leave some length and make an attempt to bury the ends within the pattern. I am guessing that washing the fabric will further reinforce this. I suppose I’ll find out! This is after all a sample, right? I haven’t cut the tails very short yet.

I was eventually able to coax out one of the ends of supplementary weft in the unwashed Guatemalan sample so I could count the number of strands the weavers were using.

It’s a very relaxing technique for me. I can sing, listen to podcasts…it doesn’t require the heavier amount of concentration that most of pick-up work involves. And, it sits light as a feather on top of my legs. It is certainly the fabric with highest amount of drape that I have created on my backstrap loom. There’s a long way to go. The warp measures something like eighty inches. which means that there is plenty of room left to play with patterns.

I am so thankful for these reeds that I managed to buy in the vendor hall at Convergence in 2010. They have just the right spacing for this open structure in the weight of cotton I am using. When the time comes to use finer thread, I will have to figure out something else. Or, not use a reed at all. The Guatemalan weavers don’t. I only want to handle one challenge at a time!

I think the only other time I used one of these reeds is when I did a four-shaft shadow-weave piece a few years ago…

My backstrap weaving friends, Christine, Kristin and Tracy made their own bamboo reeds in a workshop with Brian Whitehead at ANWG 2017. Here’s Christine with hers…I know that Kristin and Tracy have put theirs to use multiple times with both commercially and hand spun fibers and have created some truly awesome pieces of fabric. I’ll have pictures and details in future blog posts.

A much simpler project that came off my loom last week was the piece on which I had been demonstrating at recent fiber events. It is now a backstrap to add to the collection of straps that my weaving friends use when we get together. It is sitting here with a couple of my bone tools. The one on the right was given to me by a gentleman in northern Chile. He had found it in the Atacama desert. It has a beautiful shape and point.

And, here’s the latest from some of my online weaving friends and students…

It’s lovely to see patterns from my books appearing in Marsha’s beautiful band projects. She is using the Gilmore Mini and Big Wave looms as well as a Handywoman treadle tape loom with a variety of materials…cotton, silk and tencel.

Maxine combines colors so beautifully on her inkle loom. How inspiring is this? It’s nice to see these patterns from my first book being used in such an awesome way.

This is Caroline Sargisson’s first band using an inkle loom and a pattern and instructions in my Complementary-warp Pick-up book.

Julie Beers finished a really long band of the playful kitties patterns in my latest pattern book. She wove this on one of the Gilmore looms.

Tara’s making a pouch from fabric she wove using a backstrap loom. She may use some of the finishing techniques I teach to decorate it.

And Tracy has edged her bag with the ñawi awapa tubular band. She wove the bag itself using a backstrap loom and her own hand spun wool. The strap is currently underway.

Penelope made bands for her living history top hats using a Jonathan Seidel card loom with a Vav kompaniet heddle.

And, yarndragon made some keyfobs using 10/2 cotton. Because she thought 10/2 cotton too lightweight for fobs, she neatly backed them with denim.

Patrick finished the double weave band he started with me. The pattern is his own creation…

And, last of all, I will leave you to gasp at a picture of the amazing pikb’il cloth that really inspired my current project. It was one of the last things I saw on my recent trip away but became the item that jumped to the top of my to-do list on my return. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Many thanks to Deb who showed me this scarf that she had bought on a recent trip to Guatemala. It looks like it would float away in a summer breeze………

Backstrap Weaving – The Bands Play On

The bands play on…

In a time when my weaving goals are geared toward going wider, finer and longer, there is a surprising amount of narrow band-weaving happening on my backstrap loom. I guess I am satisfying the desire to go finer and longer, if not wider, in some of these projects. At least the 110-inch band that I wove as an edging for my wool blanket falls into the long and fine category.

Two years have passed since I took the panels for the wool blanket off my loom and now I have it finished at last along with its red and brown partner.

Now….bring on the cold weather so that I can snuggle under these!

I stayed with fine thread for the next band project which only satisfied one of my three goals. I wove a strap for my new iPod neck pouch. First came the tubular bands for the sides of the pouch followed by the neck strap. I set up the warp for the strap with four sets of heddles and zoomed along.

I was able to fit three of the four cat patterns from my latest pattern book on the back of the pouch. After attaching the tubular edgings, I sewed coil stitches to cover the raw edges at the bottom of the pouch. The mouth of the pouch ends in selvedges that don’t need protection. I want to re-do the coil stitches as the needle I used was too thick for the weight of wool and I think I can make the coils more compact with the finer needles that I have.

And then it was back to 60/2 silk for another band with lots of pick-up. I am using only two sets of heddles this time and so my pick-up stick is getting a good work out.

This band is for my friend Tracy who makes the most adorable sprang pouches.

I asked her if I could buy one…they are just so darn cute and I loved the colors. I know that it is hard to put a price on these kinds of handmade items and so we came to an arrangement to make a swap…a silk neck ribbon for a sprang pouch. Tracy surprised me by delivering that pouch quick smart. You can see it pictured above.

I am afraid that I am sadly lagging behind on my end of the deal. I am so happy to have this ribbon underway on the loom now.

I am using the same snake pattern that I used for a neck ribbon I wove for myself some time ago. I hang a pendant on it and use it as a necklace. This is a pattern that I adapted to fit the number of threads I am using from a pattern woven by my Guarani weaving teacher. When I showed this to some online friends, one of them pointed out the little red “rubies” that appear in the bends of the snake when you look at the other face. I hadn’t noticed that before.

So there have been a handful of narrow projects on my loom while I have been contemplating my next big project. This one will be wide. I will be on the road again before I can even hope to get this next one started. Besides, I think I need to buy more thread for it and I’ll bring that back with me when I return.

I have played around with a handful of what, for me at least, are wide projects in the past….

This was the first time I tried 60/2 silk as warp.

Another wide-ish one in 30/2 cotton. I’d like to stress that these are only ”wide” in terms of what I normally weave on my backstrap loom. They are not at all wide compared to the pieces that are routinely woven on backstrap looms in S.E Asia! Take a look at these images of backstrap weavers from Laos and Vietnam with their tremendously wide warps (used with kind permission from the folks at Above the Fray Traditional Hilltribe Art.)

I felt I needed to stand to get my friend Janet’s wide wool warp started unlike the gentleman in Ecuador who skillfully works at his wide and very heavy wool warp while seated…

A Peruvian weaver, below, stands and “dances” with her loom as she manages her 39-inch light cotton warp…

The challenges of going wide…firstly, there’s the equipment. Long beams, shed rods, cross sticks, coil rods and heddle rods are no problem. There no end of wooden broomsticks and such things down the street in the market. What I am lacking are swords of the right length. I rummaged around and pulled out my biggest ones…

Only one is the length that I feel I need. I could have some made for when I return (make them myself?…I am useless at that sort of thing!) But then I started thinking about the double-width cloth that many floor loom weavers make when their looms are not wide enough to accommodate the width that they want to weave. They weave half the width in two layers which then unfold to make one wide piece.

Time to experiment.

I have no idea if the following small experiments will really give me any clue as to how easy this will be to handle with many more warp ends. I guess I was more curious at this point to experiment with sett and how that affects the fold in the cloth.

What I liked while making these experiments was the ability to cut off a sample and clamp off my warp. That way I could wash and press the sample, take notes, plan changes and then continue using the same warp for the next one. The width of the warp you see on the loom below is half the width of the woven cloth.

I suspect that these wooden clamps that I inherited from a guild were home made. I have searched on Google for similar things but haven’t turned up anything yet. I have two of them and they work well at holding the threads while I cut off a woven sample. I clamp one to the unwoven warp while it is under tension and then cut off the woven cloth. I lash the clamp to a dowel when I want to start weaving again.

You can see the first two samples above. I calculated the width I should produce with this number of ends of 60/2 silk based on pieces I have woven in the past. I wove the first small piece at a closer sett. It’s not the width that would normally be produced in my hands and I had to work to stop the cloth from widening. That resulted in uneven selvedges. The density also made the sheds that much harder to clear. However, of the three samples I wove, this one was the only one where the fold in the cloth was not noticeable at all.

I let the second sample go wider than I normally would, which made shed management much easier. I also practiced a new pattern that I had charted in supplementary weft. The fold in the cloth was quite obvious in this one. It wasn’t noticeable when the cloth was just lying flat but it certainly was when held up to the light. The warp ends were spread further apart at the fold, enough so to create what I would consider a fairly weak spot in the cloth. Again the selvedges were not tidy because I was forcing the cloth to be a width which was not natural in my hands. The only advantage had been that the slightly more relaxed sett made opening the sheds easier.

I let the final sample sit at its natural width…yay, selvedges I like at last. The fold is only slightly noticeable when the washed and pressed cloth is held up to the light but I don’t believe that it affects the integrity of the cloth. It’s amazing how much variation there can be in width while still producing good warp-faced cloth.

Each sample had its advantages…1. invisible fold line, 2. easier loom operation, 3. a more natural rhythm for me and neat selvedges. It’s a toss-up between numbers 1 and 2. I won’t have to decided until I get home from my next trip. Most likely I will want to weave more samples. In the meantime, I can think about colors. Or…if I don’t go with double width, I’ll come home to some new long swords.

As usual, I have some pieces to show you that were woven by my weaving friends. I will limit the selection this week to four different techniques…

Ann wove this wool band using a backstrap set-up and one of my favorite patterns. I discovered this one on a pre-columbian fragment that I was shown and it is charted in my second book (you may have gathered that I have lots of favorite patterns)…

I think it is magical how the pelicans flow from light on dark to dark on light. Of course, you may not be seeing pelicans. You might see cogs and gears, as one weaver remarked. Ann wove this using a temporary picking cross, manually selecting threads for every weft shot.

Kristin’s beauty is based on an adaptation of a central Asian pattern that I charted. Those colors!!! This is stunning. This pattern allows the optional use of two sets of “pebble heddles” and I am pretty sure that that is the method she chose for her backstrap loom.

This is Nicole Stronge’s warp-faced double weave using the two basic sheds on her inkle loom. I have more projects from Nicole to show in which she has continued to create her own patterns, beautifully personalizing her bands for the intended recipients. I will save them for future posts.

Martina has created a really cool set-up for her backstrap weaving in her home. She’s using the backstrap she wove herself and is creating a band decorated with patterns in supplementary weft.

Cut into lengths, the band was made into key fobs and a book mark.

There are free tutorials for the last two techniques right here on my blog. Follow the links I posted above. I am also producing a pattern book and dvd on the double weave technique which extends and deepens the basic tutorial I have provided here.

Now it’s back to my loom and my wee silk ribbon. I also want to follow through on all my good intentions and surprise friends by weaving the bookmarks and ribbons that I have had in mind for them. Goal: get these finished before I hit the road again.

By the way, Australian friends….If you live in the Newcastle area I will be teaching two workshops there in August. There are spaces available! Contact me if you are interested via a comment on this post.