Tag: balanced weaves

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 – Little Things, Big Smiles

I was going to name this post “Taming the Tube” and that would have possibly been one of the weirdest titles I have come up with for a blog post so far but I decided to go with “Little Things, Big Smiles” as I have had a few things to smile about this week. They reminded me that it is often the little things that bring us most joy. Like the fact that my friends are on a road trip in Colorado and Wyoming and post pictures of every step of the way on Facebook so that I can be with them and share a little of the experience. And it seems that the Santa Cruz winter is over and I am back in shorts and tshirts before I can even run out of clean socks.

As for the tube that needed taming, well, I am talking about tubular bands. I have been following on with the experiments I was doing last week. These little things have brought a smile to my face as I figured out at last how to stop them from spiraling. Yes, it’s just a small thing but it gave me quite a kick!

Of course some bands look great when they spiral and that is precisely the effect that you want.

But that wasn’t what I wanted when I made a pebble weave tubular band. I wanted the woven design to lie straight along the tube so that it could be seen if the band was worn as a wristlet.

I am forcing the design to lie straight in the upper picture. As soon as I let it go, it spirals. I suppose the spiral version has its own charm but that is not what I wanted.

Most ñawi awapa bands that I have seen spiral…some to a lesser degree than others but there are some that pretty much don’t at all as you can see above. The more colorful ones in the center of the group spiral a lot while those above and below them have little or no twist. I LOVE that black one! So, clearly, there is a trick to getting them to lie straight.

I fiddled with this and that. Many warps went into the trash. Luckily I have my mini warping board and so was able to quickly and easily set up tiny two and four-stake warps so not a whole lot of yarn was wasted. And then I got it! He he…big smile.

So there’s a spiraling ñawi awapa band that I made ages ago and, below it, one I made this week that behaves nicely and lies straight. Again, I say that both types have their charms…it just depends what you want and now I have options.

Of course, when tubular bands are sewn to cloth as in this example from Peru, they are forced to lie straight. I was told by Nilda Callañaupa in Peru that tubular bands are sewn to pieces of cloth to help stabilize the edges and corners which tend to curl due to the highly overtwisted wool warp yarn that is used. Now I am wondering if the spiraling in the tube counteracts the curling in the cloth and is what allows the fabric to then lie flat.

I have always sewn my tubular bands to very sturdy material…edges of bags which are doubled pieces of woven cloth so the spiraling nature of the band has not had any effect on the finished piece….no twisting or distortion of the fabric has resulted.

So, after that, I just had to play with my new discovery and make some more tubular bands.

Thick ones, thin ones, in cotton and wool. The wool ones are much smoother and prettier….ñawis with their diverted and twisted warps, plain-weave, pebble weave and warp substitution tubular bands.

Maybe next time I am in the US I will get some caps and clasps and make some wristlets with these although maybe I should just go down to the Buckle Land  store in the street market here and see what I can find.

However, if I am going to wear a wristlet, I think that I would rather make one of these…

These were collected and also reproduced by Anne Blinks and Nora Rogers and now form part of Martha Stanley’s collection. I believe that they were made by the Mayoruna Indians of Peru who live in the same region as the Shipibo in the Upper Amazon Basin. I was given one of Nora Rogers’s pieces in progress on the loom as well as a booklet on the technique from my friend Betty’s vast collection of resources on ethnic weaving techniques.

There it is all ready to be studied!

From tiny to tremendous, I pulled out this monster project this week too….

My tubular bands look quite ridiculous next to it!

That thing is heavy! It is was very weird sitting down to it after not having touched it for so long. It took me a while to get back into the rhythm…which swords do I use when and what sequence of moves had I decided were the most efficient?

Once I was back into it, the first thing I noticed was a mistake in the new pick-up pattern I am weaving which would have had very sad results further down the track. That meant that my first task was to un-weave….sigh! but I am smiling about having caught it in time.

Yes, progress is slow on this piece but if you are thinking that I am getting nowhere, let me show you that I have least gotten the design established. Most of the major scary counting is now over as each row of pick-up is now done based on the last, if  you know what I mean….simply moving a little to the right or the left as the diagonal lines form. It is always exciting to be doing a new design and especially this one as it is my own adaptation of a traditional si’ira pattern of the Wayuu people from Mirja Wark’s book. After all the adjustments I made to have it fit my piece, it now has a lot of my own touches and so I am curious to see just how it will turn out.

So, this week I “tamed the tube” and smiled at many things…like seeing  Jeen zooming on after having woven with her and enjoying herself with my pebble weave book  using her rigid heddle loom. She is now an active member of the Ravelry group.

Now that she has woven the bird motif, she plans to try it with that gorgeous multi-color warp.

And Marge, who also wove with me, is trying warp substitution with Bedouin patterns as a warm-up to double weave.

She was a bit dismayed by the long floats on the back until we  assured her that that is what happens with warp substitution.

She will be able to take the skills she learns from this experience a step further when she tries double weave.

Alison wove a backstrap with a striking pattern and beautiful edges…

And then made a pebble weave band on her inkle loom using many of the motifs from my book.

Jenibug blew me away by taking the llama patterns that I have charted here for warp-faced weaving and adapting them to balanced double weave pick-up on her floor loom…

Here they are in warp-faced double weave…the little llama heads come from a Bolivian band. I added the body embellishments and backgrounds.

And here is Jenibug’s balanced weave project…How neat is that?!

And here it is off the loom and wet finished. Are you sitting down???

Isn’t that spectacular? She took my charts and translated them to balanced weave pick-up…blows me away!

And here are Loli’s pebble weave projects…beautiful bands!

Now can you understand why I am smiling big smiles?!! My experiment with tubular bands brought a smile but seeing cool stuff being made by the Ravelry folks is the best weaving therapy of all.

And just in case your socks are still on after seeing all that, I will leave you with another picture of one of the stunning bands from Ayacucho, Peru that I saw at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I will leave you with bright cheerful colors and these playful figures, one of which is so similar to the ones I was taught when I studied pebble weave in Peru.

Backstrap Weaving – Summery New Year Wishes

Well, it’s that time of year again…that feeling of endings and beginnings and my own personal need to do some serious downsizing. My policy is usually “new stuff in, old stuff out” which means that if I return from a trip with something new, something has to go. The new policy is “old stuff out, out, OUT”. Wow, how liberating. I have space again! And the spaces are not, repeat NOT to be filled again…ever.

I uncovered some long forgotten stuff in the recesses of the closet like this Guatemalan sampler that I made not long after I returned from my trip there. At the time I could hardly stand looking at it. It was way over-the-top too colorful for me but the purpose had been to practice my newly learned supplementary weft patterning techniques and use the thread I had purchased from my teachers.

Now I kind of like it. After looking at the red, white and black of my current projects for so long, this is so joyful, and refreshing…very summery, as I sit here in temperatures up in the high nineties and fan myself with a condor feather. (I should explain that I used to live near a condor nesting site when I lived in southern Chile and I picked up a feather or two from the base of the cliffs…something else that I have uncovered in the downsizing spree). I am without air conditioning at the moment…long story.

Here are some more detailed shots of the supplementary weft patterns….

The uppermost pattern technique in the next shot, above the birds, is soumak, something which I really want to explore more.

All the figures, the birds, the ladies and the plants are worked on a warp-faced ground weave. Two sheds are programmed on pattern sticks under which the supplementary wefts are passed to form the motifs. This means that threads do not have to be picked or dropped each time the wefts are wrapped around warps or simply laid in to form the designs. You can see the warps that are raised in each of the two patterning sheds in the speckled brick-like design that is woven immediately above and below each row of figures.

There is a tutorial here on my blog in which I show how to set up the patterning sticks and then use them to create these kinds of motifs.

The three  rows of “X” design are temporarily programmed on two additional pattern sticks which are then removed so that the other motifs can be woven.

So, back to the present and my current project…the chamanto inspired wall hanging.

My piece won’t look anything like the gorgeous Chilean ponchos, not even a miniature version of one.

I have just taken the idea of the big, bold solid motifs that speak of the rich, green, temperate central Chilean valleys and vineyards.

I was lucky this week to find the official APEC site which invites one to download a high resolution image of all the leaders attending the 2004 conference in their beautiful ponchos. This has enabled me to cut to just the chamantos and get quite a nice view of the pattern layouts and color combinations. It’s like my mind was read! Just last week I was saying how I would love to see all the ponchos at the APEC meeting up close.

So let’s enjoy looking at some of those…

Here is the piece I am working on…

This is to be one of a series of wall hangings all in the same color combination but I have a feeling that this one will be the sampler as I have had thoughts about the layout and size since starting it and would like to change quite a few things….or maybe not! I hope to weave a patterned band and sew it to the four edges so that the construction resembles that of the Chilean poncho.

As for the nylon string heddles that I mentioned last week…I made them, used them and hated them….took them off and made cotton ones…what can I say?

In the meantime, I uncovered something else in my downsizing frenzy…

This lovely tapestry hanger was given to me by its maker at Convergence last year and it will give me a very nice way to hang my Starry Night piece once I have that completely finished…I am still pondering that fringe. The hanger works by clamping the top edge of the woven piece between two pieces of wood. Justin Adams makes them in various lengths in his home in New Mexico. He doesn’t have a website that I know of and you can contact me for his phone number if you would like to know more about his work.

The hanger is posed on a Navajo-style weaving that I did many many years ago dyeing and using up as best I could all my left over odds and ends of Navajo wool. There’s that red again. I started it with a twill saddle blanket weave until I realized I didn’t have enough yarn in the three colors to complete it. So, I wove the top and bottom in the saddle blanket structure and filled in the center in plain weave.

What else have I been up to?

Well I am still messing about with weaving nice curved figures in warp-faced double weave but don’t have anything worth showing design-wise this week. However, I have a nice tip to give you for how to get really nice edges in this double weave technique.

In the picture below you will see one of my double weave mug rugs made with a 12wpi cotton. The edges are pretty good but you can see how the weft is exposed on the sides as it travels from the upper layer to the lower layer of the double weave. I have inserted a toothpick under a couple of the wefts to make this clearer. This is very exaggerated with this heavy yarn.

While this doesn’t look bad and the edges are still neat, I have found that when working with finer yarn, the edge warps tend to want to “roll off” the edge along with the weft as it travels the distance from the upper to lower layer and this can give the edge a bumpy look. My weaving teachers here did not show me any other way to do this and it was frustrating looking at other double woven pieces from here and seeing beautifully even and rounded edges and not knowing how they had been created. In the end I had to cut and pull apart a belt I have.

The Bolivian double weave belts above left have smooth two-color rounded edges. My camera strap, on the other hand, has slightly bumpy edges as some of the edge warps are pulled out of alignment by the weft as it turns down to weave the lower layer.

So, here is what I believe is the secret: If you have read or worked your way through my double weave tutorial you will know that both borders and pattern area are warped with doubled threads.

If you start and finish your warping with two revolutions of single threads in your border color, you will create a rounded edge and the gap between upper and lower layers will be beautifully bridged. (Two revolutions give a more rounded edge, one revolution also works well and gives a flatter edge with a little bit of exposed weft but it’s enough to keep the edge warps in check. The method you choose will depend on the appearance you prefer).

Pictures next week! I am working on samples now so that I can show you how these two options look next week and will add all this new information to the tutorial page.

So, enough of my experiments. What have the Ravelry weavers been up to this week? I have a couple of things to show. All of you who are currently in the throes of winter will appreciate these…

Heidai has been making scarves using the set-up known as grindvev in her native Norwegian. There she has a wooden rigid heddle on her backstrap loom and there is even an extra wooden piece that serves to raise certain warps according to the structure she has chosen to weave. What a neat little collection of pieces!

So, we have agreed to add “weave a scarf using a rigid heddle on your backstrap loom” as part of the new year’s weave-along activity. We don’t have an official start date yet which will gives us time to put some thought into the ikat and other project proposals we have been discussing. I could probably do with a scarf or two if I am to make more fall visits to the US.

Down in the summery southern hemisphere, Luchita in Argentina showed us the gorgeous pillow cover she made by sewing together three bands she had woven with Mapuche inspired patterns using supplementary warps. I love this!

I can’t think of a better way to finish this post…as it started…with uplifting, vibrant, exciting colors inspiring strong positive thoughts and wishes for you all for the coming new year. Happy New Year to you all and thank you for all your support!

Backstrap Weaving – Finnweave, Funweave and Finishes

FINNWEAVE, FUNWEAVE AND FINISHES

My finnweave piece is off the loom and is just the right size to make my storage bag. It will be a basic bag construction, simply folded in half and sewn together at the sides.

Then I will let it sit for a while to see what ideas I get about dressing it up….a strap will be needed, maybe some large tassels on each bottom corner and some kind of edging.

It is going to hold all the cds with photos from my recent travels. These are currently in a pile on the floor under my computer table which is on top of another pile of charts and booklets which is on top of another pile of….well, you get the idea.

Which is why I need another system. I am currently rearranging my wall hangings so I can hang my woven storage bags out of the reach of my cat.

I am hoping to have a bunch of these in different colors and structures to add to the “textile bazaar” feel of my room.

While this will be made into a usable product, I still feel that it should be filed in the category of “sample” as there are a few things about it with which I am not all together happy.

I have made a couple of other useful items from my samples such as, the two purses pictured at left, and I have all the pieces I have made here as reminders of how to chart designs or what to do and what not to do next time.

Give me some time and will probably sew all the samples up into something!

So, what am I unhappy about? Firstly, as I mentioned last week, my warps in the center of the piece were spaced wider than those along the sides so I know next time that I need to pay more attention to that.

The other thing is the separation of the layers. I know from doing warp-faced double weave that the two layers of fabric are not joined in places where there is no pick-up pattern but you really have to pinch the fabric and try to pull it apart to feel the separation of the layers in the warp-faced fabric.

However, in this balanced double weave structure, the separation of the layers is far more apparent and not something I like too much. I think it was a mistake weaving those long columns of motifs and leaving those long plain spaces between them. While, thankfully, the fabric doesn’t “billow” in the places where the layers are not attached (I have read that this is something that can happen), it does somehow feel unstable in those places.

The above sample designs have the pick-up better spaced across the width of the fabric. The narrow brown and white band, above right,  is a reproduction of a pre columbian piece from Peru and you can see how the weaver has added small spots, crosses and squiggles in the negative spaces around the bird motifs in order, I would imagine, to bind the two layers of cloth.

The lattice design in black and white (from an issue of Prairie Wool Companion) holds the layers together beautifully.

So, my next piece in this technique will have an all-over design and I have already found the one I would like to do on a Huichol bag. Now to chart it…I am not yet at the point where I can read the design straight off a photo but am getting closer! I might be able to do it with the actual cloth in my hands.

Of course, the fact that the layers in plain double weave don’t bind can be used to your advantage if you are wanting to make a seamless pouch (see the eyeglass case I made in this blog post).

From here I move on to what I call in the title of this blog “Funweave”. All weaving is fun for me but Jennifer in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group reminded us all this week about how fun and satisfying it can be to weave using heavy yarn.

I wrote a post entitled Big Bang and Big Thread some time ago about this topic when I made four backstraps very quickly using 12wpi yarn – Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale together with doubled Tahki Cotton Classic.

These were fast and fun to make with their pick-up patterns: pebble weave and simple warp float patterns but, hey, who needs pick-up patterns to make beautiful designs?

Look at that bag…what a beauty! Here is what Jennifer calls an ”eight-hour project” using Tahki Cotton Classic. The checkerboard design is programmed into the warp so that once the warp is on the loom it is all plain weave. She even did some weft twining. I have to tell you that weft twining is SLOW but not so bad when you are using yarn of this  weight and can work your way from one edge of the warp to the other relatively quickly.

She also made a backstrap using Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale which is heavier than the Tahki Cotton Classic.

So, I decided this week to show you a little about basic weft twining and made a couple of videos.

My interest in this technique goes back a long way starting with Cheryl Samuel’s beautiful book on Chilkat dancing blankets and I have written about this in several previous posts.

What got me out of the book pages and into the technique was seeing the twining on textiles made by the Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) backstrap weavers. They call this twining technique kteh. Some of their traditional designs can be seen above left.

On my first visit I only got to see the designs and didn’t see how they were created and so I started on some off-loom twining experiments using thick yarn as weft twined around cotton string.

I copied some of the Montagnard designs as well as woven motifs from Bedouin textiles and played with one, two and three-color twining.

I also started some one-color textured twining but got distracted when the opportunity came to actually go and learn twining with the Montagnard weavers and so I will return to the textured twining one of these days.

The Montagnard weavers twine their pieces off-loom. They twine the edges of their skirts and blankets. To make these large pieces, several panels are woven and then sewn together. Then the twining is added along the edge of the connected panels. I also understand after having spoken with Ngach that there are specialists to whom weavers take their cloth to be twined. Ju Nie often sends her skirt fabric back to her sister in Vietnam who twines the edges and returns it.

Even small pieces are twined off loom. The fabric is hung on a specially made stand or on a bar which is rests on two pieces of furniture.

Here I am learning to twine with Jarai weaver Ngach. This is a beautiful way to twine. The thread that Ngach uses is fine and she has her wefts wound on bobbins. Her movements are fluid and graceful.


There is more detail on my second visit with the Montagnard weavers in this post.

Here is a short video I made of Ngach twining. After  you watch the instructional video I have made, you will better understand what she is doing in the different movements. Watch how she twists the wefts sometimes once and sometimes twice and note how tightly she holds the warps under tension. She has her woven piece sewn around the metal bar so she can pull down on the warps. This is something I couldn’t do with my off-loom lap twining.

I have tried both on and off-loom twining and find that I much prefer twining while my woven piece is still on the loom. For me, it is easier to twine around warps that are held under tension. This also allows me to twine in the middle of a weaving as the Bedouin often do.

Something I have yet to try which I have seen in Bedouin textiles is twining a design that is completely embedded in the cloth, that is, it does not travel from edge to edge but sits in the middle completely surrounded by weaving. (see here…although I can’t be sure if this is twining or in fact wrapping, soumak or some other technique that is worked in conjunction with a ground weft which would bind the whole piece of fabric together).  What do you all think?

I have made two videos showing two-color twining as I do it on the loom (not as I was taught by Ngach.) The first video shows how to twine with two colors and determine which color shows on the surface to create your pattern.

I am twining in the middle of a narrow band woven with yarn that is very similar to Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale. I use the same yarn as the warp and weft for the twining and I twine around groups of six warps.

I am working sitting in my backstrap loom with the warp under tension.

I start by tying the two strands of weft in a square knot. The Montagnard weavers twine from left to right leaving the weft tails hanging decoratively at both edges. If you are planning on sewing your piece and hiding the weft tails, you may want to start with a slip knot which you can later easily undo and therefore not have a bulky knot interfering with your seam.

 


If you look at the large picture of Jennifer’s bag earlier in this post, you will see that the twined wefts sit on the surface of the cloth at an angle.

The next video shows how to create two rows of twining at once with the wefts lying at opposite angles creating little “v”s.

To have this show up well, this kind of twining should be separated from the rest of the two-color twining by a row or two of single color preferably in a third contrast color. You can also stack several rows of this for a very nice effect.

You can see it in red and white on this piece I made surrounded by black.

I start by hooking the two threads together. By doing this, you won’t have starting tails.

If you prefer to have tails, you can just knot the four strands together. As for the length of the wefts, I will leave that up to you to figure by trial and error. Unless you really want to avoid wasting yarn, I would go with long wefts which can be trimmed later. Having long pieces of weft to hold and work with in your hands is easier than having short ones which you can’t quite grasp.

As you can see, the weft builds up around the warps in vertical columns. This means that any motif that has been drawn on a chart that is based on columns of squares can be used…motifs designed for cross stitch or knitting, for example. I choose to hide the little “bump” at the back of the fabric. I have seen Indonesian textiles that have the bump exposed and used as part of the design almost like little beads.

In the videos I am twining up and away from the weaving line but I have also on occasion, done it the other way around. I finish my weaving and then return to the start and twine around the unwoven warp ends at the beginning of the piece. The twining grows towards me rather than away. Both ways work equally well for me.

And what’s on the other side when you twine motifs? This is how the piece in the heavy yarn looks on both sides….

And here is the finer twining I did on the Montagnard-style piece that I wove…front and back. You will notice that the twined band is slightly wavy. As I had twined around groups of four warps, the twining actually turned out wider than the woven fabric. Since then, I have twined around groups of six warps and always used the same yarn as my warp and weft for the twining wefts. That works out perfectly.

An entire piece can be made up of twining. Those off-loom pieces that I made with the chunky yarn, with a bit more practice, could be used for mug rugs or sewn into bags. You can twine around a piece of cardboard and form a tube to create a seamless bag as my friend Franco did.

I twined around single strands of cotton string for those. The close-up at left will show you the material and a first attempt at some textured twining. For the piece in this picture I have used doubled strands of #3 crochet cotton for the weft.

Twining on a woven piece adds a nice bit of decoration and can strengthen an edge. I have not seen exactly how the woven Bedouin tent dividers are hung but wonder if they are hung from the twining in the mid sections of the weaving. I imagine those tent dividers are very heavy and perhaps the stronger, more rigid twined parts can support the weight of the hung weaving (pure speculation on my part).

I used twining in a single color to edge these placemats and mug rugs just for something different.

I wanted a sturdy shoulder strap for my loom bag and so twined the whole thing with #10 cotton. I twined in the word for ”weave” in different languages. The twining was done width-wise and all the weft ends were sandwiched between the twined band and another woven one which were sewn together.

Remember the “sausage” bag I made last week? Well I finished it by sewing in the zip and am still lamenting the fact that the twining ended up on the bottom!

It really holds a lot of stuff and will make a great toiletries bag for travel. The twined motif has three colors in the center and with practice you will see that it is not any harder to twine with three colors than with two.

And speaking of decorative finishing techniques, Tracy in the Ravelry group showed us the pretty herringbone stitch that she is working along the edge of one of her Weave Along projects. Tracy lives in Doha, Qatar and has made contact with a Bedouin weaver there who uses this finish on her woven pieces.

On the left you can see a pebble weave piece she is also currently working on using her homespun yarn.


Here are other Weave Along projects from the last couple of weeks…..As you know this Weave Along is all about PLAIN WEAVE.

Peg and Cindy made their first bands. Cindy used her handspun. Ellen and Jenny made backstraps. Jenny used a semi rigid heddle on her backstrap loom.

Janet has both balanced and warp-faced projects on the go.

Marsha is doing both balanced and warp-faced double weave.

Ellen made a bookmark from her first supplementary weft band and Traudi made mug rugs charting  her own design in warp-faced double weave.

Susanna is weaving her first ever backstrap piece while Dyggvi is planning a Tibetan-style bag with bands made using the simple warp floats technique.

So, I hope you use the tutorial, twine away…and show me what you have made.

 

 

 

Backstrap Weaving – Bag Mad

Look out…I have been sewing again. I challenged myself in my blog post last week by saying that I need to sew this piece, with its supplementary weft pattern and weft twined bands…..


into something that would extend my meager sewing skills. So, I had to resist the temptation to simply fold it, flip the end over to make a flap and sew up the sides…done, easy, onto the next project. I decided that I wanted to make a kind of sausage bag, that is, one with a flat bottom and rounded sides – a sewing challenge indeed for this inexperienced sewer. I Googled away for instructions and found none. How to get the straight edge of the main piece to bend neatly about the rounded ends??….for me it was kind of like trying to get the square peg to fit the round hole.

I will show the still unfinished bag to you a bit later and then you can judge for yourself whether I succeeded!

And now I can even better appreciate why so many bags made by the weavers I have met here are simple rectangles, folded in half and sewn up the sides. Of course, it makes perfect sense after having worked weeks to weave a piece to want to use it ALL…not cut it up, tuck and pull it about to make an ”interesting” shape and besides, it will hold more that way too.

So, I have been looking through some of my photos of weavings and here and there online and have some bag pictures to show you. What a wonderful variety of designs, structures and materials I saw but all with the same highly practical shape…a basic square or rectangle.

The bag on the left is knotted using a fiber extracted from a plant related to the pineapple which is called “garabata” here and is made by the Ayoreo people of eastern lowland Bolivia. The one on the right, from Betty’s collection, was made by people of the hilltribes of northern Thailand and appears to be made up of several bands sewn together.

The Ayoreo work their pieces as rectangles which are folded and then sewn together at the sides. According to Peter Collingwood in The Maker’s Hand, bags or bilums, some made with the same knotting technique used by theAyoreo, are made in Papua New Guinea but worked as a tube rather than a flat piece….only one seam to sew.

Above left is a dual-pocket cotton saddlebag or alforja from coastal Ecuador. Both ends of the woven fabric are folded in toward the center to form the two pockets. On the right is a cotton bag from tropical lowland Peru. You might recognize the design from my recent placemat project.

Two coca leaf bags or ch’uspas from highland Bolivia and Peru made with cotton, acrylic and wool.

The Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) weavers make what they call “Bible bags” with commercial cotton thread. Verses from the Bible are often woven into the straps. Cotton satchels with zippered compartments and buckles are being made by one family in coastal Ecuador for the tourist market using ancient weaving techniques and often their own homegrown and spun cotton.

I would say that the bag made in Tinkipaya, Bolivia on the left is destined for the tourist market too. The double weave bag on the right is from Mexico and has motifs that are commonly woven by the Otomi and Huichol people.

I think that the weavers make up for what may be seen as a lack of “shapeliness” in their bags by using various finishing techniques. I am a big fan of finishing techniques and I too enjoy “dressing up” a piece with pretty straps, pom poms, baubles, braids, tubular bands, cross knit looping, fringes, tassels and other frills, fluff and stuff.

The tiny amulet bag at left has a crossed-warp strap, tubular band edging, braided tassels and Bolivian-style pom poms.

The body of  ceremonial ch’uspas are quite often completely dwarfed by a myriad of tassels, giant pom poms, braids and coins making them both colorful and musical as they jiggle about on a dancer’s hip.

I love the braided treatment of the warp ends on the Mexican bag.

Colorful edgings are added to pieces sometimes to strengthen and reinforce the edges or prevent the tendency for fabric which has been woven with overtwisted yarn to curl . And sometimes it is there solely for decoration.

The cotton bags above left from coastal Ecuador, which have been made for the tourist market,  have been edged with plain-weave bands and have had large tassels added at the corners. The technique is the same as that used on the traditional saddlebags where the bands are used to strengthen the edges. I have been told that tubular woven bands are added to large pieces in Chinchero to help stop curling. I would say that one has been added to the small zippered purse above for decoration.

Here you can see highland and lowland weavers adding bands to the edges of their woven pieces using different techniques. The edging bands used by both weavers are sewn and woven at the same time using the weft as the sewing thread. (see the videoshere ). The weaver from  the Tarabuco area of Bolivia uses a toe and finger-tensioned warp with a heddle and loop shedding system. Trinidad from Manabí province in Ecuador uses a homemade rigid heddle to create her sheds. One end of the warp is generally attached to a screwdriver which is wedged between the floor boards and the other end to a wall beam or other fixed point.

I have yet to get a zip I like for my bag creation this week. I have just pinned a metal zip into place for the time being.

This looks like a giant sports duffel bag, doesn’t it, but it actually only measures 7″ x 4 1/2″. It’s a nice size for a travel cosmetics bag. The sides are made from left over material from one of my purse projects and were woven using the three-shed method that I describe in my Andean Pebble Weave book. This produces a nice dense piece of cloth which worked well for this purpose. I cut them after a generous application of a “stop fray” product and then came the fiddly sewing process. I made use of my sample band to add a tab…something to hang onto while pulling the zip open.

I added black-and-beige tubular bands to both sides to outline the rounded inserts but, darn, you can’t even tell they’re there!! And sadly, the weft twining ended up on the bottom. That will teach me for weaving away with no end product in mind! But, sewing skills were extended and that was the post- weaving plan.

My Huichol piece is slowly moving along…

You may remember me saying that this finnweave technique behaved very well for me in that I did not need to use a reed to maintain the warp spacing. Well, it turns out that I may need to rethink that. You can see that the warps are spaced wider in the center than on the sides and I am having to fight a little with the right hand edge where the warps are threatening to scoot over next to each other.

All in all I am pretty pleased with it. I will just weave on until there is no more room to make the manipulations and see what kind of bag I can make from this. I have been searching about online for the kinds of designs that the Huichol and Otomi weave in this technique and have only come across bags and belts…..the kinds of items where you would ideally want a fairly sturdy fabric. The piece I am weaving would stand up quite well as a bag. I certainly wouldn’t call it light and “drapey” but not sturdy either. So, I was blown away this morning when I saw this on Teyacapan’s Flickr page…

An Otomi shawl, or rebozo made in what I am guessing is the same technique. Look at the braided fringe treatment. Now my question is “what’s on the other side?” (see last week’s post). The other side of my piece shows the same motifs with their colors reversed but they are clearly imperfect. That is the nature of this technique. I have seen Huichol belts online that have the same “flawed” motifs on the back while on others the motifs are clearly perfectly reversible. I shall ask Karen if I may have a peek at the other side.

Doramay Keasbey described in a recent article in Handwoven magazine (Jan/Feb 2011) five different types of double weave pick-up showing both sides of the fabric to compare the motifs. Some have varying degrees of feathering around their edges but are reversible while the motifs in the finnweave example have smooth edges but are not reversible. I wrote about this article in a previous post but I thank Marsha Knox, who has been making her own experiments in double weave pick-up, for reminding me about it.

Ah well, I shall just continue with my ten-inch wide piece and dream about one day being able to make a rebozo!

Something else I played with a little this week was two-color alternating warp floats. This comes via the “Worldwide Weaving Web”.

Yonat cast the first strand in the web by weaving some bands in this technique and posting them on Facebook.

Annie (ASpinnerWeaver) picked it up and went from there creating her own piece, a guitar strap, and posting it on Facebook too.

That’s her piece pictured at left.

I saw it and immediately loved it. It reminded me so much of something but I couldn’t quite pin it down.

Someone on Facebook commented that it looked Egyptian while Annie herself remarked that it reminded her of some Hmong designs she had seen.

Yet another said it looked like a person standing with open arms and legs.

In any case I wanted to weave it.

And then I remembered a motif from Bhutan that I have in a book which has some of the basic elements. This is what Annie’s piece reminded me of.

I wove something based on Annie’s design making some changes to make it my own version.

I used a solid color stripe down the center and added in a five-span float on the outside.

What I didn’t realize was that by adding that single-color center stripe I had changed it into one of those “eye-bending” designs which changes when you shift your focus somewhat like those 3-D designs years ago that we all used to go cross-eyed over. It was only when I turned the band over to see “what’s on the other side” that I saw the other design. I wonder if you see it too.

Look at the image, below left, of the back of the band with its diamonds for a while and then look at the one on the right of the front. What do you see now? Do you still see the stick-like patterns or do you see diamonds?

After that, all I could see was diamonds!!

I had to go take a break and come back to be able to see the nice stick pattern once again.

Then I continued weaving it as a complementary warp technique which made the design reversible. It also compressed the motif so that the five-span floats were less cumbersome.

Looking at it now all I can see is diamonds once again.

The design is just made up of floats of alternating colors starting in the center and working their way out to the edges. Here is a chart for a very large version of this pattern.

So that was all a bit of a fun distraction!

I have a band that I bought in Guatemala where the weaver has made use of some of these eye-bending motifs. It is in basic black and white which is very unusual in Guatemala where bright colors abound. I bought this belt in the same town that is famous for  hair sashes which scream with color and are heavily laden with supplementary weft designs.

When the black and white floats alternate in succession they produce quite a three-dimensional effect.

I have lots to report on the Ravelry group backstrap Weave-Along but I will save it for next week except for Amber’s amazing finished work which is in keeping with the bag theme in this week’s post. Look at her gorgeous lined tote bag! Okay, lining has to go on my list of sewing skills now….

Oh, and one more thing –  another delicious distraction arrived, this time in the post…a birthday gift from my friend Anna in Australia. My goodness it was hard not to drop everything and get into this but I shall do so on the weekend. All my off-loom time this week has been spent sewing,  trying to get that square peg into the round hole!

 This book, by Dutch author Mirja Wark, is about the si’ira, which is the intricate belt weaving of the Wayuu Indians from the Guajira, the northern border area of Venezuela and Colombia.

I flicked through and was immediately struck by a couple of things. It appears that the Wayuu make and operate their heddles in the same way as the Guaraní weavers here do, a way that is completely different to anything I have seen in the highlands or elsewhere. (see the pictures and video in this post) One of the Wayuu designs strongly resembles the design in the Ayoreo bag in this post. I imagine the Wayuu inhabit lowland regions like the Ayoreo and Guaraní….I need to stop here and go read!