While people in my online weaving groups are posting pictures of lilies, poppies and butterflies in celebration of the northern summer, here in the southern hemisphere winter is in full swing. The Bolivian President Evo Morales suddenly declared June 21st, the winter solstice, Aymara Day and a national holiday. Bolivia is now known as Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia rather than La Republica in recognition of the various indigenous groups which it comprises and this has me wondering if we will be having Guarani and Quechua Days as national holidays too.
However, it is hard to believe that we are in the middle of winter here in Santa Cruz, Bolivia where I sit at my laptop in tshirt and shorts wondering whether I should turn on the air conditioner as the suns comes around the building and throws golden rays through my bedroom window.
The highlands are experiencing their dry season and it is COLD. I spent most of one July and August up in Potosi at 4000 meters in a shabby room in a backpacker hostel – bare cement floor, pinned down in my bed under kilos of thick hand woven blankets and still cold! I remember trying to squeeze myself into the thinnest possible package in order to fit under the tiny trickle of hot water that came out of the electric shower head. The lowest possible water pressure was the only way to get hot water. Washing clothes in the cold water brought tears to my eyes!
At left you see dry, dusty and sparsely vegetated Potosi with its landmark mountain Cerro Rico whose silver deposits sustained the Spanish economy for centuries.
LEFT: Miners keep effigies of the devil, whom they call El Tio, in various places within the mines as they believe that he is the owner of the minerals and needs to be appeased with offerings of cigarettes, coca and alcohol. RIGHT: You can beat the winter chills with a soak in the thermal waters of the volcanic crater lake at Tarapaya. I must confess that this photo was taken on a second visit to Potosi in January when it wasn’t so cold. Rumors that there are whirlpools in the center of the lake which suck people in keep most visitors in the cement pools in the valley below. I kept close to the edge of the lake at all times!On my first visit to Potosi in 1997, I met Ulla, a Danish girl who was staying on in Potosi after having spent a year there as an exchange student. We learned to weave together with sisters Julia and Hilda. As Ulla didn’t have a patio, she set up an oblique loom in her warm little apartment and was able to weave comfortably there. It certainly beat having to bend over the grond loom. On her lap, apart from the kitten, you can see the “saca” or little woven sample that the weavers use to help them remember how to weave the designs.I was fortunate to be in Potosi on August 31st for the Chu’tillos festival which celebrates San Bartolome. Dancers in typical costume from all over the province of Potosi parade in the street on the first day followed by dancers from all over Bolivia on the second. The best part is actually the weeks leading up to the festival as the groups rehearse late at night in the empty streets and laugh and chatter and have a lot of fun while doing so.
Bolivia extends from the dry, dusty highlands to the lush green lowlands known as the “oriente”, where I live. They are like two totally different countries in so many ways. In recognition of that, Bolivia has not one but two national flowers, the patuju from the oriente (below left) and the kantuta from the highlands (right).
Both contain the colors red, yellow and green, the colors of the Bolivian flag. Santa Cruz abounds in flowers, trees and greenery at all times of year. It just never really feels like winter. Electric cables disappear within mazes of tree branches and it sometimes feels like the city is on the verge of being swallowed by the jungle that lurks on its outskirts.
The “tajibo” and “torobochi” trees that line the streets.The pattern barely shows on the back of supplementary weft patterned pieces
So with all this in mind I have been weaving some sunny tree and flower designs in the single face supplementary weft patterning technique that I learned in Guatemala in Santa Catarina Palopo.
This is a fun technique with little or no counting involved which allows you to play freely with shapes and colors.
The resulting weaving looks like a piece of embroidered cloth except that the “stitches” only appear on one side of the fabric.
Bookmarks made with Guatemalan tree and sun motifs
Last week when I started the tutorial on this technique, I was using acrylic threads that I had brought back from Guatemala to create bright mutlicolored trees on a green background, pictured at left.
I decided to buy some embroidery floss to work with and it took some time to get just the right thickness to go with my chosen ground weave warp. The ground weave is a 50 wpi cotton and I used 4 strands of embroidery floss to do the patterning.
The 50 wpi warp produces a wonderfully thin cloth just right for bookmarks although the pattern wefts do add some bulk.
So, let’s continue with the tutorial.
I have done a recap of what I showed you in Part 1 of the tutorial last week on a video. I have used thick cotton and only a few warps to demonstrate the picking of the warps for the two patterning sheds, the placement of the patterning sticks in the loom, the technique for opening the patterning sheds and the weaving sequence. I don’t recommend using such thick yarn for your own supplementary weft project!
All the colored wefts that form the patterns pass under or wrap around the warps in the two patterning sheds. This green piece has 86 ends between the dark green border stripes.
The base of the little Guatemalan tree is a double horizontal line. STEP ONE: To form this, place a strand of around 40cm/16″ of supplementary weft under the central patterning warp. The two ends on either side should be of equal length. The central warp in my set up just happens to be in patterning shed 2 so I have started in the heddle shed.STEP TWO: Cross the ends of the supplementary weft. STEP THREE: Start wrapping the left hand end around the 5 warps to the left of the central warp and return wrapping around 4 warps. The diagram below shows how this is done.The steps for horizontal wrapping are shown here. The left end of the weft wraps to the left and returns and the right end wraps to the right and returns. These four steps all take place in the same pattern shed. The wefts wrap around four warps on their return journey to the center. STEP 5: Pass the main weft through the complete shed.
Open the next shed, which is, in my case, the shed rod shed and pass the main weft.
Open the heddle shed and raise the patterning warps in patterning shed 2.
Patterning shed 2 contains my central warp.
Every time I raise the warps in patterning shed 2, I will wrap my green tree base weft around the central warp to form a stem. The drawing at left shows the very simple vertical wrapping method.
The stem, therefore, is woven only in every second shed.
In this shed I will lay in the wefts to form the first pair of leaves.
Cut two lengths of weft around 24cm/9 1/2” long for the two leaves.
Starting the second leaf.
The little Guatemalan tree has three pairs of leaves and the stem continues growing until it eventually widens out into the tree top.
Once you have woven your six leaves, I am sure that it will be very easy for you to see how the tree top is formed.
You are weaving your stem with two strands of weft – one will start traveling to the right and one to the left while filling in the tree top in the same way that you filled in the leaves.
Finally there are the little spots that the Guatemalan weavers like to use to fill in blank spaces between motifs. I used them in my bookmarks as flower buds. You can see two yellow spots in the photo above.
To make a spot, you use two adjacent patterning warps as shown in the drawing above left. Use a strand of weft half the thickness that you would normally use. Around 12cm/5″ length should be plenty. First pass the weft behind the warp on the right as shown. Then join the two ends together and go wrapping them back and forth in the same shed about six times. Pass the ends through the main shed and out the back of the weaving.
The drawing above right shows how to make a diagonal line for a branch.
It is very easy to improvise with this technique. Have fun with it!
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It seems I was in the mood for autumn colors as I got back to work on the yurt band piece that I started a while ago and really had a good time picking that up again. At first I found it very confusing after having spent so much time on Andean pebble weave lately. Usually one is picking up light warps on a dark background or viceversa but in this technique you pick up lights for one weft pass and then darks for the next. This is a simple warp float technique ( see this tutorial and this one) that can look a lot like Andean pebble weave but is totally different in structure. I copied the design from an image of a Turkoman yurt band that my friend Lisa had showed me on the net,
The original Turkoman band on the left next to my reproduction. I left out the triangles that run down the sides separating the two main pattern areas.
The other project I worked on this week was finishing off the red and black piece, sewing it up into three coin purses and putting in those dastardly zips! I believe that I am actually getting the hang of these zips now.
Three coin purses with North and South American motifs in Andean pebble weave.
Today, (July 1st), the appendix to my e-monograph with instructions for weaving Andean pebble weave on a four-shaft loom went out!
Those who have already purchased my monograph will automatically receive it and it will be included in all future downloads of the monograph from now on at no extra cost.
My testers have made some lovely things on their four-shaft looms which I have been showing here on my blog over the last few weeks.
Lisa wove a band with several small motifs. Lydia made a wall hanging with a bird motif of Huancayo and Jennifer is going to turn her piece with the design from one of the Russian Old Believer belts into a backstrap.
Finally I would like to show what Helena, who is in the backstrap weaving group at Weavolution, has made in supplementary weft patterning using various colors and Mexican designs. Beautiful!
Back in beautiful Bolivia and already thinking about the next trip to the US for Convergence in mid July! But, first things first. In keeping with my policy of “new things in, old things out”, I have spent a few days tossing things to make room for the books and bits and pieces I brought back from the US. I do believe I have tossed out more things than I brought back – ah, more space…that is a nice feeling.
The other policy is to finish all the projects that I started on the road and I am pleased to report that I am ninety-nine percent on the way to completing them.
Project number one…the larger backstrap piece I was using for my demonstrations.
Demonstrating, finishing the pebble piece at home and the new tool bag, front and back.Needed - one more tool bag for my new collection of shuttles. Two months ago, I didn't have a single small shuttle. Always happy for an excuse to weave something!
I had warped this up with nothing in particular in mind. I just needed something to demo with at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. This poor band had a bit of a hard life having been set up at different angles, worked under different tensions and constantly picked up, woven, and put down. My weavings always turn out better if I weave on them for a couple of hours at a time and having them tied up and worked on in the same spot helps a lot too. In any case, I got this off the loom and decided I needed another tool bag. Anyone who saw me rummaging around in my tool bags for that “special stick” or beater will agree. This new
I wove an inkle band with designs in Andean pebble weave on a couple of road trips and at the beach.
bag should help to sort out the confusion a bit. I wove a narrow blue band which served as the sides of the tool bag. All that is left to do is make a braid and sew on a button for a closure.
Project number two…the inkle band that I wove on road trips and at the beach. I completed this with twelve spaced motifs so that I could cut the band and sew it into key fobs. It was woven in Andean pebble weave with pre-Columbian and contemporary motifs.
This was a bit fiddly as I hadn’t woven quite enough plain pebble weave at the start of some of the pieces for threading through the metal ring, turning over and sewing so I had to cheat and glue some of the ends down.
So now I have twelve purple and green fobs. To be honest, I think I prefer making two at a time on my backstrap loom as I can change color and offer people more choices but…there are those times when there isn’t anywhere to tie up a backstrap loom and I can weave on my new inklette instead.
The twelve finished key fobs.
Hmmm, seems that I was in a very purple-ish mood when I was traveling as, the third project which I was weaving to show Andean pebble weave at its simplest on a very narrow band, is in an eggplanty purple shade with apple green designs. I had no idea what to do with this band when I got home – more key fobs? No…And then I remembered a wee twill-weave sample I had made ages ago. It is nothing special at all but it was the very first balanced weave I had ever attempted on my backstrap loom and I had gotten quite a kick out of it. It was also the first time I had ever wet finished something. I had not been in the habit of wet finishing warp faced wall hangings and shoulder bags so it was all new territory.
UPPER LEFT: The thin band. UPPER RIGHT: The twill piece on the loom. I wrapped black yarn between the warps on the loom bar in order to space them for the twill. LOWER LEFT: This little bag will hold my business cards. Many people were amused to see me carrying my cards around in an Altoids tin while I was traveling. I shall probably replace this pouch at some stage with another in pebble weave with two pockets so that I can also carry my e-monograph cards.Yemeni knife belt
The band served as sides for the pouch as well as to decorate the center. The picture at bottom right shows two other looms with projects that I took to show in the US. You may remember having seen these in other posts and I shall be getting down to finishing these in the next few weeks. The one on the left is the supplementary weft reproduction of a pre-Columbian fragment and the other is a warp float reproduction of a yurt band. I was lugging around quite a lot of sticks and string!
So those will keep me busy for some time and I have already decided on what will probably come after that. I would love to try and reproduce the Yemeni knife belt pictured above. It has been woven with a supplementary weft with a silvery sheen and is spectacular.
Now what about those yarn experiments? I have even had time to weave a few things in Andean pebble weave with two of the yarns I purchased in the US.
I got this Patons Grace yarn at Michael's-yikes! purple again! What can I say?-there wasn't a good color choice. On their site, Paton's decribes this yarn as super soft or ultra soft and I would not have bought it based on that description as soft yarn and warp faced weaving don't usually get on. I wove two key fobs with it and it is lovely. Zero pilling on the heddles and, being mercerized, it has a lovely sheen. It is a number 3 crochet yarn. These photos show how I make my keyfobs two to a warp so that both fobs have a clean edge. I weave one, then turn the loom around and rearrange the shed stick. I retie the knots at the other end so that they are right at the start of the weaving. When finished, the knots are untied and those ends get passed through the end loops once the metal needle is removed.A few more pictures showing the weaving process and the two fobs on the loom. The finished fobs are at bottom right along with two others I made using Coats Royale number 3 mercerized crochet cotton also from Michael's - not many colors to choose from for this brand either. I would buy it from the website. Thumbs up for this yarn too.
I have a finer number 10 merc cotton, also by Coats, to try out for next week and not in purple as well as some wool. People often ask me about respinning commercial wool for backstrap weaving so we can take a look at that too.
Other tempting project ideas that have been appearing in my inbox are pictures of belts and bags woven by the Huichol of Mexico as well as drawings of motifs woven by the Cayapa of Ecuador.
Teyacapan, too, continues to inspire me with her gorgeous photos of Mexican crafts and textiles.
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Now it has occurred to me that this blog has been filled with images of the US the last few weeks and that it was about time I showed you all a little of Bolivia. I recently contributed some photos and information to Handwoven for a piece they wrote on Sucre, the constitutional capital of Bolivia, and its attractions for tourism related to weaving. How frustrating it was having to narrow down the images to just three or four pictures! In May last year, I went to Sucre for what was probably my fourth visit but, this time, I went with my brand new and first ever digital camera.
So here is a little whirlwind photo tour of Sucre…
Sucre, the "White City of the Americas"
Sucre sits in a valley at around 3500 meters and it is obvious how it earned its nickname. From the hill tops to down at street level, both inside and out, Sucre is white – almost blindingly so in the mid morning sun! Wooden enclosed balconies adorn most of the downtown buildings as well as black wrought iron window coverings and flower filled window boxes. It has quite rightly been declared a UNESCO cultural heritage site.
The most well known weavings of the area are made by the Jalq'a people of Potolo, upper left, whose textiles depict wild mythical creatures which completely cover the woven surface. Those made by the people of Tarabuco, on the other hand, have designs that are placed in well organized columns and depict common every day objects and events. These textiles are woven by the women on oblique looms while the men weave the brightly colored tapestries, lower right, on floor looms.
More examples….
Weavers from Tarabuco and Potolo demonstrate weaving at the ASUR museum in the heart of the city and it is also possible to travel to the town of Tarabuco or, further, to the villages of Candelaria and Potolo to see weavers at work and purchase their textiles.Shopping! Traditional weavings and knits from floor to ceiling as well as items produced with traditional based designs for tourists.
More shopping...the Sunday market in Tarabuco, a couple of hours away, is a textile lover's heaven. Again, you can find traditional pieces as well as weavings made specifically for tourists. At bottom right you can see one of the market stalls in the Sucre campesino market where you can buy llama fiber, spindles, cochineal and bone weaving tools called "wichunas". People in and around Sucre...weavers from Tarabuco and Potolo, a woman spinning in Tarabuco on her way home from the market with her granddaughter wrapped in her carrying cloth, an elderly Tarabuqueno wearing the leather hat or "montero" which is said to be based on old European style helmets, men performing ritual offerings to "pachamama" on Sunday morning in a plaza in downtown Sucre. A visit with Felicia and her mother in the village of Candelaria. Felicia's cousin, also called Felicia, taught me to weave the pick up technique of Tarabuco way back in 1998. She and her family have long since left Candelaria and I was lucky to run into her cousin who welcomed me into her home to sit and watch her weaving. I took weavings and photos to show and her mother, who is not a weaver, was delighted looking at my things.
I have spent many years traveling around and spending time with weavers here in South America. It is not so easy finding a weaving teacher especially in the cities and not all my attempts to learn to weave have been entirely successful. One thing is finding the weaver, another is finding one who has the time to teach you and, lastly, finding one who is also a good teacher is something else all together. I have almost always found a good weaver and teacher with some time to spare within a few days of my arrival in a place.
Typical textiles of the Tarabuco area.
On my second trip to Sucre in 1998, I found that I had enough time to look for a weaving teacher. The museum in Sucre had given me the name of a weaver in Candelaria but I bumped into Felicia while I was waiting for transport from Tarabuco to Candelaria ,we struck up a conversation and she persuaded me to come and weave with her instead. I doubt that Felicia herself knew what she was letting herself in for when she took on the task of teaching me to weave. Youngsters generally learn by observation rather than through explanation and Felicia seemed to have long forgotten which designs she had learned first, how difficult it was to learn from scratch, and I doubt that she had contemplated how time consuming and possibly boring it would be sitting for hours with me and having to help me along with every little thing!
The first classes...Felicia would sit at her loom picking up her pattern warps on a metal needle. All I could see was the long end of the needle flicking to and fro as it emerged from her fist. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how she was forming and reading the patterns. Finally I was able to persuade her to set up a miniature warp for me on another loom and picked out the simplest design I could find from a book I had bought at the museum. I was being a stubborn gringa and I wanted her to teach me MY way.Here are the loom and mini warp that Felicia set up for me in the yard . But things still did not go well...Felicia still flicked her needle around, sighed with impatience when I didn't get it and rolled her eyes at my questions! Finally I figured that I could slip the warp off the loom bars at night when everyone was asleep. I tied the warp to my bed rail, set myself up with my backstrap and unwove. In a couple of nights, I got it figured out and once I had made a chart of the motif, I was on my way. I decide after that, that I would leave the weaving classes and just enjoy my stay in the village. There was no transport out anyway until the market day the following Sunday. So I joined in with Felicia's chores instead and learned a few things. I am sure she was relieved that I had suddenly stopped asking for lessons and no questions were asked! We made bread. I am eternally grateful that she didn't have me get my hands into the dough which was made with globs of pig fat from a sack in the corner-that apparently was grandma's job. She showed me how to peel wafer thin slivers of skin off their tiny potatoes with a knife and get the kitchen fire going. Can you tell I am a city girl? I also learned how to use the stone to grind the chili peppers to make 'llajua"-a spicy sauce which she served with the bolied potatoes. Then there were the neighborhood kids to mind. I would go out for walks with a long train of them behind me.
Somehow we ended up hitting it off and I finally showed her the motifs I had been secretly weaving at night. She was pretty happy about that but did not praise me by calling me “machita” as my other weaving teachers had. Probably not surprising as you can see at left all that I managed to weave in a week!
The white yarn used in the background area is a highly overspun cotton. You can see how the heddle strings, which are made from the same yarn, are curling up on themselves with the overtwist. The pattern warp is overspun acrylic-about three times thicker than the ground weave and not as tightly spun.
We just used twigs from the yard for the shed rod and heddle stick.
I was very surprised to receive a phone call from Felicia’s husband when I returned to Santa Cruz telling me that he had sent me a package by bus. Inside was a chuspa (coca leaf bag) and a wichuna which belonged to Felicia’s mother. Wow! I wonder if Felicia took on any other gringa students after I left!
The bread oven in Felicia's yard. A piece I wove using the technique I learned during my stay in Candelaria. I used the same weight yarn for both the pattern and background colors which gives it a very different look.
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Two hair sashes that I had bought in the market at Chichicastenango. I particularly liked the one on the right in its soft autumn colors. I later discovered that it was originally woven in bright primary colors and then overdyed to suit the taste of foreigners. I have been told that sometimes textiles are simply soaked in tea to tone down the colors. Now I would like to wash this band and recover the orignal hues.
One of the things I enjoyed a lot on this trip to the US, was the chance to play on other looms. I had a great time on what I had been calling my “first encounter” with a four-shaft loom but I had completely forgotten the quirky little four- shaft/backstrap loom that I had woven on in Zunil, Guatemala.
While staying in Guatemala’s second largest city of Quetzltenango, I heard about the hair sash weavers of Zunil and the strange four shaft loom that the weavers used.
The warp is attached to and tensioned by the weaver’s body.
I was intrigued by the loom but also keen on learning how to make the lovely sashes.
Zunil is a twenty-minute bus ride from Quetzltenango and I arrived to market day madness. You can see some of the women there using their hair sashes. A short walk uphill brought me to the relatively peaceful town square and church where I found the weaving cooperative. There I was politely told that classes would not be possible as women were not permitted to weave during Semana Santa (Holy Week). Disappointed, I left, only to be chased down the street by a woman who told me she would take me to a teacher. And so I was led up the hill to Clara’s house which had a gorgeous view over the town and surrounding valley. We negotiated the price and when I questioned the Semana Santa thing I was simply told that “some people get jealous”.
So here is the rickety and very squeaky loom. The warp stretches from the weaver's waist through the reed and shafts around a hook in the door frame, back to the weaver's waist via another hook in the side of the loom. The warp is cotton which is sized with something that smells truly awful - corn starch and other ingredients - and the weft is acrylic. The reed is made from bicycle spokes.
Amazing to think that a weaver using such a loom can produce these beautiful even sashes.
The band on the left is what I wove in my classes. An experienced weaver using exactly the same warp and weft would produce those fine, narrow bands on the right. The sashes are finished with large heavy tassels. So that was my first four-shaft loom experience. Here are the loom parts that I bought in the hope of making my own one day. Clara was an excellent weaver and teacher.
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In the coming week on Weavolution I will be running a Weave Along. This will be for those of you who have been working their way through my e-monograph on Andean Pebble Weave and are wanting to extend their skills and weave a wider piece. It is also for those who have purchased the monograph but have been feeling a bit hesitant about getting started. Join in and weave with the group!
The coca leaf – I have enjoyed it brewed in tea, chewed it on hiking trips and used it to dye my handspun llama fiber above. However, a foreigner like myself can not even begin to understand the role that this humble leaf plays in Bolivian life and culture.
Lately there has been a lot more talk than usual about this piece of Bolivian cultural heritage as Bolivian President Evo Morales has recently announced plans to launch a new carbonated energy drink on the market which has the beloved coca leaf as one of its main ingredients. It should make an appearance in the next four months and will be called “Coca Colla”(the ‘olla’ in Colla being pronounced like the ‘oy’ in boy). “Colla” is the word commonly used to describe people from the altiplano of indigenous origins. This is President Morales’s attempt to erradicate coca’s unfortunate association with cocaine and drug trafficking, increase its cultivation and have it recognized instead, as stated in the new Constitution, as “cultural heritage, a natural and renewable resource of biodiversity in Bolivia and a factor of social cohesion”.
Coca is used to make tea, plays a part in religious rituals and is chewed in order to suppress hunger, thirst and fatigue as well as to alleviate the symptoms of altitude sickness. I have chewed it myself on hiking trips and I have to tell you that there is knack to getting a wad of it tucked neatly away in your cheek and not all over your teeth thus completely ruining your smile for the day! Bags of coca leaves are sold with lejia-the gray colored bar seen at left, comprising compressed ash and other substances, which is chewed along with the leaves and acts as a catalyst.
A special woven bag called a chuspa is used to carry coca leaves but I have only seen these in use at festivals and other celebrations. On a normal day, it is more usual to see people taking their coca leaves directly from a regular plastic bag. My weaving teacher, Julia, at right, is taking a break from classes to enjoy some coca.
While Julia and her sister Hilda both know how to weave a chuspa, strangely neither of them actually owns one. When I expressed interest in learning to weave one, they had to consult with each other in order to remember how to wind the warp. What is special about warping for a chuspa is the fact that most chuspas include a small pocket which is designed to carry a piece of the lejia or perhaps a few coins and allowance must be made for this in the length of the warp.
Three Bolivian chuspas, each woven with a different complementary warp technique. The one on the left was made by my weaving teacher in Candelaria and has a pocket. While the one in the middle was bought in Potosi, I am not sure of its exact origin. It does not have a pocket. The one on the right with a pocket is the one I made in Potosi under Julia and Hilda’s instruction.Julia and Hilda are preparing the warp for my chuspa. You can see the extended piece of warp on an extra stake which will become the pocket. We are using the brightly colored respun acrylic yarns that are very popular in this area. We are all at work here. I am working on my chuspa, Hilda is backstrap weaving a band while Julia, in the background, is cutting fleece to spin. My chuspa is a four-selvedge piece so I wove from one end, turned the piece around and wove from the other end and then had the usual agony of trying to squeeze weft into those last few rows to close the gap.Hilda taught me to weave the ”rolling river”design into my chuspa. Once off the loom, the sides and pocket are joined using a variety of decorative techniques.We used triple crossed knit looping to edge and sew the sides of the pocket. This is a very pretty technique that not only binds the sides but also completely curls over and covers the edges.You may be able to see the crossed knit looping more closely here on the edge of another bag that I wove. The brown sample shows how it would look worked flat rather than curled over an edge.A tubular band was woven with the weft being used to sew it to the sides and base of the bag as it was woven. A six-strand flat braid was made for the bag strap. The chuspas that I have seen being used in festivals are highly embellished with pom poms, tassels and multi colored fringes.A small selection from the variety of braids, bands and tassels used to decorate Bolivian chuspasThe ”rolling river” design has since become a great favorite of mine and I have woven it into tool bags, sashes and key fobs on my backstrap loom.
In 1998, I spent some time with a weaver in the village of Candelaria near Tarabuco and learned the weaving technique that is used in their chuspas and carrying cloths.
A Tarabuco style chuspa made by my teacher Felicia . The pocket is so small it is hard to see it being of any real use. The other piece is a small purse which has been woven specifically to be sold to tourists. Note the cute strolling llamas along the bottom.
I returned to Candelaria last year. Felicia is no longer there but the first person I met as I entered the village was Felicia’s cousin-also called Felicia! who took me to her home and graciously allowed me to film her weaving on her oblique loom. The next day I went to the market in Tarabuco where there was a cultural festival and was able to capture a small piece of video of a weaver warping for a chuspa. She was constantly being interrupted by ladies asking her questions so the clip is very short. I don’t know how well that warp could have turned out with all those pauses. When I warp, no one can speak to me!
So here is the short video (yippy! I have finally figured a way to get around my erratic internet service and upload heavier videos). The first part is the weaver warping for a chuspa with two colors around four stakes. You will see the extra stick she uses on which to warp the extra long part for the pocket.
The second piece is Felicia-keep an eye out for the kitty snuggled in her lap while she picks up those warps with lightning speed!
WHAT’S ON THE LOOM?-AN UPDATE
I have been working away on my Abba Yohanni inspired piece and have decided that I am going to make a table set to take as a gift on my next visit to Australia. So, the piece you saw last week will be a table runner. I have made some progress on that and have reversed the design and am just starting the final motif. In the meantime I couldn’t resist seeing how the motif would turn out in 12wpi cotton and so wove it into a (rather large) hot pad using one-weft double weave technique and then wove a small portion of the motif into a mug rug. I am thinking about weaving four placemats to go with the set with a piece of the motif woven with a supplementary weft in the center of each.
Lately I have been playing with supplementary weft patterning and, once again, have been inspired by Weavolution members. One member joined my Backstrap Group as she is interested, amongst other things, in reproducing a Central Asian yurt band. She has introduced me to many beautiful Central Asian designs and often sends me photos of pieces she has seen at reenactmant events that she attends.
Together we figured out the technique on a yurt band she had bought and even wove it simultaneously- all coordinated by email!
When she sent me this photo (at left) of a Central Asian piece she had photographed at one of the historical events, I couldn’t wait to weave the design into something. The technique wasn’t clear in the photo and, as I wasn’t concerned with reproducing the original technique, I decided to weave it in either double weave or supplementary weft patterning. I chose the latter as, since studying this technique in Guatemala in 2008, I hadn’t put it to much use.
In this technique, it is really important to get the right balance between the weight of the warp yarn and that used for the supplementary weft and so I quickly wove a sample and then went ahead and made the table runner below in 4/2 cotton (24wpi) warp with 6 strands of the patterning thread that I had brought back from Guatemala as the supplementary weft. You can see that I added a little embellishment of my own to the pattern.
My colors are rather bland compared with the original. I love that orange zigzag next to the main design. Perhaps I will be more adventurous with color next time!
My table runner with a Central Asian inspired design
My other source of inspiration has been a Brazilian member of Weavolution who has generously shared what she knows about the weavings of the Huni Kuin people who live in the tropical forest of Brazil and Peru. They weave with backstrap looms using cotton that they spin and dye themselves. You can see a video of their work here and a photo of a Huni Kuin weaver here. Although they do not use the supplementary weft technique, I chose to use this method to weave one of their designs into a bag.
A small bag with supplementary weft patterning inspired by a traditional Huni Kuin design.
Here in Bolivia, the supplementary weft technique is used by women to weave bands to decorate their hats. It is in these hatbands that I have seen the widest variety of woven designs. Except for in Calcha, where it seemed that the women had decided on one hatband design to represent their village, I have never seen two hatbands alike.
This Potolo woman is using three hatbands at once.
Hatbands from Bolivia
Sometimes the supplementary weft is used to form the motif as in the small condors on the upper half of the center band above. At other times, it is used to fill the negative space to outline the motif on the ground weave.
From having purchased some hatbands here, I was able to see how they were woven. I made a few sample bands but, as I didn’t get the right warp to weft ratio, I wasn’t too pleased with the results and never really went on to explore this technique further- that is, until I went to Guatemala in 2008 and studied weft patterning with three teachers there. It was my first time in Guatemala and an absolute explosion of color and inspiration was awaiting!
The traditional hair sash of the women of Aguacatan, Guatemala
So I would like to spend the rest of this post introducing you to my first teacher in Guatemala and showing you how I learned supplementary weft patterning with her.
Lidia lives in the very small town of Santa Catarina Barahona near San Antonio Aguas Calientes in Guatemala. The typical blouse, or huipil of the area has designs woven in single and double faced supplementary weft patterning. The large areas of double faced patterning are those that most distinguish the huipiles of this area.
Typical huilpil of San Antonio Aguas Calientes.
Single faced weft patterning. The patterns can’t be seen on the back of the textile.
This double faced patterning looks very much like embroidery. The national bird, the quetzal, is a very popular motif.
Day 1-Lesson 1. I have chosen my colors for my piece and am winding the thread into balls prior to warping
Making a small warp for my lessons
Once the loom was tensioned, the heddles were made.
Lidia’s sister Carmelita showed me how the warps, under which the patterning wefts would be placed, are picked and stored on two additional sticks. The resulting designs are called ”pepenado”.
The first design lesson-Lidia is weaving the ”tijera” (scissors) pattern. She uses a pointed stick to hook theweft tails and pass them under the raised patterning warps.
The finished tijera pattern
Double faced ”abeja”-bee
Three ”abejas” that I wove when I got home
The ”abeja” was topped off with another section of ”tijera” and that completed my second day of classes. Finally, on day three, I learned the ”arcos” (arches) pattern. This is a combination of weft inlay and warp wrapping.
Weaving the ”arcos” designs
The finished ”arcos” design
It looks like my teachers did all the weaving and I just stood around and snapped pictures! Well, I can tell you that it wasn’t so. Lidia was a very ”hands-on” teacher and she would take over only when I got up to stretch and take photos.
But it wasn’t all hard work. Other family members and neighbors came to visit, we paused to make and eat tortillas, chatted and played with the nieces and nephews in Lidia’s shady yard and walked to town to go yarn shopping.
Snack time. While making my way around Guatemala I learned to recognize the ”slap slap slapping” sound of tortillas being prepared.
Small rectangular pieces are covered with double faced designs and closed with a drawstrig to make a baby’s hat.
Whne I got back to Bolivia I finished off the piece that I had been making with lidia and then wove another sampler to consolidate the weft patterning techniques I had learned.
And I used my lesson piece in the lid of my weaving toolbox.
I went on from Lidia’s home to study with two other weavers in Guatemala but, more about that in another post!
Lidia’s daugther Sara and her cousins
I will be doing a tutorial on suplementary weft patterning with lots of step-by-step photos here on my blog in the following weeks so that you can add designs like the Central Asian and Huni Kuin ones, that I showed you above, to your projects.
I hope you enjoyed this little trip from Central Asia, to Brazil, to Bolivia and onward to my teacher’s home in Guatemala. If you did, I would love to hear from you 🙂
I love double weave! I particularly like the clean solid designs this technique produces on a nice smooth background. The same design appears on the back of the textile with its colors reversed. There are, in fact, two layers being woven together.
The problem with double weave for beginners practicing with heavy yarns, is that it produces a thick textile. Now this is just what you want if you would like to make a belt or perhaps a strap for a bag or a musical instrument.
A double woven strap for a Bolivian charango
But what about a small project for a beginner who would like to learn this technique? I always recommend that beginners start with heavier yarns and gradually work their way down to the finer ones as they gain more experience. So I have been trying to think of a useful small project made in a medium to heavy weight yarn (around 12 wpi) that a beginner could make once they have practiced the fundmentals of the technique on a sample band.
And this is what I came up with……………..MUG RUGS!!
South American and North African themed mug rugs
Woven in a 12wpi mercerized cotton, these are thick and firm-they really feel like mini rugs- and look great on the table. I guarantee that these will protect your good polished table from the hottest of mugs!
The black ones have adaptations of South American motifs from several countries. I got ideas for the designs on the brown ones from a book on North African carpets that I have. I really had fun making these. With the 12 wpi yarn they weave up really fast. I have never been a fan of rolling up long warps as I find I get much better tension control on shorter ones so I wove three mug rugs on a one-yard warp. I find warping for the backstrap loom a pleasure as there is no cutting or threading involved so making multiple warps for these two sets of mug rugs really wasn’t a problem for me.
Here they are as they come off the loom………..
I sewed over the last wefts and between the fringes with an ”invisible” nylon thread to finish these off while they were still under tension on the loom.
So, if you would like to learn how to make these you can find my tutorial for ONE-WEFT DOUBLE WEAVE in the Backstrap weaving Group at Weavolution. Weavolution is a free gathering place for handweavers. You will need to join Weavolution first and then join the Backstrap Group so you can access the tutorial.
South American motif mug rugs on the loom
Here is a sample pattern chart for these mug rugs using forty-one warp pairs.
Once you feel comfortable with this technique, you can move on to using finer yarns- on the right, 12 wpi; lower center, 35wpi; and upper center, plied sewing thread.
Double weave in various yarn weights
A LITTLE BACKGROUND……
I learned this technique in Potosi in Bolivia in 1996. I weave it now on my backstrap loom and, in terms of comfort, this is like flying First Class compared to the way I was taught this weave on a staked-out ground loom!
Weaving on the staked-out ground loom in Potosi
Julia and her sister Hilda allowed me to come to their home to learn to weave crouched over the loom in their yard for six hours a day during three weeks. You can see from the bandaids that the bone tool that is used to beat the weft into place was taking a toll on my soft gringa hands! That was about ten years ago. I doubt I could maintain that position for long now. Here I am making a four-selvedge piece in the lively colors favored by my teachers which I later turned into a shoulder bag. The piece has bands of patterned double weave on plain weave.
This technique is put to many different uses in various regions here in Bolivia. It is used to make the belts which form part of the typical woman’s outfit in the highland province of Potosi. Woven with several brightly colored stripes and covered with little figures, these belts are very sturdy and are woven just long enough to encircle the waist once. The weavers put a lot of effort into beating the weft in firmly and the quality of a finished piece and the skill of the weaver is judged by the belt’s stiffness. I was surprised to see when I went to Ecuador that these belts are now much sought after and prized by women in Otavalo, who are themselves skilled weavers, and are being used by many together with their typical Otavalan costume.
Belts made in one-weft double weave technique in Potosi
I’ll leave you here as it is time for morning tea-there it is below! Remember, if you have any questions or if you just liked this post, I would be delighted to hear from you. Please leave a comment 🙂 Laverne.
Last week when I started the tutorial on this technique, I was using acrylic threads that I had brought back from Guatemala to create bright mutlicolored trees on a green background, pictured at left.
Open the heddle shed and raise the patterning warps in patterning shed 2.
To make a spot, you use two adjacent patterning warps as shown in the drawing above left. Use a strand of weft half the thickness that you would normally use. Around 12cm/5″ length should be plenty. First pass the weft behind the warp on the right as shown. Then join the two ends together and go wrapping them back and forth in the same shed about six times. Pass the ends through the main shed and out the back of the weaving.
Today, (July 1st), the appendix to my e-monograph with instructions for weaving Andean pebble weave on a four-shaft loom went out!
