Tag: double weave

Backstrap Weaving – Smoothing out the rough.

SMOOTHING OUT THE ROUGH.

SAMPLE! My own words are ringing in my ears….if you are using a new yarn or a new technique on your backstrap loom….sample, sample, sample. And don’t trust your first samples for making width measurements for future projects. You have yet to settle into the new technique and things are still bound to change. Keep practicing while you slowly smooth out the rough bits. Sample away happily knowing you can probably make something from the samples, no matter how small or silly! If not, put it in your notebook with lots of notes beside it…believe me, you will forget if you don’t write it all down.

Here are a couple of small samples that I managed to make into decorative and useful things. My log cabin sampler got used as the cover of a flip notepad that always goes with me on my travels. This notebook is now full and I need to get the cover off so I can somehow fix it to another notepad. My first ever shadow weave sample got pulled off the loom as I was satisfied once I saw that it was working and I didn’t really care for the color combination. It got made into a small sewing kit purse which also goes traveling with me.

And never mind if your sample ends up with wonky selvedges and you don’t know what to do with  those pesky raw edges. There is usually a way around all that. The edges of my log cabin piece were turned around the ends of the notebook cover and glued down. Another piece of fine cardboard glued to the inside covered those edges for a neat finish. The zip took care of hiding and protecting the raw edges of the shadow weave piece.

I thought I would show in this blog post some of the finishes that I have used for my pieces, uses I have found for samples and different ways that I have dealt with raw edges.

You may remember from these previous posts here and here that I have been trying out finnweave on my backstrap loom. My first samples did not prove trustworthy for calculating the dimensions of my next project and so, what I had hoped would turn out as squares, ended up being more rectangular. Here is my warp set up for my square design samples…

And here are the rectangular results…

Width needed some adjustments and I learned to beat a bit harder as I progressed. I learned a lot about how to read from the weaving rather than from the chart with the design on the left. This is from one of the Prairie Wool Companion 1982 issues. There is a Chinese lattice work design charted and then three variations provided so that one can weave a set of four placemats. The version I chose is the one furthest removed from the original Chinese design. The design on the right is one I invented using the little pre columbian birds that I wove before and gave me more practice with filled-in shapes.

I was able to make something cute from the two samples…

This is a double weave and it is particularly tricky dealing with its raw edges. Folding over two layers to hem is bulky and unsightly and so I followed the advice that I read in an article and wove the start and finish of each piece as two separate layers with open edges.


The idea is to turn both edges inward and sew them together like that. However, I didn’t do that. As I was going to sew in a zip, I cut the white layer back as far as I could and then simply turned the black layer over it. The black turned edge got sewn down and hidden under the zip so all is well and protected and nice and neat to boot.

One thing I was not so happy about was the edges…

This may just be something that I am goofing up, but to my eye, the edge is ugly as you can clearly see how both layers of contrasting colors come together. A row of single cross knit looping covered that up nicely as you can see on the right. However, my eyes just about fell out…black on black. I had to stand right by the window in good light to do this.

So that was one solution to the ugly edges. On the other little bag, I added one of those woven bands that are woven and sewn simultaneously using the weft as the sewing thread. I used it down the side and along the bottom and it broke the design up nicely between the two faces. A four-strand braid for the zipper-pull was the finishing touch.

Speaking of braids I made the zipper-pull for my loom bag project…remember? – woven bag, braided zip-pull and twined strap.


It’s a 24-strand braid worked in the hand as my Peruvian sling braiding teacher had shown me.

I had not done this kind of braid in this size yarn before and so it was a bit of a challenge.

This is the base of the Margarita braid but as, I was so focused on just keeping everything in order while muttering the moves to myself, I did not venture into doing the changes in sequence that produce the diamond designs on the Margarita-style braid.

The cross knit looping that I used to hide the ugliness on my finnweave piece can sometimes be added to perfectly good looking selvedges as an extra decorative feature or it can be used to draw attention to or hide the place where two pieces of fabric are joined. This is also known as Van Dyke stitch in embroidery (see the video embedded in this blog post).

Other things that can be used to disguise a less-than-perfect edge or brighten something that is a little too plain are braids.

A two-color stitch can look good on the edge of a very plain one-color piece or hide its wonkiness if necessary!




This was a sample I made for a plain warp-faced weave weave-along. I sewed a four-strand braid around the edges which also served as a strap. Again, the zip handily hides and protects the raw edges.

This little pouch was started with a third selvedge which you can see on the right. I sewed across the raw edge with very visible stitches as neatly as I could by hand and then sewed that edge down.


Then there’s good old hem stitching which I only learned fairly recently from this video. I got such a kick out of learning and doing this the first time, I wanted to go around and hem stitch everything!

Teeny tiny “invisible” hand stitches seem to work well at the bottom of book marks and keyfobs. Warp ends can also be braided. I like to dab the ends of the braids with diluted white glue and squeeze them into a tapered shape as they dry. I think it looks better than having knots in the ends.


Above are some bookmarks decorated with Guatemalan supplementary weft designs, a double weave key fob and a pebble weave Celtic knot pattern.

I am not so convinced about the way that I chose to deal with the raw edges on these very thick double weave mug rugs.

This came after many attempts to sew them neatly and invisibly. They are too thick for the method I suggested earlier where you weave the two layers separately and turn them in on each other.

I figured if I couldn’t make the stitches invisible I would go for very visible and decorative, and something in keeping with the ethnic nature of the design.

This is the back side. The brown thread cannot be seen on the front.

I sewed these while they were still stretched out on the loom and had to put a mirror in my lap so I could see how the stitches were being placed on the back.

I am open to suggestions for improving this!

 

Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) weavers often finish their weavings with weft twining. They then add beads and often a few more rows of weft twining. I wasn’t convinced that the weft twining would stand in place on its own and sufficiently “finish” a piece until I tried it myself. It is firm and sturdy and there is no way those twined wefts are going to work their way loose. Here is some twining I did in a traditional Jarai design on the end of a warp-faced piece…

On the Bedouin design wall hanging that I did on the right I also twined the edge and finished it off with wrapped warps.

Warp wrapping, braiding and other finishing techniques are covered in Finishes in the Ethnic Tradition by Karen Searle and Suzanne Baizerman.

My latest favorite edging which I learned at the tinkuy de tejedores in Cusco last November is the tubular woven band which is woven and sewn simultaneously to edges shown below on the right. This is another one that totally grabbed me. I had to stop myself from tubular banding everything in sight!

I decided to try a plain weave single-color band as an edging after seeing how Guarani weaver Angela edges her pieces and I used it on the cell phone pouch above. It very nicely covers and protects the raw edge where I cut and shaped the flap.

Well, enough about smoothing out the rough, brightening the plain and taming those wild warp ends. Back to finnweave. I am still enjoying the Cora and Huichol pieces and traditional Scandinavian patterns and have just learned that another Mexican group, the Otomí, also practice this technique. However, I am returning to my original goal now and am about to chart my first pre columbian design based on one of my textile fragments. This will be another sampler and I will wet finish this one.

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What have the weave-alongers been up to?

Linda wove her first band with horizontal bars getting warmed up for simple warp floats. She also made supplementary weft samples so she could learn about the scale of her charted designs against the woven fabric before launching into a project. Bobbie finished her piece with the central supplementary weft pattern. The chart for this design is here. I really like the effect of the different colored horizontal bars design that she used on the edges.

After finishing another pebble weave piece, Jennifer shifted to double weave and enjoyed sampling the technique in #3 crochet cotton. The llamas are charted here.


Tracy is back from her trip and back at the loom doing pebble weave.

Tracy’s latest band is on the left and Jennifer’s finished piece is on the right. You can see that her knitting needle is not standing up to the task of creating her third selvedge. You can read some tips about starting with a third selvedge here.


Both Marsha and Jennifer tried double weave in #10 thread but decided it was too fine to tackle yet. Marsha is doing a double weave band, her first with a pattern, in #3 thread. She is writing the name of her roommate on what will be the strap for a camera bag. Jennifer made a keyfob as her first attempt with #10 thread and is happy to continue sampling with #3.

And just wait until you see this…

Helena in Brazil finished her pouch and has attached an adjustable band with buckle for her sister to use on her trip to Australia. I love that orange! There are ideas here for fun ways to combine colors, right?

The central design is one I invented and include in my book. I made it to go in a wall hanging along with the adaptation I made of a Huichol motif. This design includes the diamonds, spokes and curls that were also elements in the Huichol pattern.

I will leave you with our Weave-Along group’s learning mantra:

Short, Narrow Warps and Sample, Sample, Sample!









 




 

 

 

Backstrap Weaving – Care Packages

Mmmmmm 🙂 Care packages….this is part of a five-kilo box that showed up in the mail this week…

A huge cliche, I know, but I do like to have my Vegemite and Tim Tams. I have tried the gourmet cookies but nothing tops good old Arnott’s biscuits. This is just a fraction of what was in the box!

I suppose if I ever go back to Australia I will be having care packages sent from here….dried cuñapes, pots of dulce de leche,  facturas, alfajores and “Sublimes“! I must gather them all up so I can show you what they are.

It has occurred to me that I get care packages all the time…not necessarily cartons of stuff in the mail box at the post office, but rather, emails from people all over the world with links and photos and information about things that they know will be of interest to me…notes of concern if they hear of a new outbreak of social unrest or natural disaster in this area….words of comfort if life throws me a little disappointment on a more personal level. Nothing says more clearly “I care” than all that.

A certain person’s exceeding generosity has helped me to be the owner of this….

“Legacy in Cloth” – this book contains the results of Sandra Niessen’s thirty years of research on the weaving techniques and textiles of the Batak people of Indonesia. Five hundred and sixty-eight pages of text and luscious photos!

I am not even going to touch it until I have quality time available to give it the attention it deserves. This is not something to just flip through.

Sandra writes a fabulous blog packed with stories about her time spent in Indonesia with the Batak people, writing the book and then taking the book back to the villages.

She is currently in Indonesia making a film on Batak weaving inspired by a Batak poem, a project about which you can read here. Many thanks to Pamela Cross who gave me this information and sent me the link. You can see photos, also generously provided by Pamela, of Batak textiles with their twined edges in this previous blog post.

This week there was some time spent at the loom and a lot of time spent at the drawing board, the drawing board being my bedroom floor.

I love charting! I am still in finnweave mode and made an attempt at reproducing the design on a piece of Huichol weaving that I was able to photograph at the National Museum of the American Indian in DC. This was a great learning experience as I can really see now how my lines on paper transfer to cloth, how much space is created between rows of charted squares etc so that next time I should be able to make this a precise reproduction rather than an “adaptation”.

I knew from the get-go that this was not going to be faithful to the original. I couldn’t get the spacing of the outer “spokes” right, for example, but there was really only one way to figure it out…go ahead and weave it. Certain parts came out quite well while others obviously didn’t. Without the comparison I think it stands up as a nice design.

I read in one of Mary M Atwater’s articles in Handcrafter (a free download from the arizona archives..thanks Jeannine and Helena) that large areas of solid color should be avoided (much the same as in warp faced double weave) as, in these areas you end up with two separate layers that can tend to bulge and billow.

For that reason I wove the three small crosses at the bottom of my replica  piece to help fill in that negative space and bond the layers. I omitted them from the top corners so I could compare and found that the crosses made very little difference. I think the design looks less cluttered without the crosses and that it is nice to have areas of solid color if you can get away with it.

I then returned to the Xenakis article in the Prairie Wool Companion on which I had been working last week and wove the traditional Scandinavian design, for which a chart is provided, at left…

How amazing is the close resemblance it bears to one of the motifs on this other Huichol piece that I photographed in the museum in DC.

And then I was tidying up my bookshelf and was about to shift my copy of Verla Birrell’s The Textile Arts to another spot when right there on the cover I see a tiny image of a  loom and textile with a flower motif that even more closely resembles the Scandinavian one.

I guessed that it was a Huichol piece but it turned out to be a double weave piece of the Cora Indian culture of Mexico. So much to learn!!

Speaking of books, I managed to find a copy of Atwater’s The Finnweave and the Mexican Double Weave at Amazon. The search for this dates back to when I first started playing with finnweave back in 2008. Can’t wait to read it!

I had been thinking while trying to chart the Huichol piece that perhaps I had made an incorrect assumption and that the Huichol pieces are not, in fact, woven in finnweave technique at all. This world of balanced double weave pick up is very new to me and so the article in the latest Handwoven (Jan/Feb 2011) by Doramay Keasbey couldn’t have been better timed.

Many thanks to Caroline for pointing this article out to me. Doramay Keasbey writes about five balanced double weave pick up variations which she has woven in bookmarks showing how both faces of one design look when woven in each of the five techniques. What a nifty article! It has helped me, who has so little experience in this, to see what elements can identify a piece as having been done in finnweave.

It also helped that Hans Christenssen, who has authored a book on finnweave, confirmed the technique used for the Huichol pieces.

He also gave me some background on the piece I showed last week that was woven by Weavolution member Manicgirl. Manicgirl has disappeared from Weavolution for the time being and I hope she comes back soon to find out why her ears are burning so!

On top of giving me this link to the original piece in a Stockholm museum (click on the image in that link to see a much larger view), he told me that it is a 15th century piece from Grodinge, Sweden that has been analysed and reproduced in part by Ulla Feltzing, THE expert in finnweave in Sweden..

Two motifs from reproductions that Ms Feltzing made were the subjects for these two beautiful Swedish postage stamps and instructions for weaving some of the motifs appeared in an issue of Vavmagasinet.

Now you see how I have wandered off again. This all started with a desire to reproduce some textile fragments of pre-columbian Peru and now here I am in 15th century Sweden.

Back to Bolivia to my studio a.k.a my bedroom floor. I have decided to weave up a set of squares with some finnweave designs I have been collecting here and there hopefully with something to represent each of the cultures in which I have found a traditional use of this technique. I want to do something along the lines of the warp faced double weave mug rugs I made some time ago. (pattern charts here)

These were made in a 12wpi cotton and are super thick. In order to get the detail I want in the finnweave designs I will need to use finer cotton and make larger squares, around 5 1/2 – 6″ and so I will call these “table toppers”…something on which to pose a small pot plant or a bowl of candy or whatever. And if you are thinking that this sounds like just an excuse to weave something you are right. I don’t actually have a clear table on which to put these!

I have prepared the warp which may end up being a sampler…


And now to chart the designs and make adjustments to my first reproduction attempt.

At left you will see that I finished twining the Gaelic word for “weave” on my bag strap and have added the Swedish one. Next stop…Nigeria.

I didn’t get a start on the Margarita braid for the zipper pull – maybe this week.

A Weave-Along update….

A small group of members in the Backstrap Weaving Group on Ravelry have been participating in a weave-along. I suspect many more are doing a watch-along…

Something I learned this week from weave-along participant, Barry: there is such a thing as bonded nylon and apparently it makes great heddle string. All the weavers I saw in Guatemala use nylon for their heddle string. None of the weavers I have encountered here do. They use their warp yarn for heddles and I do too. I hate nylon…it’s slips around on the heddle stick and won’t hold knots – horrid stuff. But, apparently this bonded variety is very cool.

This is the picture from the Memphis Net and Twine Co web page. Barry has been using size#6 which he says works well with the #3 mercerized crochet cotton thread with which he is weaving. Using nylon cuts down on possible abrasion of the heddle string on the warp which can cause pilling. Excessive pilling will be a problem as warps will eventually start sticking together. Those who have been backstrap weaving for a long time will have learned to open their heddle shed with the minimum of abrasion but for those just starting out, this pilling can be a very annoying problem. Apparently this bonded nylon holds knots well…yay! Below you can see Barry’s loom with bonded nylon heddles nicely gripping the heddle stick.

And here is his backstrap with finished five-strand braid (link provided by Barry) and first pebble weave project following instructions in my book…

Linda sent me these pictures of a supplementary weft patterned band she is making which has been inspired by a design on a Guatemalan huipil.

She built herself a mini warping board and, wise woman, is making short pieces suitable for keyfobs and bookmarks while she learns the techniques.

Last I heard, the blizzard has kept her at home and she is trying horizontal stripes and four-stake warping.

Marsha wove her dog, Wiggles, into her simple warp float band. She was inspired by a dog she found charted in one of Mary M Atwater’s books.

I have seen that dog and Marsha’s is way cuter.

Helena in Brazil wove this piece and showed it on Weavolution. It is destined to be a waist pouch for her sister. The center pebble weave design is charted in my book. Wanderingskopos (Reetta from Finland) is using the practice patterns that I provide in the one-weft double weave tutorial to make her first double weave band.

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There is an online workshop on the traditional Sami band weaving of Scandinavia being run in the Yahoo Braids_ and_ Bands group this month of February. Sue Foulkes is presenting the workshop and, if you follow the second link, you can click on the image in the top right hand corner and see some examples of Sami bands. Although they are warp faced, they are traditionally woven with a small rigid heddle on a backstrap loom.

The files will remain in the group’s archives if you are unable to participate in the workshop this month – always more fun to do the workshop though. Last November Sue presented a workshop on Baltic Bands, also done with a rigid heddle, in the UK Online Guild of Spinners, Weavers and Dyers. You can see some images of the bands members produced on their public web page.

Kimberly Hamill, a wonderful backstrap weaver whom I met at Convergence last year, is giving a backstrap weaving class March 11-13 at Weaving Southwest in Taos. You can see one of her backstrap woven artworks at left which has been accented with a little embroidery.

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Finishing off here and going back to the loom…. I would like to give a big thanks once again for all those behind the scenes, too numerous to name, for all the wonderful “care packages”.



Backstrap Weaving – In the Mood for Finnweave

I am back into fabulous Finnweave after a very long break.

I was trying to think back to when this Finnweave adventure all started and I believe it was in the early part of 2008. I wanted to try and reproduce the structure and motifs on some pre columbian textile fragments that I have which were woven in what Suzanne Baizerman calls balanced double cloth.

Here are some of the fragments that I have collected….

All these pieces were attached to Chancay doll replicas like the one you see above that I have bought in various markets here in South America. I wrote a lot more about these and other textile fragments in this previous blog post.

In  Double Woven Treasures from Old Peru (by Adele Cahlander with Suzanne Baizerman) instructions are given for weaving this technique on a treadle loom rather than on a backstrap loom. I have had this book for over fifteen years and had always skimmed those instructions without paying much attention because I had never used or even touched a treadle loom and I assumed I would never be able to understand them. The notation and charts meant nothing to me. However, something made me go back in 2008 to open the book again at that page and take another look. Nope, nothing new had appeared… it all still looked like a mind numbing maze…so frustrating!

Who else did I know who knew about backstrap weaving and these kinds of structures who might have a clue? I had just made contact with Carol Ventura online through WARP. I had her book on Jacaltenango hair sashes and so I wrote to her. She hadn’t tried this particular structure herself, but she suggested I join a thing called Ravelry where there was a backstrap weaving group where I could ask. Ravelry? What in the world was that?!

I also wrote to Ann Rowe as I had met her on a trip to the Textile Museum in DC and she sent me a picture of a Huichol loom saying that I may be able to figure it out from that. The Huichol people of Mexico still weave this technique. It is no longer woven in Peru.

I don’t know what it was in the end that suddenly turned the light bulb on but the next time I went to the book…click!…and I was able to weave the above band. I have to say that the technique is not that difficult. You need to use three sets of string heddles and a shed rod which holds the warps for the fourth shed. That is not as bad as it sounds as it is a balanced weave which means that the heddles can be raised easily and cleanly. What I was having difficulty wrapping my head around was the charting system which takes some getting used to.

It is a technique for those who love pick-up. It uses two different colored wefts and has more steps than warp faced double weave…two weft passes for each layer… but I love the result!

So what happened? Where are all the lovely pre-columbian textile replicas that I had wanted to weave?

“Ravelry” is what happened! But even more importantly, I joined Weavolution, where I started my own backstrap weaving group, and was hit with a tsunami of weaving ideas!

Thanks to Ann Rowe I have two goals now for this structure… to reproduce the motifs on my fragments and to weave traditional Huichol patterns. Actually, the picture that Ann Rowe sent me was not my first encounter with Huichol weaving. It is a funny coincidence that back in 2007 while visiting the National Museum of the North American Indian in DC my eye was caught by a beautiful textile piece. I had no idea what the structure was and did not retain what the label had said but I roughly adapted the motif to pebble weave and used it in a hanging.

And again here…

Well, you probably have guessed that I now know that that is a Huichol weaving. That will be number one on my list of reproductions.

I was feeling uncomfortable by the end of 2008 about this abandoned project and so made it a resolution for 2009 and there it sat for another year as I wandered off on all sorts of weaving paths. Now I have returned but not with the pressure of a resolution weighing on me. I am simply in the mood for Finnweave! What put me there?….THIS!….

Last week Ane Lisbet posted the above image on Weavolution of a wall hanging she made in Finnweave using a floor loom. How beautiful!

And if that wasn’t enough I was inspired to return to a discussion we had had on Weavolution last year about Finnweave and was able to get reacquainted with this amazing piece at left woven by Manicgirl on a floor loom.

Hans Christensson also participated in that discussion and was very helpful. At that time he was taking part in a project to find new designs, usage and materials for Finnweave. The project concluded with an exhibition at the Museum of Bohuslan in Sweden and now I see that he has written a book on the future of Finnweave with his new computerized way of designing and interpreting patterns. He has plans to translate it to English.

I will have to be patient waiting for the translation. So, out came the instructions from Double Woven Treasures again, the pages now covered with my scribbled notes and, you know what?, it looked like a mind numbing maze all over again only messier this time with all my notes!

Back to square one. Well, not really. I warped up to make the same design as last time and after one repeat, remembered, and  felt confident enough to move onto something else.

I wove it this time in a heavier yarn and it should be much wider. You can see that the brown areas are more warp predominant than balanced but it helped to refresh my memory and got cut off the loom very quickly.

Thanks to some kind Weavolution buddies I got an article from the Prairie Wool Companion April 1982 issue which introduced me to the wonderful world of weaver and author A. David Xenakis. His article is not a project, not a lesson, he calls it an “Etude”. I love this! Only the other day in one of the forums someone compared sampling to the scales one has to practice when learning the piano and so we can go back to the music lesson metaphor now. I love Mr Xenakis’s writing style…so very proper! He amuses me by saying please when he gives his instructions…please wind the warp…please wind two stick shuttles.

He shows the same charting system as that used by the authors of Double Woven Treasures from Old Peru. Thank goodness, I didn’t feel like learning another! After giving detailed instructions for one half of the motif, we are given this piece of advice…

Take a deep breath, stand up, pace around a bit and relax. Nothing in finnweave will ever be as hard as this first small woven figure. New things always take a bit, do they not? But if you’ll persevere, I truly believe you’ll be rewarded with a sense of accomplishment second to none you’ve ever derived from your weaving.

I am sure the folks in the backstrap weave-along on Ravelry will smile if they read that! The result…

He then gives pattern charts for some lovely traditional Scandinavian designs. So, I am doing my warm-up, my scales and my etudes for the final goal…finding myself comfortable enough with the charting system to be able to chart directly from a textile and reproduce the motifs. I need to experiment a bit with how I turn the two colored wefts at the edges. As always, one edge is neater than the other.

It wasn’t long ago that I knew of only one pick-up technique that enabled one to produce a motif on a solid color background, that is, a background without pebbles, speckles or horizontal bars and with no long floats on the back. Now I know three…

I also finished the warp faced double weave cell phone pouch with the Guarani designs…

And managed to twine most of another word…

There’s an “h” yet to be twined and that will be the Gaelic word for “weave”.  I received the Navajo word from DY and  the Slovak one from Alexis. This is the strap for my woven loom bag. I am planning the zipper pull. As I have a woven bag and a twined strap I am probably going to braid the zip pull…maybe I’ll do the Margarita braid.

I remembered after finishing Xenakis’s Etude that, on a whim, I had bought his book on weaving four harness textiles on a rigid heddle loom a long time ago. I had done nothing more than flip through it and admire the Finnweave cat on one of the first pages. Here, once more is the very proper writing style. I flipped through it again the other day and his amusing description of string heddles caught my eye. I am a big fan of string heddles. He is obviously not. He says…

“I find the sight of this stringy paraphenalia unappetizing.”

But he goes on to say that if you don’t have a third rigid heddle, you should use a string heddle “without hesitation and appetizing be damned.”

Cracks me up!

So, what’s been happening in the backstrap weave-along this week?

Warping arrangements have been designed and built…

This one was designed by Jennifer and built by her husband.

New places to tie up looms have been found and wool has been prepared…

Phil has moved to his sunny kitchen to weave and has spun a good amount of wool for his next project. He has placed a snake motif on his woven band using a supplementary weft.

New structures have been learned to make thicker, sturdier fabric and a backstrap has been made…

That’s Barry. He finished his backstrap with a five-strand braid.

Pieces were started and finished…

Marsha has started her widest piece ever on her Wave loom. Linda, who is not in the weave-along, has been sharing pictures of her projects with me by email (thanks Linda). She has finished her backstrap.

Jennifer also made a backstrap using a pebble weave motif from The Art of Bolivian Highland Weaving.

Jenny has been very much inspired by all the beautiful things that Marsha has been producing on her Mini Wave loom so, she ordered one and has just joined us to make her first warp faced project.


Another week of progress with encouragement from all when things went wrong…the reminder that mistakes are learning opportunities…the fun of seeing Anja’s “mistake” turn into a new pretty pattern.

I will leave you here with Mr Xenakis’s take on mistakes…(which comes in the middle of an explanation of tie-ups and sequences)…

Probably nothing is ever truly an error.  …….it is worthwhile to note that an error – in the words of America’s premier knitter-designer Elizabeth Zimmerman – when repeated, becomes a pattern. Which, were we of a philosophical turn of mind, might be the key to whole new vistas of thought. Think about it: at the very least, the regular repetition of an error indicates persistence.

Your pardon, a freely associative mind hath led us astray.

I think that I will have to drag out my rigid heddle loom just so I can enjoy this author more!

Backstrap Weaving – Barefoot Weaving

As the Backstrap Weave Along progressed on Ravelry this week and I got on with my own projects here at home, I was once again reminded of all the reasons I love the backstrap loom. Two things stood out in my long backstrap loom-love list…

Number one: Minimal loom waste! One and a quarter inches in this case. I could have made it a four-selvedge piece and wasted nothing but that wasn’t necessary for this project. This is the back panel of my loom bag.

Number two: The ability to weave on tiny warps. I needed to sample a new design I was charting to check for scale so I was able to wind and weave on a ten and a half inch warp. In fact, I probably could have gone even smaller.

Which brings me to the title of this blog post:

BAREFOOT WEAVING

When I was teaching English here we had a visit from an American teaching consultant who introduced us to the concept of what she called “barefoot teaching”. She had developed this after having spoken with many teachers, especially those living in the developing world, who had convinced themselves that they simply could not teach effectively without flashcards, computers, dvds, interactive boards and all other kinds of whiz-bang audio-visual aids. It basically involved setting yourself the challenge of leaving all the tools at home and going into class with nothing more than a lesson plan and a piece of chalk (as well as a lot of enthusiasm and creativity)…in other words “barefoot”.

Talk in the backstrap group during the weave along got me thinking back to my first Peruvian weaving teacher and what one really needs to get started in backstrap weaving…basically your back, some thread/yarn and a toe! (and a teacher or an example to follow). Real barefoot weaving!

Little Juan Miguel above has a stake driven into the ground to which his warp is attached – his only real piece of equipment. If it were a shorter warp, he could use his toe. A string passed through the end loops of his warp goes around his waist and acts as his “loom bar” and “backstrap”. He is using a string loop for one shed and string heddles for the other. He isn’t even using a beater or sword. His hands do the trick. After passing the weft he opens the other shed and pulls the upper layer of threads up while pushing the others down in  order to force the weft into place.

A warp can even be wound around a forefinger and toe.

Don’t get me wrong, I won’t be tossing out my loom bars. I like using them even for the tiniest of warps but it is nice to think back to how I got started. We used pencil-width sticks about five inches long for loom bars, slightly longer ones for cross sticks and we had a beater. My teacher tied a cord around my waist and lodged the stick under it. Cord was passed through the other end of the warp which was attached to a rose bush so we could weave tiny pebble weave bands.

Here is my first teacher with her set of small tools. Oh yes, long thumbnails help too for heddle making and separating warps. I am at home now and have let mine grow shamefully long!

So, that was what I was pondering while visiting the weave along forum. Others there have had cause to ponder their yarn and project choices…another week of successes with some frustration thrown in but the sense of humor permeates all…

Here are some results…

Jennifer has gotten started on her first double weave project and has found her ideal place to weave attached to the kitchen counter.

Tracy has left us to go to India for two weeks but posted pictures of her pebble weave bands before she took off.


Jennifer also extended her pebble weave skills to a pattern in Marjorie Cason and Adele Cahlander’s book. Bobbie moved on to fine number 10 crochet cotton and wove a pebble weave band too.

Fliegnepilz finished her pebble weave band. She took a classic design and added her own ‘twist’ by alternating the color of the diamonds. She named this project “Open Sesame!” when she posted it on Weavolution…I must ask her about that. She made this into a keyfob.

And then there’s Barry who recently joined the group and posted pictures of his warping and weaving set up…all his own handmade tools.

And the result of his work…his first backstrap woven band…

He is pointing out the fact that his band narrowed slightly toward the end, he knows why and knows how to prevent that for his next project.

I also got some pictures from blog reader, Linda who is weaving the practice band that I recommend in my WeaveZine article…


Basically everyone is sticking with narrow bands to learn and practice new techniques which is the best way to develop all those new skills. We have  come to the conclusion that going wider should be taken in baby steps. A couple of people have warped up for wider projects but have decided to stop and rethink as the leap was perhaps too great.

Jennifer has the brilliant plan of sewing several narrow bands together to make a small purse. Marsha has been doing that for some time with her simple warp float projects creating the purses and tote bags that I have shown here in past posts.

I decided to gather some sample bands and leftovers to show you here what one could do to make a simple piece wide enough for a tiny purse. I don’t have great variety of colors to show. These have been done in my thick demo yarn which does not come in many colors.


I have these two black off cuts from the loom bag I am making plus a pebble weave sample band I made ages ago. These three bands could be pieced together to make something. I have just placed them here together as an example.  A Van Dyke or other embroidery stitch could cover the joins if they are too obvious.

Here are the same two off cuts with another simple sample band that I have made in finer yarn.  Join them , add a zip and voila! a small coin purse or credit card case. You can see another even simpler red and white pebble band below.

Turn over the raw edges and sew in the zip…

You can see on the inside of this bag that the raw edge gets hidden and protected by the zip. I hand sew and it took me a few attempts to get the knack of correctly placing the zip.

Speaking of zips and hand sewing, the loom bag is coming together…

You can see the front and back panels and sides on the left and there it is pieced together on the right. What is missing is two narrow bands to go up the side around the top and back down between which the zip will sit.

There they are. Just for the fun of it I decided that, rather than weave one long band and cut it in half, I would weave two side by side on the loom. Montagnard weavers often weave bands like this as it helps balance their really long loom bars which have been designed for wide pieces. I didn’t find any particular advantage in terms of speed or efficiency in doing it this way. On the right the bands are in place and the zip has been sewn in too. Thanks to that marvelous market stall called Buckle Land I can buy zips by the meter. They measure out your zip and then add the “pull ”. (What in the world do you call that thing?)


The zipper pull will have a woven tab…I just put that band in there for this photo.

The strap will, of course, be the twined band I have been working on for the last couple of weeks.

I only got one letter twined this week! – the ”s” of the Gaelic version of the word ‘weave’.

I am happy to say that I now have the Navajo, Ladahki  and Finnish words to add to my collection.

And then to decide…to edge or not to edge the bag.

The other thing I was up to was charting the Guarani design from my cell phone pouch and seeing how it looked in double weave. As both double weave and the Moisy technique give a solid color background I was interested in comparing them. Even though I made a sample and then made adjustments to my chart, I didn’t quite get the scale right. It is elongated, but I did find out in the process that it is possible to weave a pretty good looking circle in double weave.

I am up to the head of the nettle (this is what someone on Ravelry called what I had thought was a flower and I think she is right) and have made a warp long enough to make two cell phone pouches.

Here is the same design in the Moisy technique. The design is “softer” this way and I prefer it.

I am reposting this picture because someone asked me about the fabric on which I have posed the woven bag and I wanted to tell you all a little about it. We often forget that apart from the better-known highlands, the countries of the central part of South America also have their tropical lowland areas. In Peru around the city of Pucallpa, (which is, according to Wikipedia a sister city of Miami) in the central eastern part of the country, live the Shipibo people who paint these designs on cotton fabric with vegetable dyes. I am told that rubbing the cloth with a certain kind of mud is also part of the process.

The Shipibo people are also well known for their pottery which is decorated with similar designs. I remember making fabulous plans when I lived in Chile to visit this area which included a three-day river boat trip…don’t know what happened to that itinerary…but I ended up buying pieces of the Shipibo cloth in Quito of all places…

There are two nine-minute long YouTube videos that show the painting process here and here.

And there is something else that I found on Youtube about which I am really excited. It is in Paraguay. I have to tell you that even though Paraguay is a neighbor to Bolivia, it does not make it to my list of places to visit. I would consider flying to Asunción in order to go to Iguasu Falls but that is about it. Well, all that has changed.

I was looking around for information about the Guarani people and their weaving and came across images of what is called the “poncho de sesenta listas” or ”para i” in the Guarani language, the sixty-stripe poncho made by Guarani weavers in the area around Piribebuy in Paraguay. They are basically, as the name suggests, striped, but with a broad patterned woven band sewn around the four edges. They are made from cotton and considered a lightweight summer garment.

I have a couple of books on ponchos, and although a page is dedicated to the sixty-stripe poncho, the information is mostly historical with barely a mention of the looms used (Creole, it says) or the process.

Thank goodness for the internet. If you use your google translator you can read about them and see a really nice image of one here and it is here that I found out that they are woven on backstrap looms.

How strange, I thought, considering that the Guarani weavers here do not use this type of loom and do everything on vertical looms. Could this be a mistake? I was dying to find out more and then came across this wonderful video…It is lightweight and loads very fast.

The first minute shows scenery of Paraguay and then we get to meet the weaver and see her warping her loom. She warps it end-to-end rather than using a circular or dovetailed warp (which I will tell you about a little further on). Imagine the distance she walks during the three hours it takes to warp. Then see the warp stretched out. I wonder how difficult it is to maintain good tension on such a long warp.

The loom is actually attached to a beam that is fixed to the back of her chair rather than to the weaver herself. It looks like the chair can rock and at one point you can just make out how she rocks forward to take a little tension off the warp to help open the heddles.

Note the stick in the warp attached to rope that she is holding with her foot. I have never seen this before here in South America. The weft is on a little spool which she deftly passes through the sheds. She doesn’t seem to beat very hard either. She must have her cloth somehow clamped and then pulls it through the clamps as the work advances and she seems to be quite comfortable leaning far forward to weave.

And, finally, check out the way the two ladies are making the fringe at the end!

So, when am I going to Paraguay? It is probably as hot and horribly humid there as it is here at this time of year. I might wait for cooler months. I am also waiting for responses from some people I am trying to contact about it.

The weaver in the video is warping “end-to-end’ , as I call it…like this:


The warp threads are passed around one stake and then travel to and around the other in a figure-of-eight path crossing themselves in the middle. The length of the woven piece will be approximately what you see in the picture (discounting length lost in take-up of course).

W= warp stake   C= cross stick

Montagnard weavers halve the space necessary in which to weave very long pieces by winding circular warps. This is particularly important to them as they like to use bamboo lengths against which they brace their feet which must be supported against a wall or other immovable object.  This means that they cannot be seated too far away from a wall or other convenient object. Their warps basically look like this:

Trini winds a circular warp on her vertical loom to weave her saddlebags. Pieces woven this way must be cut in order to be opened out to their full length when finished.

Another option which also halves the space needed to accommodate the warp length is the dovetail method:

Instead of forming a complete circle, the warp threads pass around a third element marked ”D”  – the “dovetail” stick (this is the name that Ann Rowe has applied to it in her writings), which is sometimes replaced by a cord once the warp is on the loom. Once the piece is finished, the cord or stick is simply removed and the piece can be opened out to its full length. In this way, the warp does not need to be cut.

Here in Salasaca, Ecuador, Felipe is teaching me to warp for a backstrap woven belt making a mini warp as an example. The stick nearest his left hand is the dovetail stick. His cross sticks are immediately to the left (our left) of the dovetail stick rather than positioned as in my diagram.

To finish off, here is a video of a woman in Paraguay spinning cotton which will be woven into fine cotton clothing known as ao po’i. Paraguay and its textile arts…so much to learn!


For those of you in the UK, check out the FAQ page on yarns here. Members in the backstrap groups on Weavolution and Ravelry have given me links to yarn sources.

Backstrap Weaving – A Little Product Amongst the Processes

I haven’t wandered off too much around the globe this week but people from around the world, via this blog, Facebook and my online weaving groups, did drop by to help me with my latest twining project…the strap for my proposed loom bag on which I am twining the word “weave” in different languages and fonts.

Here is where I am at so far…

And, if you are thinking that I haven’t advanced very far since last week, you are right! I am used to doing patterns on my backstrap woven pieces in pick up techniques…picking or dropping every single  thread across the width of my warp and I don’t find that slow. However, I have to tell you that twining is SLOW! Reeaaaly slow! But, as you know, I am a process driven gal and what keeps me going on this project is the varying fonts. It is interesting to chart one and then see how it works out on the band. I have, in fact, finished the last word shown above which is “away” or “aguay” (I have seen it spelled both ways) which is the Quechua word for “weave” here in Bolivia.

The next word will be the Gaelic one, sent to me from a Facebook friend in Ireland. I am designing my own lettering form for this one….a cursive hand…and am a bit unsure about how it will look.

Here are the words I have …

Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed so far. I doubt that I will be able to fit all these in and so another project will have to be created. The next one will be in double weave and I will make it all my own lettering style. Double weave will be way faster. See how many languages you can identify. Someone remarked on Facebook that I could just use an online translator. True, but this is more fun. This way I will always remember the person who gave me the word and “carry” them around with me. 😉

While on this multi-lingual topic, I thought I would tell you that an online weaving friend in Germany took on the heavy task of translating my Andean Pebble Weave book to German. How cool is she, and how grateful am I?! I am in the process now of redoing the layout as it seems that German folk are more wordy than English speakers 😉 and hopefully that will be available soon as a pdf.

Amongst the processes, there are some real products emerging. The twined band above is going to be a strap for a loom bag which I am modeling on my camera tripod bag.

I discovered that this backstrap that I made ages ago with a 13wpi mercerized cotton, (the same stuff I used in the WeaveZine article), is exactly the right width for the front panel of the bag and so I was easily able to calculate how many warps I needed to get started on the body of the bag. I wanted to keep it relatively simple as the strap will be quite busy with all its woven words.

So, here it is…black with just a strip of pebble weave pattern down the middle. These are two of the 8-rev designs that I have in my Andean Pebble Weave book and they look gigantic in this 13wpi thread. What fun it was to weave this up in one sitting in this chunky-ish yarn!

A couple of shots on the loom…

I just managed to get the length I need from my standard 36″ warp. It is wonderful how little waste there is when using backstrap looms. I will make the other large panel and sides in plain black and will then edge it with a tubular band in black and white. There is also a zipper to go in.

Another product to show…yes this is something that I will keep and use myself…

I finished my double weave belt with the Bedouin designs. I had to get an extra wide buckle for it and there weren’t many choices. Fortunately there is a market stall, just down the street from where I live, called “Hebilandia” or, “Buckle Land”! (hebilla being the Spanish word for buckle). Who knew there were so many people out there in want of buckles! The three belts on the left and the one bottom right are patterned in pebble weave. The other one has a design in simple alternating warp floats.

And the final product and my favorite for the week is my cell phone pouch. Yes, my cell phone pouch –  not to be given away or traded.

I finally own a cell phone but it is not for use here in Bolivia. I am happier having my answering machine take the calls here. The cell phone was actually given to me by a friend in the US for use there. As I travel on standby tickets, I really need one in order to let folks know if I have gotten on my flight and am about to arrive. No more begging kind strangers for change for the pay phone or to use their cell phone.

I modeled my cell phone pouch on that made by Guarani weaver, Angela. I bought two of her pouches some time ago, gave one to a friend in the US, and am saving the other for my friend Lisa.

That’s mine above left modeled on Angela’s blue and black one. It is woven in the technique that the Guarnai weavers call Moisy which produces quite a dense fabric.

You may remember that this was the sample piece that I had made to see if I understood what Angela had shown me. I copied her designs with some adaptations, for example, I rounded the flower head and used one of her leaf designs as a butterfly. Angela’s patterns reflect the abundance of lush vegetation here in the Bolivian lowlands. The designs that the Guarani women use on their Moisy pieces are not like any you will see elsewhere in Bolivia. You can read more about my visits with Angela here and here.

Angela had finished her pouch with a plain band which she had woven and sewn simultaneously to the edges using the weft as the sewing thread. I did the same except I used this edging only around the flap. You can see the band with its heddles and shed loop above left. Then came the scary part…

I really loved the shaped flap that Angela had created but couldn’t bring myself to cut the fabric. I was imagining the whole thing fraying away in a jagged mess while I tried to sew on the band and that is precisely what started to happen.

So I sealed all the way around the cut with diluted white glue, waited for it to dry and that did the trick. I will never make a cell phone pouch with a square flap again! This was fun!

I also copied her idea of making a striped band for the sides and strap. A tab of velcro for the flap finished it off.

Something else that has made me smile this week has been following the Weave Along in the Backstrap Weaving Group on Ravelry. There is a lot of enthusiastic participation and sharing, cheers and, sometimes, commiserations. People have been having their successes and frustrations and I think that everyone pretty much agrees that “baby steps” are required…stay with the heavier and friendlier yarns and narrow projects until you really feel that you have the hang of it. There are so many things to think about and get under control before one is ready to move on to new challenges.

Here are a few works-in-progress and finished objects from, from left to right, Firecracker8 (who found that beating harder made her supplementary weft pattern look much nicer and her pebble motif less elongated), Jennifer (who found that size number 3 crochet cotton makes a pretty band and is easy to handle) and Marsha (who used a Gilmore Wave Loom for her first attempt at double weave). We are waiting to see pictures from other participants who can only weave on weekends. No hurry! We will be around 🙂

Lots of cool ideas have been appearing in the forum and I have some more warping options to show you from himalaya and wanderingskopos…

We just had a new member from the UK join the group and the Weave Along. He is a rope and canvas craftsman and net maker. Well, I was curious about this as I had no idea what that entailed and invited him to post pictures of some of his work and he totally blew us all away! I immediately checked out his website. I love the hammocks and rope mats.

In my inbox I found images from Julia who made a band with a bunch of pebble weave motifs using my book. I love the way she has hung it with all the loom parts in place. She did a good job weaving as close to the end as possible which is not easy with cross sticks and two sets of heddles.

I also asked Steve Pretty if I could show the frame loom on which he has been weaving warp faced bands and, most recently, an Andean pebble weave band using my book.

Steve got the idea for this frame loom with its nifty tensioning system from the web site of Dr Carol Ventura. This page on Toba weaving of Argentina on Carol Ventura’s site shows the loom and the technique to produce the band above left. The technique is similar to that which I call Simple Warp Floats.  On the right is Steve’s pebble weave band.

It really puts a big smile on my face to see people in the online groups jumping in enthusiastically to learn these techniques and weave stuff.

I have had the benefit of spending days and, most often, weeks at a time face-to-face with my weaving teachers here.  Not everyone reaches their weaving goals without having that personal contact with a teacher and besides, we all have our different learning styles.

So, I would like to tell you that there are still a few more places available in the Andean Backstrap Weaving class called “Beginning and Beyond” that Abby Franquemont is giving at Beth Smith’s The Spinning Loft in Howell, Michigan from January 28th to 30th, 2011.

Beth tells me that Abby Franquemont first went to Peru around the age of five and was there on and off throughout her teenage years travelling with her anthropologist parents Ed and Christine Franquemont.
She began spinning and weaving immediately upon arriving in the Cusco Region of Peru and, although she is best known as a spindle spinner in the US, she is also a fantastic weaver on the backstrap loom.

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In the post box this week…some inspiration from Turkey. My brother went to Istanbul and got me this locally published book (in Turkish) on Hakkari Kilims. It has lots of luscious photos.

Now to figure out which word from the text is the one for “weave” to add to my band.

And what about those videos that were giving me grief last week?

In the end I had to whittle them down to under ninety seconds so I could load them to my Flickr page and link from there.

So, there is a short video showing warping for one-weft double weave and another on heddle making on the tutorial page.

Nothing new – they are just meant to give further clarification for those who might have doubts.  I also added a video on adding a second cross to stabilize your shed rod to this FAQ page.

What I am planning next for the tutorial pages here is a full project  – Making a Key fob in Double Weave – from start to finish with a few videos.

But for now…the products are done so it’s back to the process…