This will be a very sparse blog post, I am afraid. But, the exciting thing is that I have been spending almost all my time working on my next book. I am on a roll! I am weaving samples, washing and pressing them, taking photos, wishing for clear days with good natural light to re-take photos, and writing, writing writing. There have been some very exciting and surprising discoveries along the way. There’s always something new to learn.
October was supposed to be what I considered to be a well-earned ”play” month after two-and-a-half months away from home on the road. Writing was to begin promptly in November.
Well, that didn’t happen. I was having way too much fun weaving, spinning and even knitting. But, by mid-November the books I had started writing earlier this year were calling for attention. I do, after all need to earn a living! Getting everything set up to start is the hardest part. I tell myself to just get over that hump and everything will start to flow. Well-taken advice. I cleaned up my chaotic creative space and set up for writing and photographing just before I went to bed one evening. It turned out that the ”hump” had been the cleaning. I woke up to a clean, organized space and happily jumped into the writing the next morning.
As for my play-time weaving experiments, I took my own advice again and stopped spinning cotton to weave a sample. It would be no use continuing to spin if the thread I was producing was not suitable for the kinds of cloth I want to weave. I am, after all, very new at spinning cotton. What I am producing now is clearly beginner stuff and I don’t expect to be able to produce anything consistent until I spin my way out of this beginner phase and improve my skills. That just takes mileage….lots of it…..and, hopefully, some advice and tips from experts.
I was curious about how my beginner efforts in spinning singles for weaving would hold up. I created a warp for the kind of sheer cloth that I recently wove using the hand spun Guatemalan cotton I had bought. I wanted to spin thread that was finer than that.
Well, my hand spun cotton is finer in most parts, less fine in other parts and shockingly thicker in others…you know, typical beginner stuff! But, I was determined to weave with it anyway. I didn’t use a reed, as if one challenge would not be enough!
There was a fair bit of un-weaving and re-weaving in the beginning as I messed around trying to get the sett right. I didn’t have a sample from which to take measurements. This was the sample. My hand spun didn’t really care for all that fiddling about and a couple of threads broke.
And then I ran out of weft and that is where it stands. Is it worth spinning more thread for weft to finish this or has the sample already told me what I needed to know? You might know by now that I like to make things from my samples if that is at all possible. I’ll let it sit there while I think about it. What I do know is that I have much to learn about spinning cotton.
The other thing I wove, before I got my nose buried in my writing, photo-taking and sample-weaving, was the strap for my little pocket bag. When I use the ñawi awapa tubular band as the edging for a piece, I like to weave a strap with a design that resembles the ‘eye’, or diamond shapes on the edging. A simple pattern like that is easy to set up with four sets of string heddles.
Here’s the finished bag with its strap…
Weaving can zoom along when I use those extra heddles. I have used up to eleven of them when I have needed to quickly knock out a strap or lanyard.
It’s fast and could almost be boring if I didn’t have to busy my mind with remembering which heddle came next in the sequence. I found color coding useful.
And then there’s this…! Those are all heddle rods. This lady certainly knows how to weave a complex pattern without having to do pick-up.
I spent a lot of time watching this lady weave and realized that figuring out the next heddle in the sequence was not a visual thing for her but rather a matter of ”feel”. She could tell by the way the sets of heddles moved along the warp which one was next. The heddle sets she had already used would slide freely. The next one in the sequence would resist.
Now I am going to take my own advice again and set up a couple of small weaving projects that I can play with as ”rewards” for time spent at the keyboard working on the book. I have been advising a friend who is moving house to take time out and reward herself during the tedious packing-up process. When you live alone, like I do, and don’t have encouragement and support immediately around you, the rewards system seems to work well. I might weave the fabric for some hair barrettes (yes, the going-grey plan is still in action) and add some new pieces to my woven jewelry collection.
I fear the truth in the adage ”out of sight, out of mind”. You wouldn’t believe my computer desktop! It is a cluttered mass of folders and icons. I just know if I put anything away into a file, I will forget about it and I have new ideas coming up all the time.
The same goes for my bedroom/work space. We have had to come up with some interesting solutions to the lack of space in this little home which means we have two single beds side by side, one of which folds away during the day so I can have some floor space on which to work.
Everything has to be rolled up, picked up and put away at the end of the day so the bed can come back out. You would think that that would keep things fairly orderly…
I still seem to end up with piles of stuff on the floor everywhere…weaving sketches, books, tools, baskets of yarns, things I don’t dare put in a cupboard or closet because they serve to remind me of the latest new weaving idea I have had. They have to be covered so the cat won’t get at them. It is a merry mess, it lives and grows and never stagnates. But, it’s time for a change!
The fact is that there simply isn’t anywhere to put things anymore as my books have completely taken over…no more floor, shelf or closet space left but aha! there is wall space!
So, I am going to have lovely woven storage bags hung on the wall to hold my project bits and pieces and, on the whiteboard, a nice orderly list of what’s waiting to be explored. The bedroom will start to look like some kind of crazy textile bazaar! Actually it kind of does already.
Storage bag ideas: I love the woven sacks that are used up in the highlands for storage, transport and display in the markets and fairs. I have been searching for ideas for interesting bag shapes but I have to admit in the end that a rectangular piece of cloth folded in half and sewn together at the sides is probably the most economical if not the most elegant way to create a practical bag from a piece of handwoven fabric.
You can see one deep storage bag that I have at the top of this post that Tracy sent me from Qatar. The wool fabric is part of a Bedouin tent divider. That currently holds all my Tour de Fleece gear.
This wool bag that I made years ago with Mapuche designs woven with supplementary warps hangs on a doorknob and holds all my camera stuff…battery recharger, cables, tripod attachments etc.
This gigantic cotton bag with Guarani pebble weave designs, which was bought here in Santa Cruz, hangs off one of the bed posts.
So there are more bags to be made so I can get everything off the floor and onto the walls! Well, you all know that I am just looking for an excuse to weave more things.
So, I am in the process of weaving a hanging strap, which I couldn’t resist decorating, for what will be a new storage bag made from a piece of fabric I wove some time ago as an ikat experiment. The strap has motifs from Bhutan as does the bag fabric.
It will also need a back and some sides in plain black…it will be very fast to weave those.
This will hang on the wall and hold what is currently being stored in a large basket on a shelf. The basket will go and yes! that way there will be more room for books or at least something that is currently on the floor. (I have a new book coming in the mail…thanks Anna!)
The motifs have been woven using supplementary wefts. I used one and a half strands of embroidery floss as the supplementary weft with my 35wpi cotton warp and weft. Veeeery slowly things may become a little better organized.
I have been admiring the designs made by the Huichol people of Mexico in balanced double weave for a long time ever since I first ran across their work in a museum in the US in 2007. They make bags on which they add large corner tassels and have an unusual way of braiding the warp ends.
These are a couple of samples I made in this technique some time ago.
I prefer the patterns that they use in their belts and so I will probably try to make a storage bag in this double weave with motifs from their belts. I wonder if I can figure out how they work those warp ends.
The other project I worked on this week was the mug rug set.
My friend, who has decorated her kitchen with flower and butterfly motifs, saw the prototype I had woven (at left) and asked for a set for her breakfast bar. Now she tells me that they are too pretty to use and that she will put them on her wall.
I have made three and will wait for her to choose the colors for the fourth. The motif is neither butterfly nor flower and is based on a Guaraní leaf design which I wove one way and then mirrored.
The red and black sample, which is larger than the other three, will stay here as my tea mug rug where I work on the floor and the other three will go to Evelyn with a fourth one yet to be made. They have all been edged with tubular bands.
Evelyn’s kitchen is yellow with bits of green and blue in the wall tiles so I think these will look nice there.
It’s hard to decide which face to make the “right” side.
There is another commissioned piece that I have been working on, which I can’t show here yet, but this piece has made me even more enthusiastic about the simple string heddle.
This is a particuarly long but narrow piece that I am weaving in Andean pebble weave and I have set up the warp with four sets of string heddles (two more than I would normally use for pebble weave), and what an incredible time saver this has been! This project is simply zooming along!
The black and white cord that you see in the warp is my “saver cord”. By using these two additional sets of heddles and the saver cord I actually get to do seven consecutive weft passes without having to do any pick-up for this particular design.
String heddles are so cool! I love how they allow you to put one warp thread into multiple sets.
No matter how they are made, whether they are single or continuous, I love them.
You can use one, two, three or four as I am currently using. I am not sure what limit I would put on the number that I would personally consider comfortable or practical for my own backstrap weaving. I have seen backstrap weavers in pictures with many more.
The warp on this vertical loom in Ecuador will have eleven sets of patterning heddles plus one that will control one of the two plain weave sheds.
They can be made on a stick, made around the fingers and knotted into a bunch or chained together.
There are so many different ways to make them with no one particular way being the “right” way. I have chosen my favorite ways over the years but love seeing and learning new ones.
Education and More has just posted the following video on YouTube showing a Guatemalan weaver teaching her foreign student the way she makes her string heddles.
While on the subject of Guatemala, it is always fun for me to go to Facebook and see the latest video that Red Corn Tours has posted on Guatemala…weaving, costume, festivals and different aspects of simple daily life from the making of tortillas to the washing all those beautiful hand woven huipiles.
And now for our plain-weave backstrap loom weave-along progress….
We started this week with more people, so far, opting for the balanced weave project after a flurry of pre weave-along DIY reed and hole-and-slot heddle making activity.
Warp-faced projects for the color and stripes challenge from Bobbie in cotton and Jennifer in her homespun wool.
Those who have not joined the weave-along have been turning out projects on their backstrap looms as well.
Jennifer is weaving a balanced piece using hemp yarn and a reed made for her by Janet. She has also finished three plain weave warp-faced panels with her homespun wool which will be joined into a bag.Here's the beautiful reed that Janet made. Kathi has set up her loom with a rigid heddle with different kinds of yarn for her balanced weave project.Cindy has joined in showing us her warp wound on its stakes and there she is with loom set up and ready to weave a warp-faced band.Blomster is using wool in a piece she is weaving with a rigid heddle on her backstrap loom. It is pictured next to the warp-faced band she made with the same warp. She is making a bigger wall hanging using her rigid heddle loom and natural color and madder-dyed wool as, being new to backstrap weaving, she does not feel ready to attempt such a wide piece yet on a backstrap loom. Her wide piece is inspired by the hanging you see nearby which she bought in Oman. She thinks that it was probably made with goat hair.
Both Amber and catknitlatte have reported that they are on their way and we hope to see progress pictures soon.
Fiall and WannaGTD finished these backstraps before the weave-along started but these backstraps could easily be weave-along projects as they fit the plain weave criteria.
The instructions for weaving these backstraps are in my WeaveZine article.
Janet is making a shawl using her 24" rigid heddle and a bunch of different yarns. Her warp is cotton and her indigo-dyed weft will come from her homespun stash. This is really amazing! She will weave it in several panels.
Knitnfrenzy and ElizArtist have both checked in. Knitnfrenzy is going for a warp-faced project while spindleori showed us her homespun, at left, which she will weave up with a rigid heddle to make a bag.
Dygvvi is going to weave fabric which will go around a frame to make a yarn storage bucket.
We are waiting to see what Franco, AuntJanet and Phil have been up to. We know that Phil has a painted warp and can’t wait to see how that is going.
Marsha and Traudi have been working on their patterning techniques on projects outside the weave-along. Marsha's band has designs in both simple and two-color alternating floats ("warp floats galore") while Traudi has been playing with supplementary weft patterns.
And what about my weave-along project? Blush…I had better get going and go warp one up!
I set up my loom yesterday to weave a narrow band – just 28 ends. Once I had made my simple heddles, tied them in a bunch and added the shed loop I realized that my entire loom consisted of just two simple sticks – the two loom bars and that’s all – one attached to a bed and the other to me. My weft was tied in a butterfly – no sticks there. The only other stick involved was a wooden beater to prop open my sheds and beat in the weft. How much simpler can it get?
I filmed the entire process from warping stakes to ready-to-weave if you would like to take a look. (Donna, I made this especially for you!)
So, again I ask you, how much simpler can it get?
Actually it can get simpler! I was in Tarabuco recently and watched a weaver sitting on the ground deftly wind a warp around her hand and foot. She tied one end of the warp around her foot, passed a length of yarn through the end loops at the other end and secured it to her waist. Then she made simple heddles around her hand, added a shed loop and started to weave. Briiliant! All in a matter of minutes.
A weaver in Tarabuco using a “toe” loom
You are probably thinking: okay, a simple loom for a simple weave– but even very complex weaves can be done on a very basic set-up.
A weaver from Tarabuco creating a complex design on a simple loom
You may recognize Felicia above with her sleepy cat from the video in this previous post. She has a shed rod, a heddle stick and some bars between which to stretch her warp. She has just inserted a couple of thin sticks to help with the pick-up but look at the photo at left and see the complex designs that she creates on this simple set up.
Now what about those looms that you see in pictures on the internet and in those Youtube videos? Some of them are loaded up with sticks – all those mysterious sticks – what in the world do they do? Hopefully I can solve the mystery behind at least some of them here. I have to admit that there are Asian looms that I have seen online with a multitude of patterning sticks and that I still haven’t figured out how some of those sticks work.
An extra stick added in a second cross in Guatemala
But at least I can let you know a bit about the sticks I have seen here in my travels in Central and South America and what they do. In the picture at right, number 1 is the heddle stick and number 2 is the shed rod. We are familiar with these. But what about number 3? This is an extra stick to hold a second cross. A lot of weavers wind a second cross as they warp. I don’t. I find that the fewer twists and turns I make on the warping board, the easier it is to wind a warp with good even tension. I only use a second cross on narrow warps to stabilize my shed rod which tends to slip from side to side and be a thorough nuisance. Making a second cross and putting a stick within will lock the shed rod into position. It is very easy to create a second cross once your warp is already on the loom. Here are the steps…
LEFT: Your loom is set up with heddles and a shed rod. RIGHT: Open the shed rod shed, place your beater within and draw it down to the weaving line. Remove the shed rod. It is important that the beater not fall out at this stage as it is saving your shed rod shed. Use a back up safety string if necesary.LEFT:Open the heddle shed and place an additonal stick within. RIGHT: Tilt the beater to open the shed up beyond the heddles and place your original shed rod within. Tie or tape the shed rod and additional stick together.You have created your second cross.Another Guatemalan loom with a second cross installed. The shed rod is pvc pipe which is often used as it can be thick without being heavy. Notice the orange safety string – if disaster strikes (and it most probably will with those 3 little guys hanging about!) and all this weaver’s sticks fall out, the safety string will save her cross. Even the experts use them! Look at the little future weaver there on the left. She is wearing the typical long “corte” skirt and even has her own woven belt.
Some looms have a mind boggling amount of sticks but the reason can be very simple!!
LEFT: The 11 sticks on this upright loom in Ecuador will become heddle sticks. The 22-row design, which is horizontally symmetrical, will be programmed into these 11 heddles. RIGHT: This is one of my own warps set up on my Navajo loom in Chile. As I am using 4 colors in my pebble weave I have extra sticks to separate and keep the colors in order for the pick up.Miguel Andrango’s granddaughter poses with one of the looms. You can see the two shed rods above the heddle stick. The space for the extra shed rod is programmed into the warp by using an extra stake during the warping process.
In Ecuador I saw the use of an extra stick which I have not noticed anywhere else. This is especially useful for wide warps or particularly fine yarns but I saw it being used on warps of all widths and yarn sizes in Ecuador. It is an extra shed rod. I know from my own experience that the shed-rod shed on a wide piece with fine yarns is really difficult to open. It was a very slow and tedious process on my Abba Yohanni piece, for example. The extra shed rod in Ecuador holds every second warp that passes over the main shed rod. This means that half the number of warps can be raised using the extra stick. Then it is very easy to use the main shed rod to raise the rest of the warps.
This is one of Miguel Andrango’s looms. He is a very well known weaver from Agato, a small town near Otavalo. You can watch a video of his work here. Fifty-seven seconds into the video you will get a very nice close up of the two shed rods. You will also see the typical white woven alpargatas he is wearing. I spent some time with an alpargata weaver and hope to blog about that some time. Miguel Andrango is not a large man and, although the piece above is not particularly wide, he weaves some of the widest backstrap woven pieces I have ever seen!
A weaver near Otavalo is preparing to make her string heddles. She is using the extra shed rod on her loom. This rod has a dual purpose as it also serves to stabilize the main shed rod.
Now we come to the patterning sticks that are used by weavers in Guatemala to create designs using supplementary wefts. The supplementary wefts are either laid in to form block patterns or wrapped around warps to form little figures.
It is not my intention here to teach you how to insert and use these sticks. So, don’t worry if you don’t quite get it. No doubt, I will be doing a tutorial on this in a future post. I just want to take a little bit of the mystery out of it so that when you are looking at weavers and looms in books and on the net you may have a better understanding of what all those sticks do. For now, read on and just enjoy the beautiful textiles!!
Typical designs of Santa Catarina Palopo.LEFT:Supplementary wefts have been laid in to make designs like the X’s in the center or wrapped around warps to form figures, like the stem of the plant below and the arms of the woman above. RIGHT: The upper design has been woven using the technique employed in making the typical huipil of this town.LEFT: Bands woven using patternig sticks and offered to toursits. RIGHT: The typical huipil of Santa Catarina Palopo. These colors are a relatively recent introduction. Old huipiles in crimson and white can be seen in paintings by Carmen Pettersen. My teacher told me that only the very oldest women in the town may still have the old huipiles.Carmelita is teaching me on this loom in Santa Catarina Barahona. Number 1 is her heddle stick, number 2 her shed rod, number 3 the stick in the 2nd cross and number 4 is her newly introduced patterning stick.
These patterns are created by adding two extra sticks to the loom – the patterning sticks. In Santa Catarina Barahona, the weavers open the shed-rod shed and pick up every fifth warp. They store these warps on a stick – the patterning stick that sits up behind the shed rod.
The heddle shed is then opened and, once again every fifth warp is picked up but in such a way that each picked up warp sits between two that were picked up on the first patterning stick. The warps are stored on another patterning stick which sits behind the shed rod but, this time, under the warp.
Here is how the loom looks with both patterning sticks installed.
Number 1, heddle stick. Number 2, shed rod. Number 3, stick in 2nd cross. Number 4, 1st patterning stick and number 5 the 2nd patterning stick. The patterning sticks are simply drawn down towards the heddles to create sheds for laying in the supplementary wefts.This diagram shows a loom in profile with the positions of the patterning sticksLEFT: Lydia is laying in a supplementary weft in one of the patterning sheds. RIGHT: The patterns at top and bottom were made with the aid of the two patterning sticks.
Sometimes a second pair of patterning sticks is inserted when the weaver wants to change the design. These are only temporary and will have to be removed when she wants to return to the original design.
Take a look at the photo below…can you name all the sticks?!
A sling braid made from llama fiber from the Colca Canyon area of Peru. It comprises a braid with a finger loop in one end and a cradle in which the stone to be hurled sits.
Now to return to the simplicity with which I started this post…………some braiding and edging techniques with few or no tools required.
After having done the tutorial on cross knit looping last week, I remembered another interesting edging that I learned with my sling braiding teacher in Yanque, Peru. We used it to edge the cradle section of an Andean sling braid.
I made one sling with him and he taught me to make three different braids. Men in Peru braid their slings holding all the braid strands in their hands – no other equipment is required – and can quite happily stroll along the road while braiding. Two of the braids I learned had twenty-four strands and the other twelve. I was told that the main use of the slings these days is to hurl stones in order to keep control of animals straying from the herd.
LEFT: The single cross two-color edging that I was taught on my sling. RIGHT: A double cross two-color edging on an Andean sling that I bought.A few of the braids used for Andean slings. Named from left to right…PALMA, MARGARITA (2nd and 3rd),SALSA and CAJAMARCA (5th and 6th)
When making an Andean sling, first, one half the braid is made. The strands of llama fiber are measured from the tip of the nose to the toes and then doubled. The first section usually includes the finger loop. More strands are added to weave the cradle in tapestry technique and then work the braid for the other half.
The cradle is woven on a backstrap set-up tying the braid to the waist while the strands which serve as warp are tied to a fixed point. Then the second half is worked in two braids – first a thick one and then a thin one to finish.
Decorative tassels and edgings are the last things to be put in place. Some of the tassels can be quite flamboyant. My teacher didn’t care at all for the more extravagant decorations!
I love these slings as there are several skills involved. Without even realizing it, this was my very first taste of backstrap weaving and with this one teacher I learned so much. He taught me the Palma and Margarita braid styles and a thin version of the Palma which didn’t seem to have a name, a little tapestry weaving by backstrap as well as tassel making and decorative edging.
LEFT; The very start of the Palma braid with the 4 sets of 6 strands used to make it. RIGHT: My hand in the braiding position. Two opposing sets of strands are interchanged. The braid is then rotated 90 degrees so the other two sets can be worked.
Zacarias was a marvelous teacher with a lot of patience. He would get me started on my work and leave me while he harvested the barley crop – plans were afoot to make some alcohol – moved the animals from one field to another and generally took care of things on his property.
LEFT: My sling braiding teacher, Zacarias on his property near Yanque, Peru. RIGHT: A woman by the shores of Lake Titicaca shows me how to hurl a stone with a sling braid.
I know that backstrap weaving isn’t for everyone and I am so glad that people are still able to make use of the instructions here and at Weavolution and use the techniques and designs on other looms. Ellen Turner, in Denmark, has woven a double weave band on her inkle loom using my tutorial at Weavolution.
She made a celtic design inspired by something she saw on the internet.
I also ran into Jessica’s blog where she has been experimenting with double weave on an inkle loom too. Check it out.
Kristina in Germany wove a double weave band on her inkle loom using her own handspun llama fiber. She commented that it put a lot of stress on her inkle loom so that is one important thing to take into consideration.
So if you have been enjoying the designs and have found the tutorials interesting and tempting but are still hesitating about getting strapped in, remember that you can adapt these techniques to other looms. I have set up warps on my rigid heddle loom and woven bands with string heddles rather than with the rigid heddle.
I have to tell you, though, that for me the backstrap loom wins hands down for the ease with which I can adjust tension with the slightest of body movements.
And, finally, I mentioned above the paintings of Carmen Pettersen. Check if your library has a copy of “Maya of Guatemala-Life and Dress”. Her paintings of Guatemalan people in traditional dress are stunning.
A Weavolution member recently introduced me to Teyacapan’s fabulous Flickr page which has hundreds of images of Mexican people with their crafts and weavings. Honestly, you can get lost in that site for hours! I was very much taken by a photo of a weaver doing gauze weave and hope to go to Mexico one day to study with the gauze weavers. Mexico is very high on my list of places to visit and, as I am planning to go to Guatemala again in March or April, it will be easy to duck over the border. If I can spend so long just looking at the images on Teyacapan’s site, imagine how long I will get caught up in Mexico!!
I am lucky to have some great books on Mexican weaving and have been inspired by the images in Joanne Hall’s marvellous book Mexican Tapestry Weaving, to make some more mug rugs with Mexican motifs. I was given this book by my Navajo weaving teacher back in 1995 and made a Navajo style tapestry based on one of the pictures. It is wonderful to see that all these years later, the images in the book are still fresh and inspiring.
So, I am happy to say that I have woven a set of four Mexican themed mug rugs in double weave and have come up with a new double weave project-a hotpad.
hotpad and matching mug rugs
So, it was Mexican all the way for lunch yesterday with spicy beans and tortillas. I think that the hotpad is another perfect double weave project using 12 wpi cotton-it makes a good thick piece to protect your table from hot dishes and casseroles. I wove it on my backstrap loom and is a good project for those of you who are thinking about venturing into wider pieces. Practice on a mug rug set first and then add your matching hotpad.
hotpad and mug rug designs
Although I am very happy with the hotpad design, I think I will make a few changes in the patterns I drew for the mug rugs. Perhaps I will break up some of the large red areas with a bit of black-what do you think? Once I have tweaked the designs and woven another set, I will post the pattern charts here on my blog for you all. In the meantime, here is the chart for the hotpad. I am only posting half of it as it is huge!
double weave pattern chart for the hotpad
If you would like to learn this double weave technique, you can use my free tutorials in the Backstrap Weaving Group on Weavolution. The tutorials have step-by-step photos and links to videos on my Flickr page. Remember that you will need to first join Weavolution and the Backstrap Group to obtain access to them.
Well, as much as I love Mexican food, I don’t think I could manage it every day (although, if I am planning that trip to Mexico……..). Anyway, here is another fun use I found for my new hot pad. It fits perfectly on my breakfast tray where it stops my plate from sliding about and certainly “spices” things up a bit!
spicy breakfast!
I loved designing and weaving this hotpad and I have a bunch of designs in my head for others so you can certainly expect to see more of these in the future. 🙂
MAKING CONTINUOUS STRING HEDDLES………..
I warped up a couple of weeks ago for another set of South American themed mug rugs and used that warp to put together a tutorial on making continuous string heddles. This process is shown on the videos in my WeaveZine article but I have heard from many people on dial-up who have not been able to access the videos. I spend half my time on dial-up as my wifi connection is pretty erratic so I certainly know how it is. I kept all my photo files small for this and I do hope that dial-up folks will be able to enjoy this photo sequence.
I learned this way of making continuous string heddles from my very first weaving teacher, Gladys Miller who taught me Navajo style weaving way back in 1995. I have seen many different ways since then while studying with my indigenous weaving teachers but none have convinced me to change my ways.
First I’d like to show you some pictures of a few weavers I have met and worked with here in South America and Guatemala and how they make their heddles.
Zapote, Ecuador. This weaver is using her flat tenter stick as a spacer around which to wind the heddle string. This helps her to make all the heddles the same length.The spacer will later be removed.San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala. Here the weaver wraps the heddle loops around her hand before passing them to a stick.Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Hammock weavers' warps are so wide that they can't use a heddle stick. They just leave the heddle loops loose and pull them in small groups across the width of the warp to open the shed.
THE TUTORIAL………
Larger and heavier versions of these tutorial photos can be seen here.
For double weave, your cross will look like this. Remember that in this technique you are using doubled warps. The all-black warps will form the black border. You have one white and one black warp in pairs in the area where you will weave your motif.You will be putting each of the pairs of warps that are passing over stick B in a heddle. Open the shed and pass your heddle string through as shown.Make a slip knot in the end of the heddle string and place it on you heddle stick. Leave a long tail as shown.Reach down between warp pair 1 and 2 and pull up the heddle string as shown.Put a twist in the loop.Place the loop on the stick and anchor it with your left forefinger.Put an extra twist in the heddle string forming a small loop.Put the small loop on the stick and tighten it by pulling on the end of the heddle string.You can now let go and see that your first warp pair is secured within its heddle.Moving on.....heddles have been made around the 1st and 2nd warp pair and the heddle string is being pulled up to make the 3rd heddle.Slip the loop on the heddle stick and adjust its length by pulling on the end of the heddle string. Once you have the length correctly adjusted, anchor the loop on the stick with your left forefinger before making your extra twist.Continue like this, cut the heddle string and tie the start and end tails together. DONE!
I always use the same yarn that I am using for the warp for my string heddles. A lot of my teachers use thin nylon thread or cord as it is less abrasive on the warps. I can’t stand using nylon but you should experiment and see which kind of heddle string suits you.
Here’s hoping you have found this useful. Maybe you know some rigid heddlers too who will be interested in seeing how to make string heddles so they can add another shed to their looms. Pass it on!
Recently I found myself in the unusual position of having run out of loom rods.
This is because since joining Weavolution in June, I have been completely soaked in new ideas and inspiration for projects that I can adapt to my backstrap loom. Rather than adding them to my woefully long ”to-do” list, I prefer to at least warp up the project, get it started by weaving a few rows and then put it aside so that at any time when the urge hits me, I can just throw on the backstrap and continue weaving. This has resulted in a closet shelf full of loom rods with brightly colored warps attached. The days of one-project-at-a-time are long gone. Fortunately, this is one of the many wonderful things about backstrap weaving-you can warp up a project, roll it up and put it away.
So when I found myself needing to make up several warps for some tutorial pictures, there were no more loom rods to be had. I don’t like borrowing loom rods from unfinished projects so a new set had to be ”found”.
A quick scan of the halls and terraces of my apartment block did not turn up any abandoned brooms or mops whose handles make marvellous loom rods. So I actually had to go out, for the first time, and buy dowels. While doing so, I was reminded of my students and the new weavers in my Backstrap Group who go looking around the house, garden shed or hardware store for bits and pieces to make their first looms and was prompted to write a little piece about putting together a backstrap loom.
I showed the parts for the backstrap loom in my WeaveZine article but space did not allow me to cover the topic in detail and there are a few refinements and tips that I have always wanted to add and a lot more photos that I would love to share. So now that I have woven up some of those closet projects and have loom rods to spare, I have been able to put together a short photo tutorial on the backstrap loom.
First the loom rods……..
loom rods
From right to left….
A pair of my recently purchased 1” dowels;
A pair of 3/4” broom handles;
The next three sets are from Guatemala. The middle set was bought at the stall at the Chichicastenango market pictured above. The other two are the loom rods from the weavings I worked on with my teachers in Guatemala. I brought these back to Bolivia with the unfinished weavings attached.
I weave happily with my broom sticks and mop handles. I simply cut them down to 19” length and I use these as my standard loom rods-even for the tiniest of bands. The shortest of the Guatemalan rods are 14” and these work well for me too although I prefer the longer length. The main feature of the Guatemalan rods is that they have grooves cut into their ends.
grooved loom rods
Personally, I don’t find these grooves particularly useful but my Guatemalan teachers do as they tie up their looms like this……………
tying up the loom in Guatemala
The grooves on the far end loom rod will stop the cords from which the loom is suspended from slipping in to the center of the rod.
So, you can experiment with the ideal length of your loom rods and decide if you like them with or without grooves. In any case, you will need two loom rods.
Cross sticks, heddle rods and shed rods………….
It’s nice to have a good collection of thin dowels and sticks of varying lengths depending on the width of your project. Pencils work well as do chopsticks and kebab skewers and then you can always go out and buy dowel rods. Packages of thin, round craft sticks are ususlly available at the dollar stores and are probably the most useful things I have. These sticks have all sorts of uses-as cross sticks when you are warping, heddlerods, shed rods, their ends can be sharpened so they can be used as pick up sticks and they can be slipped under pesky warps that have gone slack to take up tension.
Those used as shed rods need to be thicker depending on the size of your project. I don’t use anything thicker than 3/4″ for the very biggest projects. I even have a set of cheap touristy pan pipes which are abundant here. This I have dismantled and the hollow bamboo pipes in their different lengths are lightweight and handy for all kinds of things-my apologies to the music lovers!
Above is a random selection of my thin sticks-one, as you can see, even gets used to stir the dyepot. It is very handy to cut grooves in these sticks eventhough my grooves are not exactly pretty.
grooved thin sticks
The grooves will help you tie your sticks togethers securely in the cross on your warping board and loom. They will allow you to secure your shed rod in the shed. Anyone who has had sticks drop out of their loom will know just how important this is!
So, where are we now in our loom construction?
Let’s see our rods and sticks in action!
At left you can see the warp on its loom rods with cross sticks in place. These cross sticks are just that little bit too thin for grooves-I have snapped too many already trying to put in grooves-or maybe I am just not that good with the tools! Anyway, these are simply secured with adhesive tape.
The loom rod on the left with the knotted “start” and “finish” warp ends will be attached to a fixed point-a heavy piece of furniture or a tree (more about these options in a future blog post), while the loom rod on the right will be attached to you by means of your trusty backstrap – speaking of which……..
The backstrap…………….
a selection of backstraps
This is all a matter of personal preference, but for me, the broader the backstrap the better. Those of you who have read my article on WeaveZine will remember the simple homemade backstrap shown there made from a pillow slip and will also recognize the red strap above. The straw one next to it is my all time fave-made for me in Peru and much chewed by my cat. Moving left, you see another one that I wove and, finally, a leather beauty that I bought in Guatemala. Weave your own backstrap-a wonderful first project to go with your homemade loom. Check out my instructions on WeaveZine.
Swords and beaters………..
I collect swords and beaters in my travels and have a ridiculously large collection of them but here are just a few……
The sword acts to prop open your shed so that you can pass your weft. It can also double as a beater to beat the weft into place once you have changed sheds. The bottom sword is my favourite for wide projects-a homemade job, can you tell?! Above it you can see an adapted ruler and, above that, my favorite small beater for bands-this one was made for me in Peru.
Bevel one of the long edges of your flat sticks as well as the ends and round them off as shown so that they will enter the shed easily. The upper stick at left was once a long shuttle for my Navajo loom, hence the “v” cut into its end-this is not necesary for your sword/beater.
I generally prefer to put a lot of tension on my warp and push the weft into place with a pointed stick in addition to some moderate beating and so I have never felt the need for a big heavy beater like those shown in the above photo. Everyone has their method. There is no one ”right” way to do it.
Let’s see another “”sticks-in-action”” shot……
almost ready to weave
“Almost” ready to weave?………What’s missing?
a shuttle and a weft "butterfly"
Shuttles………..
These carry the weft through the open sheds. I have the above home made wooden job made with the help of someone who is handy with tools and a simple “butterfly” of weft. I would love to have a small wooden shuttle too but have been making do with a cardboard cut-out version these last fourteen years! My indigenous teachers simply wrap the weft around and around and up and down a long stick.
Now we are on our way-the string heddles have been made, the shed rod is in place. I have added an extra stabilizing rod from my collection of small dowels. This will stop my shed rod from rolling about in the warp and is placed in a second cross behind the shed rod. I have even managed to weave a few inches. This is where the final part of the loom comes into play-the roll up stick. This should be, preferably, the same size as your loom rod and will enable you to roll up your weaving as you progress so that you are always in easy reach of your heddles, shed rod and weaving line.
By the way, if you have been looking for pick up sticks in these photos, you won’t see any. Pick up sticks are used to lift and hold the warps when you are weaving design motifs in your cloth. My fingers are my nifty pick up sticks although I have a lot of bone and wooden tools for this purpose in my collection.
And now, a few final words from someone who has been watching this whole photo taking process with much interest and who insisted on being in the final picture………..
The Backstrap Loom
Just remember that, although the basic elements are the same, backstrap looms take many different forms in different cultures around the world. There is no one ”correct” way to set up your loom and I have based these descriptions on the looms that I have seen and used with my indigenous teachers here in South America and Guatemala.
Now to finish this green band, make it into something useful and free up another pair of loom rods for the next project!
I hope you have enjoyed this little article and have found it helpful. If you have, let me know-I love to receive your comments.:-)
IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING………….
The red woven piece on which I posed the loom parts for many of the above photosis a weaving of the Jalq’a people of Potolo in Bolivia. Their weavings are almost exclusively done in red and black and have a chaotic display of figures called khurus, a word which means ”wild” or ”untamable”. Every space on the cloth is filled with strange figures. There are even creatures within creatures and I watched weavers forming the myriad of figures without reference to other weavings or swatches for help or inspiration. Incredible!
A weaving from Potolo, Bolivia
The weavers use a simple oblique frame loom and a long wire to pick up the hundreds of warps which form the patterns in each row. Rather than using a beater, a wichuna-a bone tool fashioned from the leg of the llama- is used to push the wefts into place. The designs are woven into the woman’s axsu-a tunic cinched at the waist with a woven belt.
The typical loom of Potolo
I learned this warp-faced complementary warp technique with my teacher in Potosi, where it is used for a completely different design layout. I have never used the technique to create anything anywhere near this level of complexity!
A weaver working at the ASUR Museum in Sucre, Bolivia
This Jalq’a woman is weaving a piece that will be sold at the ASUR (Antropologos del Surandino) Museum in Sucre.
As for my play-time weaving experiments, I took my own advice again and stopped spinning cotton to weave a sample. It would be no use continuing to spin if the thread I was producing was not suitable for the kinds of cloth I want to weave. I am, after all, very new at spinning cotton. What I am producing now is clearly beginner stuff and I don’t expect to be able to produce anything consistent until I spin my way out of this beginner phase and improve my skills. That just takes mileage….lots of it…..and, hopefully, some advice and tips from experts.
