Tag: ikat

Backstrap Weaving – Proud!

I have woven a lot of things that have made me very happy but my latest piece is something of which I am particularly proud. That might sound a little obnoxious…but I can’t help it. The little cross-body purse that I just hand-sewed has me grinning from ear to ear. I guess it’s because I remember my school days when I was convinced that I was a total klutz when it came to any kind of craft project. In the end I even stopped handing in the work all together and my report cards would say “No work presented”, “Assignment incomplete”, or “Disappointing result”. I remember having a friend’s mother take pity and rescue and do

the sewing part of an assignment for me. My mother was also convinced that she had no craft-related skills or talents and I guess I just assumed I would be the same.

One of the 60/2 silk ikat pieces that I wove last year.

Not that this latest project is any great feat of sewing. It holds together and looks like what I had in mind and that is enough to please me. There aren’t any zips or fancy pockets. I took sewing skills that I had learned in my recent shoulder bag project and got to apply and improve on them. I took the ikat skills that I had learned in all the silk projects that I had woven during the worst of the pandemic and applied them to cotton.

In my last post, I showed you my ikat warp on the loom, heddled up and ready to go.

Almost all heddled. There are 880 ends in total of 20/2 cotton.
A coil rod in place on one of my older cotton scarf warps.

I had been deciding n whether it would be worth inserting a coil rod. I did go ahead and use one. Next time I will insert the rod right at the far end of the loom and leave it there. This time I inserted it, as is my habit, within reach just beyond my shed rod which meant that I had to roll it along the warp each time I advanced the warp. The rod will pick up the tiniest looseness in tension in any particular thread, take it up, and sort of push it along and away to the far end of the warp where it remains trapped. This is all very well unless you are trying to keep your ikat threads strictly aligned. In this case, it is preferable to have any tension differences gradually even themselves out as you inch your way along the warp in such a way as not to be noticeable at all. Each time the coil rod pulled a thread out of alignment, I had to take hold of the thread and ease it back into place. Lesson learned.

It’s amazing how fast the weaving goes after all the wrapping and dyeing that had taken place before I could even get the warp on the loom. Of course, it is only a meter of cloth which was the amount I had calculated as being necessary for my purse. I did not have a pattern for the purse and made up something very simple that is not all that different from my shoulder bag shape, except for the absence of pleats.

Rapid progress on the loom. The coil rod, unfortunately, is out of shot.

All my weaving friends will understand the reluctance to take scissors to a piece of your hand woven cloth and so it won’t surprise you that I had to let this cloth just sit about for a few days. In the meantime, I had to scale down the paper pattern I had made for my shoulder bag.

The finished one meter of ikat cloth.

I sewed a dummy purse, minus flap, to see if the shape I had drawn worked. I felt that it did and was able to use that dummy piece as the drop-in lining. It’s chocolate brown and I guess I was influenced by these naturally-dyed quilting pieces from Threads of Life in Ubud, Bali when I came up with my combination of colors. I have also seen ikat work in Guatemala that combines natural indigo blues with chocolate brown.

Hand-spun, backstrap loom-woven cotton pieces from Threads of Life…swoon.

Sadly, I neglected to take in-progress shots of the sewing part of this project. I wove three bands, one of which became the sides and base of the purse. The other is the strap and the third is the tubular edging on the flap. I was pleased that the pattern on the flap lined up quite nicely with that on the body of the purse and I used a magnetic clasp for the flap.

Feeling proud…can you tell?
Finished cross-body ikat purse.

These are sloooow projects but I find the slow hand-sewing so very relaxing. I posted my cloth in an online weaving group and one member responded with something like….”That looks like so much work!” I was kind of surprised. That’s the kind of thing that non-weavers say when I do a demonstration of backstrap weaving at an event. I have always felt that weavers, on the other hand, just get it!

A benefit of slow projects like this is the value you get from a relatively small amount of yarn! It has certainly kept me out of trouble for a good while. It never fails to tickle me that the bits that you see below can be transformed into a patterned purse.

20/2 mercerized cotton thread, dye for cotton, and ikat tape.

Next up…an attempt to make a small zippered coin purse in warp-faced fabric as a way to test my hand-spun Sea Island cotton. My teachers in coastal Ecuador used hand-spun cotton singles doubled rather than plied, and not sized, for their warp-faced weaving. My singles have stood up well to a balanced structure in an early test sample. Warp-faced will be a different story all together with all that added abrasion. Why am I using singles? I guess it’s only because I want the thread to be that fine. I may be completely misguided in this but we shall see what comes out of this next small experiment. I don’t think I will be wasting too much thread while learning these lessons. If my single thread stands up to the abrasion it just might be because I have put in too much twist and perhaps robbed it of its rustic hand-spun qualities. There are so many lessons to learn!

Mariana weaving warp-faced fabric for a double-pocket saddle bag using doubled hand-spun cotton singles, coastal Ecuador.

In my next post, I’ll have photos and information that my online weaving friend Christina has shared with me on her experience studying with ikat weavers in Mexico in 2019 as well as some images by another online friend who was in Ecuador interacting with ikat weavers in the 1970s. There might be a little something to report on my cotton coin purse project. I might even get to use my cochineal and alum.

And speaking of the red color of cochineal, here’s a teaser from next week’s post as the weavers in Mexico remove an ikat wrap to reveal one tiny part of the overall pattern…just in case you have seen enough blue for today! (Note that these weavers were using synthetic dye for their large production runs of 90-meter warps but use cochineal for their single unique backstrap-loom-woven pieces).

Photo courtesy of Christina Palafox.

Until next time…

Backstrap Weaving – Ikat Progress

Threads of Life in Ubud, Bali posted a video to Youtube some time ago in which you can read about the 56 steps taken by weavers in Indonesia to create a naturally-dyed and handwoven ikat hip cloth. 56 steps!! Imagine. (I have embedded the video for you at the end of this post).

My ikat projects are pathetically simple (not even pre-kinder level) compared to the intricate tying and color work carried out by the masters of this art in Indonesia. What goes into achieving the desired depth of just one of the many colors employed is mind boggling in itself.

I have been dabbling in ikat once again because I had decided that I wanted to sew a small bag. I had had so much fun creating the large shoulder bag, below, a couple of months ago. The weaving of all the parts was very satisfying as I was able to employ a variety of techniques from warp-faced to balanced plain weave, to intermesh, three-color pebble with my own designs, and woven tubular edgings. On top of that, there had been so much to learn about hand sewing….seams that curve, drop-in linings, pleats, interfacing…..

I decided that the small bag should be sewn from ikat fabric and I set about planning a simple motif. I wanted busy fabric with small repeating motifs. I would use 20/2 cotton and was grateful for having used this thread before for an ikat project in which I had created just one large motif, Fortunately, I had kept pretty good notes about that project.

A drawstring bag for my Kindle in 20/2 cotton with ikat and supplementary-weft patterns. There’s a tiny band of pebble weave around the mouth of the bag.

That meant that I didn’t need to sample….that’s just one step that I was able to skip. Add to that the fact that I wasn’t hand-spinning the cotton (after having grown, picked, ginned and prepared it for spinning). Plus, I wasn’t going out and picking plant matter and preparing it for the dye pot. I just walked down to my LYS, a mere three blocks away, and bought some cotton dye. I scoured the 20/2 cotton thread to ready it for dyeing.

Here’s the simple motif that I created:

This is the pattern I tied onto the two layers.

Once I had figured out the number of ends I would need and the length of cloth I would most likely need for my bag, I wound the warp with my scoured cotton. When it came to tying the pattern onto the warp threads, I folded the warp in half to halve its width so that I could tie onto two layers of threads at the same time. That way I only had to tie half the pattern and in doing so would automatically create its mirror image. I could have challenged myself further by also folding the warp to halve its length but that would have meant having upside-down motifs on one half of the cloth. That would limit my options for where to cut the cloth to make the bag. I am not an experienced sewer. I don’t yet have a pattern in mind for my small bag and so, who knows where I will need to cut?

I extend my ikat warps on one of these canvas stretcher frames and use turn buckles to adjust tension.

When planning the pattern, I decide the number of threads that I will wrap for each section. That in turn will determine the total number of warp ends that I use. I mark these sections with thread before I start wrapping.

Dividing the warp into bundles, as seen above, is done before the warp is folded in half. Before folding, I enclose each bundle in half-inch wraps of ikat tape at the far end of the warp. Those wraps stay in place throughout the entire process. Then I fold the warp in half and connect each bundle from the upper layer with its corresponding partner from the lower layer. When wrapping with tape, I wrap these two joined bundles as if they were one large bundle.

By the way, the Tour de Fleece ended today.

I enjoy every part of this process except this next one: measuring and measuring and measuring again to make sure that the warp is good and square on the frame as well as making sure that I start tying in a straight line. How my eyes play tricks on me and sometimes simply refuse to believe my tape measure! Once I get those first few wraps in place, I go back to enjoying myself (even though I have to confess that I often still don’t feel 100% sure of having got it all straightened out). I wrap a few bits here and there throughout the day and then do some more cotton spinning. I don’t like sitting at it for long sessions because I get sloppy. I wonder about the artists in Indonesia and whether they sit at it all day. I imagine having that kind of time on one’s hands to devote to just this one task might be a luxury.

One other reason for doing this in short sessions is that I have taken on a new challenge of spending more time on my feet and less time sitting. I have found a nice spot on which to place my spinning bowl which allows me to spin very comfortably on my takli while standing up and want to see if I can spend all my mornings from now on only doing things that involve being on my feet.

I mark the pattern with charcoal pencil and use the tape that my friend Betty gave me some years ago. I tie a knot in my tape that sits at the center of the wrap and have what I feel is a fast and efficient way of cutting the knot and unwrapping later. Some people don’t knot but I don’t feel secure not doing so! Placing the knot in the center of the wrap reduces the risk of accidently snipping a warp thread when unwrapping.

The placement of the knot is the only tip I have to share and this will only apply if you go with tying a knot. Many people don’t tie them. Otherwise, wrapping involves…well….. wrapping, that’s all. I wrap very tightly. I don’t know if this is the best way…it works for me. I get a callous on my left index finger from the tape constantly rubbing against its tip. In the following video clip I have started wrapping in the center of the section and am proceeding until the end of the section. Then I turn, (video clip stops a couple of wraps after the reverse of direction) and wrap over the top back to where I started, continue beyond that point to the other end of the section, return to the center, tie, and cut.

I let the wrapped warp soak in water for a day and a half. I used a new-to-me dye and that always makes me nervous. However, I was really pleased with the color I got. I had added a little black to the blue to “dirty” it a bit.

It’s amazing how tidy this warp was when it emerged from the dye bath compared to the silk ones that I usually work with! From here it went back on the frame so that I could add more wraps. I wanted to reserve some of the blue before once again dyeing the warp a much darker blue. This first blue was so pretty. It seemed a terrible shame to now cover most of it with a darker blue. I kept dyeing notes in my book with its hand-woven cover so that I can hopefully replicate that blue for another project some day..

The cover I wove for my Dyer’s Notebook with words from a poem by Emily Dickinson.
The warp is stretched on the frame ready for the next wrapping and then a good soaking before being dyed again.
Here it is after the second dark blue dye bath. I almost thought that I had ruined it by adding too much black but, thankfully, it came out just the kind of inky dark blue that I had been hoping for.

I don’t get so nervous about removing the wrappings any more. I seem to be using a reliable wrapping technique and so I am not worried about dye having seeped between poor wraps or having bled into the ends of the wrapped sections. The part that makes me nervous is the weaving! How much will the threads shift? Some kinds of shift are attractive to my eye while others are not. The threads just have a mind of their own and from one project to the next I am never quite sure what to expect. As I always say….Will it be a mess or success? I try to keep my mind as open as possible because initial disappointment often fades and ends up with my being completely in love with the results. But that change in opinion can sometimes take a long time! It’s best not to have expectations.

So, what did you do on Saturday night? Oh, I sat about and cut dozens of knots and unraveled ikat tape while listening to podcasts. I remind myself that this is the stage at which the pattern is probably the best it will ever look. I am now releasing the threads from their bonds and they are free from now on to wander about as they please as I get them onto the loom, retrieve the cross, put sticks in place, and make heddles.

Normally, I would only remove 6-8″ of wraps and then prepare the warp for weaving. That would give me just enough space in which to set up heddles etc, create (small) sheds, and weave. I would only unwrap more tape when I had no more room in which to work. Working that way has helped to reduce shift in the threads and keep the pattern nice and sharp. However, because I folded the warp in half, I have no choice but to cut off all the wraps. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to unfold the warp. Peeling the two layers apart and opening up the warp to its full width is super fun. I take a few pictures because anything can happen to the pattern after this point!

You may remember that at this point I do still have some wraps still in place…those half-inch ones that I placed right at the end of the warp before I folded. They do help to some extent to reduce shift but not as much as you might think or hope.

The cross has been retrieved from where it had been saved on lengths of thread and in the wee hours of Sunday I started making the string heddles.
This is as far as I got before bed.

Later, on Sunday afternoon, I took all those heddles off as the #12 DMC thread I was using was too heavy. I ended up using the same 20/2 cotton….. of course. That’s what you get for starting something like this at midnight.

Ready to roll? Maybe just one more step before I throw the shuttle. I might install a coil rod. Do I really need it or am I just procrastinating? I do believe that it plays some role in locking the threads in position. As I said, the weaving step is for me the part during which I feel I have the least control over the pattern. Getting started makes me nervous!

Here’s the warp with the 20/2 cotton heddles in place.

I will leave you here with a picture as a teaser of things to come. This picture comes to you courtesy of my new online weaving acquaintance….someone about whom I have often wondered over the years. I shall tell you more in future posts.

Now, imagine me sitting here alone on my Saturday night carefully cutting knots and rolling off the ikat tape with BBC radio to keep me company….and then look at this picture which looks to me like a jolly ol’ unwrapping party with many hands at work.

Photo courtesy of my new online friend whose name I shall reveal in a future post!

This picture was taken back in the 1970s in Ecuador and my new friend struggles to recall exactly what had been going on but it seems that the warp has been anchored on one lady’s foot while bundles fan out in all directions so that each helper can be occupied removing the wraps along their particular bundle’s length. I love this photo and like to imagine lots of happy chatter and laughter accompanying this task.

And here’s the Threads of Life video that I mentioned at the start of this post. Make sure to view it in HD if you want to be able to read the text….

Until next time…..

Backstrap Weaving – Bubble, Bubble

Why “Bubble, Bubble”? Because I seem to have spent more time at the pot dyeing yarn and boiling my hand spun cotton than anything else these last days. And that’s okay. I can stand there stirring and thinking about what I am going to weave, or continue with the Bananagrams game that is always in progress nearby. I kept a careful watch over the cotton because I am notorious for letting things boil dry. I don’t know how many times I have stepped away from rice, beans or quinoa on the stove to weave “just a few rows” only to be alerted to a dry pot by the smell of something burning. The pencil cups that I showed in my last post have been working out well for holding these samples of my newbie hand-spun cotton singles under tension. I got a few suggestions from Facebook friends for alternatives when I start producing larger quantities….mostly involving pvc pipe.

I put my juggling balls into the cups to weigh them down and then set them on the window sill to dry. The wind was so strong yesterday that I had to go down the three flights of stairs twice to retrieve everything from the garden below. Versions 2 and 3 seem to to be similar enough to use in a piece of sample weaving. I am not ready to go with the sheer-cloth-and-sizing idea yet. I am thinking of using these samples in my finest reed to weave some balanced plain-weave, something along the lines of this silk sample that I wove some time ago….

I’d like to weave in some tufts of very lightly twisted colored cotton into the cloth now and then. I have a few shades of natural brown and a bit of green. I saw a lovely scarf on Instagram that had been created like that with tufts of wool.

That’s taking second place on the to-do list because I am first weaving fabric for the bag to accompany the three-color pebble strap that I recently finished. It’s funny that this whole project has sprung out of the desire to weave something in the reversible three-color pebble structure and use it in something that would allow both faces to be seen. A bag strap is what I came up with. And so, here comes the bag fabric.

I over-dyed some pale green yarn to this dark blue, hadn’t thought through the project properly at all, and ran out while creating the warp. So then I had to over-dye some pale yellow to finish the warp and have enough for the sides and separate flap. Of course, I can’t expect for a minute to be able to create the same shade of blue when over-dyeing yellow instead of green but this is what happens when you are working with diminishing stash. You either have to plan more carefully around the quantities that you have or just go making it up as you go along! I am usually much more in tune (to the extreme!) with the former of the two strategies and it is interesting finding myself being fairly content with this more carefree approach this time.

I found out when I dyed cotton black for the scarf project above, when it was already too late, that not all blacks are alike. You can probably make out the two strips of darker black in the cloth. They could have been placed at the two selvedges if only I had noticed earlier. What chance do I have, then, of perfectly replicating blue on two different base colors? At least this time I was aware that there was going to be a difference and I placed strips of the “new” blue on the left and right edges of the warp to balance things out. I am weaving in warp-faced plain weave and will add a hummingbird and a flower motif in supplementary weft to one lower corner of the front of the bag and perhaps another pairing in the center of the back. The cloth needs to be fairly “quiet” because the strap is so lively.

I christened the Weaver’s Journal that I had covered with my woven cloth. I haven’t even tried to make my notes neat and pretty because I knew that the effort would not last long at all. Besides, I kind of like my scribblings. 🙂

I haven’t made notes in the Dyer’s Notebook yet because my latest dyeing has been of the more desperate never-to-be-repeated variety.

My Weaver’s Journal covered with cloth in 30/2 silk and patterned with supplementary weft.

This kind of stash scrounging reminds me of when I weaving Navajo-style tapestry pieces in southern Chile in the mid 1990s. I had brought back some Wilde and Woolly wool from the States and topped up my stash some months later via mail order. The rich “Ganado Red” color that I had ordered didn’t arrive. Instead, I got this kind of dusty pink. It worked out okay. I gave this piece to my brother when he visited here and he keeps it under glass on his dining table.

The way the diamond pattern was meant to be aligned.

After that, I decided that I wouldn’t order more yarn by post and that I would only buy in person. I wove several pieces and eventually the bottom of the yarn barrel was in sight with no plans to travel to the States. I had to get into “make-do” mode with whatever I could scrape together. I didn’t want to stop weaving.

Joanne Hall had written a book on tapestry weaving. I had a used copy and I loved some of the Mexican patterns that she had included. The main motif of intertwined black and white lines was meant to be woven as a diamond shape sitting within a square. The square was supposed to be positioned with horizontal top and bottom and vertical sides surrounding the diamond motif….that is, not like I had woven it on the loom.

Because I didn’t have enough of any one color to weave the whole surrounding square, I had to swivel the pattern 45 degrees. And I didn’t have enough yarn to be able to weave the two inner motifs in the same colors. It didn’t look like the picture in the book and I just wasn’t crazy about it when it was done. When I moved to Bolivia, it got left behind in Chile hanging on the wall of the little cottage in which I had lived. I wonder where it is now. Of course, I wish I had it now. What you see here are photos of the only photo I have of it.

The way I had to align it on the loom.

I remember tapping away at a calculator to plan out this piece so that the pattern would fit into the four-selvedged limits and use just the right amount of yarn. My boyfriend at the time asked me if that was how the Navajo weavers plan their pieces….with a calculator…lol. I had obviously put more thought into planning this around my available yarn quantities than my current bag project!

And then I threw almost all the left- over bits and pieces into a pot, dyed them red and wove one last piece….another odd piece with, naturally, multiple shades of red. I got to use the Navajo saddle-blanket structure at the top and bottom of this four-selvedged piece before running out of the tan color and then filled the center with plain weft-faced pattern. Sound familiar? Here I am in 2022 doing the same thing with dye to make the most of my supplies. I like the challenge. I like just making do with what I have on hand.

The twined edging tassels in the corners were sewn down to make the piece less interesting to my cat (who had chewed off the tassels on one of my other pieces as well as a chunk of corner!)
From the archives! 1996 and weaving with my backstrap warp attached to the bottom of the Navajo-style vertical frame.

Of course, it didn’t matter in the end that I had run out of tapestry wool yarn for weft because shortly after all this I went to Peru for the first time and it all became about warp-faced weaving on backstrap looms when I returned, using locally available cotton and the high-twist wool singles that I had been using for warp for my Navajo-style pieces. It all got used! My Navajo-style loom was only used as the anchor point for the end of my backstrap-loom warps after that, except for a couple of quite wide warp-faced pieces which I wasn’t yet ready to handle on a backstrap loom.

Now I am looking at a tiny amount of powder at the bottom of my pot of red-blue dye. My friend Mog had given me some of her supply the last time I was in Australia and it’s almost all gone now. That’s okay. I had a good run with it in some fun projects mixing it to get a variety of blues….

I enjoyed creating different intensities of blue on 30/2 silk for this book cover project.
More fun with dyeing blue on this 60/2 silk ikat warp.

I still have a good amount of a green-blue (again, thank you, Mog) as well as a teal, so who knows what might come of that.

I am reminded that I have credit with Southwest Airlines that expires in September and an empty Traveler’s Diary. But everything is still so unclear and confusing, isn’t it? In the meantime, I am trying to coax my book-writing mojo back into existence. I made a good start but a tripod-fail let me down. I finally got a new one…no excuses now! Please check out the eight books I have published so far at Taproot Video. They’re available as PDFs to download as well as in the form of spiral-bound books. Here are a few…

Until next time.

Backstrap Weaving – The Story of the Hummingbird.

I am busily weaving the third panel in the Within These Walls series and having quite a lot of fun with it. After all the pick-up that I had to do on the second panel to create that sensation of chaos, I am enjoying the wide open spaces in this third piece and feel like I am zooming along. In this piece the friendly hummingbirds play a major role in building the transition from the chaos and darkness of Panel 1 to the harmony of a newly established normal in Panel 3.

I am using doubled 140/2 silk for this one as I had run out of my red 60/2 silk. It’s a rosier red and I love it even though much of it ended up being covered by black dye. It did mess with my head at the start when I kept counting the doubled threads as two threads instead of one when I was doing the Andean Pebble Weave pick-up. I am well over that now.

It’s funny to think that the very first motif I ever wove with my teachers in Peru was a hummingbird. This year of 2021 happens to mark the 25th anniversary of my first trip to Peru during which I had my first experience learning to weave on a backstrap loom. I know that I met my teachers some time towards the end of August 1996. My birthday is in mid-August and I remember quite clearly spending that day alone in Ayacucho. I was so sick and had been for weeks after having eaten something that had been fried in bad oil. I decided to move on to Huancayo and find a place to stop still for a while so that I could give myself a chance to recover. It was either that or head back to Chile. Thankfully, the abuela who ran the hostel at which I stayed made it her mission to make me well again. She made me dandelion and papaya smoothies every day which she said would clean my liver.

I have been thinking back on that experience and those little bands of fine threads that I wove with one end of the warp connected to my waist with string and the other end tied to a bush in the yard. Before my teachers arrived with their thread and sticks I had no idea what motifs we were going to weave, what structure I would be learning or even what kind of loom we would use.

The very first motif the ladies started demonstrating looked like it was gong to be a simple triangle flanked by a couple of inverted ones. I thought that it was very sensible starting with some basic shapes like that. However, just as I started to get my head around that, hoping that I could then predict what was to follow, things changed and I was lost. I thought that asking what the figure was meant to be might help. I was told it was a hummingbird. That didn’t help because I simply could not relate the little figure on the band to anything that looked like a hummingbird to me!

Even after returning to Chile with all my little bands with their clearly recognizable dog, llama, puma, human and various bird motifs, I simply could not make out how that little figure was supposed to be a hummingbird. The figure you see above is my replication of my teachers’ motif woven with a lot of their help which mostly involved their pushing my hands out of the way and taking over every time they saw that I was lost or about to make a mistake. You can tell from the wonky selvedges that this was not their masterful work.

And then I thought that perhaps I had misinterpreted what my teachers called “picaflor”, which is not the official Spanish word for hummingbird. Perhaps that’s their nickname for bees. But nope, I still couldn’t see it. In any case, I have since learned that picaflor is indeed another name for hummingbird.

Here are some more figures from my learner bands from 1996…

And then one day, it occurred to me that perhaps the black outlined triangle in the figure is the bird’s beak and the bird is looking straight at me. That would make the red line and two little bumps directly above it the top of the bird’s head and two eyes. The main red triangle is the bird’s body and the sides are its wings. Can you see it? The bird is flying straight towards me. I was delighted! How unusual to depict a bird head-on lie that! Once I could see it, I couldn’t un-see it. The band was glued into my journal and I never wove it again. It was quirky and interesting but I didn’t like it enough to use it in any of my projects. Later, I found another hummingbird motif on a band from Taquile Island and now I have created my own original one.

Just the other day on a Zoom call I pulled out my learner bands because I wanted to tell my weaving friends about my 25th anniversary. I had long ago removed the bands from my journal so that I could photograph them and show them in my workshops. I started telling them The Hummingbird Story and showing them the little figure. Literally as the words were coming out of my mouth, I suddenly saw it! The figure is TWO hummingbirds in profile facing each other with connected beaks. Of course! How did I not ever see that? I am sure that you saw it right from the beginning and must think that I am mad.

I was actually a little disappointed about this new discovery. I had quite enjoyed the unique idea of depicting a hummingbird flying straight towards the viewer. Oh well.

The little hummingbirds that I created in my Within These Walls series are depicted in profile. Some are solid and some are outlined. You can see one of them in my latest panel busily unraveling the chaos lines that had covered the previous panel…

Others are collecting sticks and plants with which they will help me build my own world within my walls. I am quite accepting of the fact that I shall most likely remain within these walls for the rest of the year. The supposed roll-out of a vaccination plan here has been carried out in the true Bolivian style that I have come to expect…utter chaos and confusion. I gather that it may not have been much better in some other more developed countries. And, I know that with limited resources this can’t be an easy task.

Some of the supplies have already mysteriously “disappeared” according to a newspaper report today. Every time I turn around there is a new website on which we are supposed to register. I have signed up to three so far with no sign yet of when anything will actually start happening for the general public..

I have advanced quite a lot since I took the picture of Panel 3 above. I am just about to reach half way and my thoughts have started turning to what I might weave after this project. I am still deciding about whether to weave a fourth panel in this series. If I don’t, I hope to weave something with my handspun wool and have decided that all Zoom time from now on should be spent spinning. I would really like to do some more of this three-color reversible Andean Pebble Weave. Here you can see the technique on two wrist cuffs that I wove last year.

I also have these two strips that you can see below (they’re both about twice the length that you see here) that I wove from my handspun llama fiber years ago, probably back as far as 2005. I sewed them onto cotton cloth that I had also woven on my backstrap loom and made shoulder bags. The black bag with the grey strip got used a lot and the cotton part ended up looking rather shabby. I have since removed the llama part which looks good as new and thrown away the cotton cloth. So, I want to weave new pieces to create new bags but, this time, in my handspun wool. I am never short of projects! The brown one was my attempt to replicate a scrap of band that I had bought in Cusco on that first trip in 1996.

The fabric for the bags will be in warp-faced plain weave and I’ll weave straps in the three-color reversible Andean Pebble Weave. On a strap, the different ways that the three colors position themselves in this technique on the two faces can be appreciated. The two faces can look quite different…

While on the subject of spinning I wanted to tell you that tinyStudio Creative Life Magazine is now offering subscriptions to its magazine in print form. I have seen Suzy Brown and the team showing off the print version of the latest issue and it looks luscious. There are 120 pages of content beautifully bound in such a way that it always lies nice and flat on the table. You may remember that Suzy asked me to contribute to issue 9 (below) with a bit of a story about my learning to weave with my indigenous teachers. Hopefully, once subscriptions have taken off, she will consider printing some of the back issues too. Subscription includes free shipping for the four issues per year from New Zealand. Here is an excerpt from the website which will give a better idea of what this magazine is about:

Mindfulness, simplicity, and a conscious approach to fiber crafts. These are the foundations of an inspirational magazine! tinyStudio Creative Life Magazine is created especially for fiber artists of all kinds, spinners and yarn artists. We aim to enhance your fiber life with projects, patterns, creative rituals, fiber artists’ stories and articles, ideas for storage and decluttering, ways to reuse and recycle, and articles on fiber producers who themselves adhere to conscious and caring processes. The ultimate lifestyle magazine specifically for people like us, who have a passion for all things fiber!

I actually have a lot more to show and tell you about things I have been seeing online in forums, Zoom lectures and via backstrap weaving friends about backstrap weavers on the Tibetan Plateau, on the island of Yap, the Himalayas and in Costa Rica but I think I will keep those for a post all of their own soon.

To finish, I would like to share with you another part of the continuing story of Maribel. You may remember that I first met her back in 2017 when I went to the central Bolivian highlands to meet the ladies in my teacher Maxima’s co-op. Nineteen-year-old Maribel had been the first one to show up at the gathering with her toddler Daniel, eager to get involved, put the weaving skills that she had been observing but not practicing her entire life to use and become a paid member of the co-op. She asked to learn how to read my pattern charts and after starting to weave one of the patterns set about copying charts from my book.

Some weeks later, she showed up at the co-op with her first woven band in naturally dyed handspun yarn using the pattern that I had taught her via the chart.

You can see that it was accepted and labeled by the co-op ready for sale. I so wish that I had bought it!

Next came her first faja…

That has been followed by her first aguayo, completed with the help of her mother-in-law. This piece was not destined for the co-op but is most likely for her own use. These ladies much prefer the finer synthetic threads with their bright colors when they weave for themselves.

Dorinda tells me that Maribel is now Secretary of the Association of Artisans in her community of Huancarani. Such good news! I can’t wait to see what she weaves next.

March 31st marks the end of another quarter of business on the Taproot Video website where I sell my books and video class. Thank you so much to all of you who continue to support me by buying my books and telling weaving friends about them. I have been enjoying meeting new pick-up weavers and re-uniting with past students in my Zoom workshops and love running into some of you here and there in the social media forums.

Take care everyone and stay safe, please.

Backstrap Weaving – That Inevitable Question

If you are a maker, I think that you know the question to which I am referring in the title of this post….”How long did it take?”

I find that I am being asked that a lot when I show people the completed second panel in my Within These Walls series. I actually have to look back through my photos and find dates to be able to at least remember when I started this second one. I was shocked to see that the first picture that I had taken with the warp on what I call the ikat frame was taken on January 2nd. I am not able to process that! I can’t remind myself that…oh yes, I was doing that when a certain event occurred. I can’t tell myself that I was tying the heddles the day after I went to such-‘n’-such a place or that I dyed the warp on the afternoon after I hung out with a certain friend. I am sure that you can all relate. I am not doing anything or going anywhere to set the landmarks through which I can meander and mark the passage of time.

However, it’s strange that I can remember the song I was listening to when I wove the first hummingbird as that marked a change in pace. I recall the episode of the BBC comedy show I was listening to when I was roughly an inch into the chaos section because it had taken an inch of weaving that pattern to convince me that this idea was going to work. I know which re-run episode of The Gilmore Girls I was watching when I reached the main blacked-out section of the design because that blacked-out section reduced the amount of pick-up I had to do in each row….it was an event! 

I just don’t know WHEN those things were happening. Were they two weeks ago, a month ago? Not that it matters. I really have settled into this sort of timeless existence and I am sort of okay with that. I had wasted a lot of head space getting anxious about Carnival and its associated disruption. It didn’t happen. It was DEAD QUIET…seriously, not a peep! So, I can’t even associate part of the weaving process with Carnival craziness. Not that I am complaining! 

I have to say that I enjoyed every step of the process….the drawing and charting, the warping, bundling, wrapping, soaking, dyeing, drying, unwrapping, heddling and weaving! Even a broken thread didn’t phase me. However, there was a jolt when I realized, at some distance into the  weaving, that I had neglected to wrap one part of one bundle of twenty threads. How to quickly become an expert in replacing broken threads…replace twenty of them in a row! I had to tie and dye a bundle of twenty ends so that they would match the color changes in the warp and then cut out the offending threads and replace them, carefully matching the black and red sections along their lengths.

 

A big part of the enjoyment in every step came from the fact that there had not been anything nagging and telling me that I need to hurry up because I’ll be traveling soon and will need to stop weaving to spend weeks winding literally hundreds of warps for up-coming workshops. But, having said that, gosh, I miss the traveling and weaving with friends! Thank goodness for Zoom.

A weaving party at Janie’s!

Anyway, here’s the finished second panel (which is actually Part 1 of the story told by this series)…

If you know the Bob Marley song Three Little Birds, you might know the message of hope that the little hummers in this piece are bringing me along with yarn and sticks for my loom.

Here are two of the three panels….

The third panel will soon be underway. I’ll be using doubled 140/2 silk for it in a different tone of red. It will be the center panel and for that reason I think that I can get away with it looking a little different color-wise. You might ask what in the world am I doing with 140/2 silk. Allow me to drop some names! These cones were given to me by Betty Davenport and Sara Lamb who had decided that they certainly were not going to put them to any use. They have sat in my drawers for quite a few years and now out they come to rescue my project. It’s a different kind of silk and I hope that it takes the black dye as well as my 60/2s does.

And now I have realized that I really need to weave a fourth panel.

The third one in the series, which is the one on the left in the photo above, shows me in my present timeless state…happily weaving away within my walls in my own little world with everything outside the walls being a big black unknown. I think I need to finish the story with a panel that shows that I am actually able to imagine myself in a future post-pandemic world. I had a dream recently in which I could hear magpies singing outside my window which is a very Australian sound to me. It was so real. Birds seem to be carrying messages to me lately.

If you are unfamiliar with the sound of magpies, here is a little clip that I made the last time I was in Australia in 2019.

In this break between working on the panels, I decided to try out an idea for the fourth panel using some 20/2 cotton and warp-faced double weave.

I was inspired by Japanese braids that had been created on a takadai braiding stand that I had photographed at the Braids 2012 conference in Manchester, England. Yes, it has taken me this long to get around to taking a closer look at them.

What attracts to me them is the way the motifs are not contained within the width of braid. Sometimes you only see half the motif or even less lying along the edge. The motifs roll off the edge and then reappear later. If you understand that I want this fourth panel to represent the opposite to being confined within walls, you might see where I am hoping to go with this. 

My double weave sample is in black and gold 20/2 cotton with flowers that I saw on the Japanese braids just to see if I could create the same kind of effect using a totally different structure. The real project will naturally be in red and black 60/2 (or, more likely, doubled 140/2) silk and the motif will be humming birds. I am in the very early stages of getting this idea sorted.

So, that’s what I have been up to. Now I can show you what some of my weaving friends and online acquaintances have been doing…

Jessica used a band lock and rigid heddle in a backstrap set-up to weave this beautiful band in which the pattern is created by supplementary warp threads. You can see the brown belt that she uses to secure the warp to her body.

Susan Bratt is keeping all her friends supplied with her beautiful guitar straps. She uses a backstrap loom with dowel rods like I do and the patterning structure is Andean Pebble Weave. 

This beauty is by Rosita Scheidt using a pebble structure that doesn’t have regularly repeating pebble sheds. This is one of the classic Andean hook patterns which is charted in my More Adventures with warp-faced Pick-up Patterns book.

Here’s another classic Andean hook pattern that Joanne Teague wove on her inkle loom. This one appears in Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms as well as in Complementary-warp Pick-up. That hook shape is the base of so many larger and more intricate Andean patterns.

This one was woven by Sally Backes. I love her beautiful dense twisted fringe. these kinds of knotwork patters work really well in Andean Pebble Weave. This is one that was designed by Louise Ström for tablets. She allowed me to adapt it to Andean Pebble Weave for my books. It’s in the More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns book.

I have shown Shilpa Nagarkar’s work here before. She combines bands and constructs the most amazing bags. There’s that classic Andean hook again in black and white. These patterns are in the pebble weave structure. She also weaves and includes bands that use supplementary-warp techniques and plain weave. Her piece is on one of the Windhaven double-sided band looms. You can see more of her work on Instagram.

Anyone for more hooks? The options seem endless and this is one of my favorites of the Andean hook patterns in the Complementary-warp Pick-up book. This was woven by Jennifer E Kwong.

To finish I want to show these five little dragon patterns in Andean Pebble Weave that I don’t believe I have shown before. Several years ago, I was asked to translate a popular historic double dragon figure that is traditionally woven using tablets to the Andean Pebble Weave structure. An online friend wanted to weave it on an inkle loom without using tablets. It’s the second one from the left. Of course, the chart I created is for a simplified version of the original and the structure is totally different. I liked the little dragons and looked for more tablet-woven bands that included the dragon heads. So, here are five of them.

The charts for these are included in my More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns book.

I am really excited about the fact that I have been invited to attend a presentation next Saturday by a lady who traveled to Costa Rica to learn about the preparation of cotton for weaving and the creation of cloth on a backstrap loom. I had no idea that the backstrap loom was still being used in Costa Rica by the Boruca people. I hope to have something to share with you about that next time.