intermesh – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Accidents

**There’s been weaving happening at my backstrap loom but this has been a bit different from a standard band-weaving project. A recent incident turned this into an interesting challenge.**

Regular readers of my blog may recall mentions now and then of the fact that I literally fell into weaving after taking a fall while out mountain biking in Colorado. That incident back in 1995, which left me on crutches for six weeks in a Colorado youth hostel, started a chain of events that created the backstrap weaver that I am today. If you’d like to know more, I can tell you that during the pandemic British weaver Stacey Harvey-Brown invited a few dozen weavers to tell the story of how they got into weaving for her Loom Room blog. It’s fascinating reading about the different paths the various invitees have taken to arrive at their looms. Here’s the link to mine.

The reason I’ve taken this little trip back in time to think about an accident thirty years ago that became a life-changing event is because a couple of weeks ago I once again found myself down on the ground thinking “Ouch!”

While in 1995 my first thoughts were about how all my plans to hike and camp in the Utah canyons had been ruined (hiking was my passion at that time), this time my first thoughts were about weaving and all the other fiber-related activities I do that require an intact dominant hand. Darn it, I had broken my right wrist and it required surgery. Was this also going to be a life-changing event?

This screen shot from security camera footage shows white-headed me walking away in the distance while a happy-go-lucky dog bears down on me. It kept going and ran right into the back of my legs taking me out like bowling ball hitting a pin!

Anyway, I’m determined not to let this slow me down too much while remaining sensible and giving myself time to heal. First up was a visit with my Ayoreo teacher, Rocío. She’s been teaching me about the traditional process of stitching bags using garabatá thread as well as about the patterns that identify the various Ayoreo clans.

**Rocío showing me how she connects two lengths of thread without using a knot.**

The last time I’d seen Rocío I had still been practicing the basic stitch using crochet cotton. Since then, and without Rocío’s knowledge, I’ve been scavenging bits of garabatá thread from various sources and working entirely with that material.

The most recent piece was this bag that I stitched during the Carnival break…

My indigenous weaving teachers have never been in the habit of expressing much enthusiasm when I show them my creations. Sometimes it’s a little crushing but I know it’s just their way. My current Guaraní teachers are particularly cool! So, of course I was glowing with pride when Rocío reacted so joyfully to the things I showed her. I think she was shocked. She particularly liked the red, black and white bag with the woven backing I used. I showed that in my last blog post.

She immediately called her husband to come and take photos.

The idea of my visit was to have her show me how to spin and ply the garabatá fiber that she had brought me. While I won’t be able to use my hand to do it myself for some time, at least I can turn it over in my mind in the meantime. A friend came with me and took video. The most valuable thing was seeing how Rocío joins lengths of spun and plied thread during the stitching process without having to use a knot. I hadn’t been successful doing it and had been resorting to using a dab of glue as backup. Rocío was not impressed when I confessed that! We really focused on it this time and I’ve learned a thing or two that had previously escaped me because I simply hadn’t been ready for it yet.

**Showing Rocío some woven rather than stitched garabatá.**

**The fiber is** **spun and plied by rolling it along the upper leg. Both hands need to be involved so I’ll just have to be patient.**

As for that hatband project, I decided that it was time to smarten up my left hand. I really needed to at least try.

**It was a little** **discouraging at first because this is the distance I was able to weave after three consecutive days of spending one to two hours at the loom.**

The gift project had a deadline and I didn’t see myself being able to complete it. But my left hand got smarter and faster and I found that once the cast had been switched to a brace, I could at least insert the pinky of my right hand into the shed to hold it open while I inserted the sword.

**One-handed pick-up. I’m just holding the sword here for the photo. I couldn’t rotate my wrist to be able to insert it in the shed.**

**In progress on the loom and finished. I wish I could complete the gift by attaching it to my friend’s hat but I don’t think either hand is up for that kind of sewing right now.**

And then came a visit with my Guaraní teacher, Eldina.

**Eldina working on a warp just wide enough to be able to demonstrate for me the technique the Guaraní weavers call Moisi.**

I forgot to bring my swords so we used scissors to separate the threads that needed to be heddled. Three sets of heddles are used for this structure. Eldina’s 5-month-old baby girl is never far away when she’s weaving and teaching.

Eldina had to call her mother to be reminded of how threads are selected to go into each set of heddles. Grandma Clara is the Moisi expert while Eldina tends to focus on Karakarapepo. According to Eldina, pick-up for the Moisi style is much more complicated than it is for Karakarapepo. If you’ve read my posts from long ago when I was studying with my very first Guaraní teacher, Angela, you might remember that I soon realized that the structure that I call Intermesh and which I first learned from an Ayacucho weaver in Peru in 1995, is the same as Moisi. This allowed me to easily replicate some of the lovely patterns that Angela had been weaving to make cell phone pouches. Replication is always one of my first steps in learning.

**A cell phone pouch that I wove using the intermesh structure back in the days when phones were small and cute.**

Hopefully, Eldina will eventually take on all of Clara’s skills and knowledge and maybe pass them on to her baby daughter some day.

**Mother and baby busy** **at the loom!**

Clara has been working on samples of jaguar skin print using the Moisi technique for a project that a wildlife photography guide is planning. While this sample is not exactly what the guide has in mind, I’m so in love with this Moisi piece. I think it’s stunning. Hopefully the guide will be able to communicate more precisely his vision for this project but he is, of course, paying for materials and compensating Clara for the time she has spent so far. Commissioned work is hard!

It’s really interesting for me to discover that the thread arrangement while warping and the thread selection for heddles is really different from the way I was taught in Peru. Once my hand is back in actIon, I’d like to set up a warp for my backstrap loom in the way Eldina and Clara set up on their vertical loom. I’d like to see if there’s perhaps some slight difference in the structure that I’m missing. The woven results certainly appear to be identical.

So, my backstrap loom is just a bunch of sticks now. I might give left-handed warping a go eventually to see if I can manage the Guaraní style of set-up for Moisi. But for the next two weeks at least I’ll be giving my wrist a chance to quietly heal. Maybe I’ll dig out the files in which I’ve started writing new books and get my thoughts reorganized on those. I’m in a transition period right now having sold my old apartment and not in a position to set up for photo shoots but at least I could work on the overall plan, chapter headings etc. A good introduction always gets the ball rolling. Let’s see….

And, speaking of my books….the hatband pattern, or at least something very similar, is in my More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns book. There are so many versions of the snake pattern which is basically an embellished zig-zag and I’m often adapting them to suit the number of threads with which I’m working.

If you’re a regular visitor to my blog and have at some point thought about perhaps buying one of my books, maybe you’d like to take the step to buying one now at taprootvideo.com. The accident and resulting surgery have been a significant financial blow and every little bit helps! I’d really appreciate it!

Backstrap Weaving – Yards of Deserts and Dreamlands

Great width and great length are two things that I cannot hope to comfortably achieve on my backstrap loom and so it was nice to be able to spend time with my friend Claudia and be there just in time to see her pull yards and yards of soft Hawaiian sunrise fabric off her floor loom. Claudia and Janet, who together form Lotsaknots Studio, have been weaving baby wraps….yards and yards of custom baby wraps. It seems that many new moms out there in the Western world like to “wear” their babies these days and put a lot of thought into the color of their custom-made baby-carrying fabric. Claudia cut the fabric off the loom and then pulled and pulled out over 8 yards of fabric for two wraps. It tumbled onto the floor in a pile of luscious soft sunrise tones.

Of course, mothers in Asia, Africa, Central and South America and many other regions around the world have always carried their babies either in front or back wrapped in fabric so that baby can accompany them in every aspect of their daily lives…on a trip to market, working bent over in the fields or at the stove, carting water from the well…

One of my weaving teachers in Guatemala shows me her nephew which she carries in a woven sling. His little cap is a woven piece which has been decorated with a double faced supplementary-weft technique. Therectabgle of fabric has a draw string through the top which is pulled to the form the cap. — One of my weaving teachers in Guatemala shows me her nephew which she carries in a woven sling. His little hat is a woven piece which has been decorated with a double faced supplementary-weft technique. The rectangle of fabric has a draw string along the top which is pulled to close the top of the hat

A lady in Bolivia carries her randchild on her back leaving her hands free to spin yarn on a drop spindle. The carrrying cloth is traditionally hand woven although this lady is using a synthetic factory-made piece. These cloths are used tocarry any kind of load...goods being taken to and from market or "luggage" on a trip. — A lady in Bolivia carries her grandchild on her back leaving her hands free to spin yarn on a drop spindle. The carrying cloth is traditionally hand woven although this lady is using a synthetic factory-made piece. These cloths are used to carry any kind of load…goods being taken to and from market or “luggage” on a trip.

When I went to the Tinkuy in Cusco in 2010, I accompanied a group of weavers from Cochabamaba. We had quite a trek to make from the bus stop to our lodgings and I was very envious of the ladies as they wrapped their duffel bags in their carrying cloths, tossed them on their back and headed off down the dusty road. I lugged mine, handles over my forearm and with bag clumsily bumping along against my hip. Guess who made better progress.

My Vietnamese weaving tecaher Ju Nie showed us how she wraps a baby sling. The Montagnard baby slings are woven on backstrap looms and often decorated with motifs in supplementary weft. made — My Vietnamese weaving teacher Ju Nie showed us how she wraps a baby sling. The Montagnard baby slings are woven on backstrap looms and often decorated with motifs in supplementary weft. Using a circular warp on a backstrap loom make these kinds of lengths more manageable. They are usually woven as two separate panels which are then sewn together.

I enjoyed learning about the whole process involved in the creation of one of the Lotsaknots custom wraps. First, the mother will describe her needs and usually provides a picture which contains the kinds of colors that she would like to have in her wrap.

This is the picture that was used for the latest wrap on Claudia’s loom which has been entitled Dreamland. The yarn is ordered and Janet wraps colors around card to help determine the final layout. She has amazing talent for this and I think that she has captured the tones and mood of the picture beautifully. As I stick to red, black and white for my entire series of wall hangings, this talent for combining colors is one that I envy.

Then comes the job of winding all those yards of warp. One half will be the custom wrap made to the mother’s specified length. The second wrap will have a different weft color which will give it quite a different look and this “sister wrap” can be sold online.

I loved seeing these chained sections of warp sitting on the floor ready to go on the loom. They reminded me of snakes of berry-flavored soft serve icecream oozing out of a machine.

I am often mystified by the way people gasp at all that is involved in setting up for backtrap weaving. People roll their eyes when they look at all the string heddles I have to make. I don’t get it. I have to say that that is nothing compared to the process of getting this kind of warp onto a floor loom! Now I know what rough sleying is and understand the need for a trapeze when warping. Then there are all those heddles to thread and then the reed. Some of it seems really hard for one person to do all alone.

Here are all the threads on the apron rod after having been rough-sleyed. Doesn’t that look gorgeous! I learned a lot watching Claudia do all this and I was even able to lend a hand now and then. I was sorry not to have been around long enough to witness the entire process.

We could have finished it but Clauda wanted to take advantage of my being there to get in a little backstrap weaving so we spent some time on that. She has been wanting to do rep weave and, as she has never done it before, I was happy to be able to get a sample project set up and started on her loom.

Here’s the start of a pink and lavender rep weave. I love the kind of ikat effect that appears in the warp threads as you are in the process of changing sheds. Rep weave is a piece of cake for me as I am used to doing warp-faced weaves and rep weave simply involves alternating a thick and thin weft. The effect is lovely and it weaves up so very fast with that thick weft. Claudia would like to make a set of four placemats in repweave on her backstrap loom and will use a circular warp to get the desired length for all four pieces. The width is one that is easily manageable on a backstrap loom.

Here’s the rep weave piece that I made some time ago for my tray table. It is decorated with complementary-warp pick up pattern.

Here’s Claudia’s piece underway. I was having fun with it and had to try not to go too far before letting Claudia take over. She was busy hemming her just completed pair of wraps while I worked on this. Above you can see where I have just started making a change of dominant color by swapping the sheds into which I place the thick and thin wefts.

Claudia does some backstrap weaving every time I visit and goes back to her floor loom when she finishes her project. Therefore, it takes her a little time to get back into the swing of things after having had a long break. Above, you can see that she is well underway. We used a pick-up stick to make that small block of color change and now she is back into the original sequence. It is just a short warp for sampling. Now she has a nice width sample which will help her calculate how much warp she needs to wind for her placemat project. She is using 3/2 perle cotton.

This was a nice break for Claudia between baby wraps. The baby wrap business is never ending with 47 people on the custom order waitlist!

Here’s one of the earlier wraps which was called Sedona. I love this one!

The color arrangement was inpired by this painting…

And here is the fabric….it is a wonderful representation of the painting, don’t you think?

This next one was entered in a Facebook wrap challenge which had a theme of Wizard of Oz…

The metallic red threads, which I think are such a nice touch, represent Dorothy’s ruby red slippers.

Unfortunately, I didn’t photograph the Hawaiian sunrise beauties when they came off the loom but, no doubt, they will be on the Lotsaknots blog page soon. Doing custom-made pieces is quite a challenge, I think. With only phone calls, email correspondece and maybe a photo, a major piece like this has to be designed and constructed to match what the mom envisions as being perfect for her baby. I really believe that Janet and Claudia are a good team for this. Janet doesn’t weave but is so good at putting the colors together while Claudia has years of experience at the loom and sewing machine. I can’t wait to see Dreamland when it comes off the loom.

Last Saturday I wove at Terri’s place. Some of you may know Terri as Magical Moons on Etsy. Terri makes beautiful swords for backstrap weaving as well as spindles, pick-up sticks and other tools for fiber artists.

She weaves with me whenever I am in the Maryland area. Laritza joined us. Stephanie, who has never woven fabric before, (she studies basket weaving with Terri) came to have her first-ever try at backstrap weaving.

It was a spring day…a REAL spring day… and we all felt guilty for being indoors in Terri’s workskop while the sun poured down and warmed the air outside. For everyone who had endured the long long winter it was a truly unique day.

It didn’t last long as you can see at left. That was the following Tuesday. I felt guilty about being so pleased with it when everyone just rolled their eyes and said “not AGAIN!”. I didn’t want so much snow that my travel plans would be disrupted…just enough to make things pretty.

We didn’t have to be out in it. We were weaving away warm and snuggly in the studio looking out and watching it accumulate.

Here’s Stephanie making her first patterned band using what I like to call the “barefoot method”…no sticks… just string and fingers.

Laritza and Terri wove intermesh. This technique was taught to me in Peru with two sets of string heddles. This gave the ladies some good heddle making practice as a warm-up before they could get into the weaving. This is one of the patterning techniques that I teach in my second book.

Laritza’s warp goes well with her sweater. Inside it was sweater weather…outside, it was almost warm enough to shed them.

That’s Terri working on her intermesh warp.You may remember from previous posts that Terri spends a good part of the year living on Nantucket Island where she has studied basket making with the master weavers there. Below you can see an example of one of her friendship baskets. The little dog figure was contributed by another artisan but the basket is Terri’s. Everything she does including her woodwork is impeccable. I love using her swords.

Here is a gorgeous keyfob that she gave me after our time together. It has a piece of whale tooth which Terri shaped and polished. It is a “worry” piece, Terri tells me, as the piece of tooth is just the pefect shape for holding in your hand and rubbing with your thumb when you are feeling agitated. The smooth polished surface really does have a soothing feel.

So, now I am in South Jersey ready to weave with a group tomorrow..

I met Trisha and April from this group at the annual Spinning Seminar at the Mannings last summer and the idea for this gathering was born. How time flies! I had known Trisha for a long time as part of the Backstrap Weaving Group on Weavolution from way back in 2009. Now we finally get to weave together.

I just received one of my new books from the printer. It looks very handsome with its new red coil binding in place of the black comb that I have been using. I love it.

See you next week from Massachusetts.

Backstrap Weaving – The Plain Parts

I live right in the heart of Santa Cruz city. It is a crazy jungle of tangled electrical wiring, crumbling adobe and sagging red rooftops. Even when I am alone in my little condo I can sense the beat of the city as people go about their daily lives…booming tropical rhythms, car horns constantly blaring, the scratching scraping sound as the washer woman in the building next door scrubs the heck out of the clothes. And then there are the smells. At any hour of day or night someone somewhere in the neighborhood is having a barbecue. I live within a stone’s throw of one of the city’s largest street markets. That brings its own collection of interesting aromas. The football stadium is four blocks away….faint cheers, chants and whistles on weekends and, if the wind is blowing the right way, I get to hear all the concerts for free. It is colorful and somewhat joyful…nothing “plain” about it, that’s for sure.

I have been going through old pictures. Here’s a reminder that there are some simple, “plain” places to which one can go to escape all the man-made mayhem. Right here in the city there is a very odd and very large and unexpected stretch of sand dunes. Go there mid-week and you can have it to yourself. On weekends it becomes yet another venue for salsa music and barbecues.

I am weaving the black panel of my wall hanging project. Nothing plain about this. In fact, I have to keep stopping and checking myself…how much pattern is too much…have I gone too far? Is it too much, overdone?

The thing is, I am still learning LOTS of lessons from weaving this piece and so I won’t be using it for the wall hanging. I will finish it and keep learning from it.

There are definitely some things I would do differently a second time around. Luckily I have a whole lot of green Guatemalan cotton that I can dye black for a second attempt and I think that my silk supply will hold out too.

I can probably make something nice from what has now become another “sample” and I will start again on the wall hanging panel.

I will tell you just one of the lessons I learned. If you are doing plain weave and using black warp and weft it really doesn’t matter if some parts of your piece are a little less warp-faced than others. You won’t be able to notice that fact.

However, when you are using a white continuous supplementary weft, it DOES matter. The smart thing to do is to put that white weft in as a tester right at the beginning. That way you will be able to tell if some of the black warps have a slightly different spacing to others as the white weft will show through. You can then go about shifting and settling the warps so that their spacing is consistent and completely hides the white weft.

At the same time I have been doing a little study of some of the different ways that indigenous weavers here treat the plain parts of their woven pieces. By plain parts I mean those that do not have any kind of pick-up patterning.

Here are some examples…from left to right…

Sample 1: A rolled edge. There are actually 18 brown warp ends there on that border that have been woven and rolled to form a sort of tube edge. The edge is good and thick and would provide very good protection for the sides of a belt. The weavers from San Ignacio de Loyola use this kind of edging for the plain weave that borders their belts.

Sample 2: Two-weft-span borders. I learned this method from my teacher Maximia in the Bolivian highlands. Look at difference in the yellow edge on sample 2 and the green 1/1 plain weave border on Sample 3.

Maxima makes a cross with her fingers while she picks the various colors needed to create her pebble weave pattern. She first takes the borders from the far side of the cross, then works her way across the warp picking her pattern , She finishes by taking the borders from the near side of the cross. This is what enables her to form the two-weft-span borders.

Sample 3: 1/1 Plain Weave. Using 1/1 plain weave as the border gives the pattern area another dimension. The border remains “flat” and the pattern area is raised. This is a very nice effect.

Sample 4: Intermesh border. This is the “thick border” that I explain in Andean Pebble Weave and was taught to me by weavers in Ayacucho. Because it is a three-shed structure, it is the perfect companion to the two-heddle pebble weave set-up. The plain borders match the thickness of the pebble weave sections.

In this pebble weave piece from Ayacucho, the red plain area on the left is woven using the intermesh structure.

Here are some of the sample bands that Maxima and I wove using the border method in Sample 2. My cell phone pouch uses the method in Sample 4 for the plain red sections.

The method I most use is that in Sample 4…intermesh.

Oline friend Larisa sent me pictures of her project using intermesh using scrap yarn for learning purposes and so the piece does not have as good a contrast in colors as she would have liked. She says that she believes that intermesh is good for “bold statements”.

Larisa tells me that her rosebud motif is based on one from Palestinian embroidery. Gorgeous!

Julia used Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale to make the pebble weave band, below. This yarn, for me, is the perfect weight for making a backstrap and I have used it often for that purpose alongside some doubled Tahki Cotton Classic for additional colors. You will need two skeins of Plymouth for a backstrap in the dimensions I give in my WeaveZine article.

You can see one of the beautiful swords in the picture from Magical Moons.

,y backstrap s made from Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale and doubled Tahki Cotton Classic. — My backstraps made from Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale and doubled Tahki Cotton Classic.

Julia wove with me one day and we played with the finishing techniques shown below in which we worked with tubular bands, coil stitches and cross knit looping.

I gave Julia a piece of wool woven cloth made by Maxima and weavers in her cooperative in Cochabamba so that she could practice her new skills. Here is her finished bag:

The broader part of the strap is two tubular bands edging a piece of linen. Beautiful work and she had just the right colors of yarn for this project.

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