Jarai – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – The Weaving Melting Pot

The Weaving Melting Pot….that is what I have bubbling away here. Every time I start a new piece on my backstrap loom I am so aware of the vast array of sources from which I have drawn technique and inspiration. I have studied weaving on a variety of simple looms here in South America, in Central America and even in North America and bring a little of everything to my work when I set up to weave on my loom of choice…the backstrap loom.

I even draw inspiration from the online weavers who work on floor looms…a handy tip about how to handle the two wefts in rep weave from Tom Knisely, ideas about finishing pieces from shadow weave weave-alongs, lessons in handling floating selvedges from discussions on twill, or from card-woven and inkle loom-woven warp patterned bands…all far removed from the Bolivian weaving environment in which I live.

They all go into the pot….stir, stir, stir….add a dash of ideas I have developed from my own experiments and onto the loom it goes. Some of my ideas having nothing to do with the traditional way of doing things……..

like using cable ties to lash my warp to the loom bar and a bicycle spoke instead of a yarn header cord. I was using cassette tape to wrap my warps for ikat until I was given “proper” ikat tape which seems acceptable in place of cabuya fiber and other natural materials in many “traditional” settings these days.

Plastic and metal??? One of the weavers I met in Candelaria found using what looked like a steel railway spike far more efficient than the traditional llama bone tool for beating in her weft. PVC pipe often replaces wooden shed rods. It’s like the time I had a lovely wooden Navajo weaving loom made for me when I lived in southern Chile and used rope to tension the warp only to find that a lot of the Navajo weavers are using metal looms and turnbuckles for tensioning. After weaving for some time on that Navajo loom I found that copper pipe for the loom bars worked much better than wood anyway.

I travel from place to place and see things and bring back ideas to add to the ingredients that go into my weaving melting pot.

And now I am about to apply some Bolivian highland weaving technology to a weaving tradition on the other side of the world.

I am jumping the gun this week by sampling for the next piece in my red, black and white wall hanging series and I am concocting quiet a brew in the old melting pot.. I say jumping the gun as I am nowhere near finished the third piece which is coming along veeeeery slowly! The other two pieces while off the loom are not yet completely finished. But the temptation to put an idea into action once it develops and starts churning in my head is irresistible!

You can see the melting pot at work in the above pieces…I took a motif designed by a German weaver for tablet weaving and wove it in an Andean technique, Chilean ponchos called chamantos influenced the leaf design hanging to which I added weft twining which has nothing to do with Chilean ponchos and the piece inspired by si’ira weavings of northern Columbia and Venezuela has more than a few of my own added touches.

Some of the traditional colors of Bedouin weaving make that the perfect influence for what will be in the fourth piece in the wall hanging series… in red, black and white, of course.

It was a weird and wonderful path that led me to Bedouin weavings way back in October 2010. I was Googling weft twining techniques after having seen the twined work of Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) backstrap weavers in North Carolina in August 2010.

A book on the Taaniko twining practiced by the Maoris of New Zealand helped me to get started on my own off-loom experiments…. a Maori technique for Vietnamese patterns…straight out of the melting pot!

This piece has Montagnard designs as well as motifs found in both Bedouin weaving and twining. My Google searches led me to sites with Bedouin weaving and I was in love! I bought Joy Totah Hilden’s book on Bedouin weaving after finding her website and was pleased to be able to see images of the back of the woven pieces making the technique easy to identify as warp substitution which I already knew how to do. There is a link to a pdf on Bedouin weaving by Hilden on my RESOURCES page.

It was clear from the book that the Bedouin do their twining both on and off the loom and so I was interested in trying it on the loom…it’s so much easier when the warp is under tension, as far as I am concerned, and that enabled me to use much finer yarn than I had used for the off-loom piece.

Here is the first piece with its al’ouerjan (in which I had made a warping mistake) and shajarah patterns. The al’ouerjan pattern is the checkerboard type design on the sides.

The twined sections are sometimes worked in the middle of the woven piece as well as at both ends.

I then dove into the melting pot and added a finish of wrapped warp ends…

I enjoyed the process and I wanted to know more…both about weft twining in general and about Bedouin weaving.

I was especially curious as I found out from Betsy, who works with the Montagnard weavers in North Carolina, that their weft twining technique is done off-loom and this astonished me as the yarn they use for their designs is so very fine (Cebelia #20 or finer). I had to see and learn this! Betsy was happy to have me visit and I was able to learn from Jarai weaver, Ngach.

And in the meantime, Tracy, a member of the Backstrap Weaving Group on Ravelry, started showing us gorgeous pictures of Bedouin textiles from the souk in Doha Qatar where she currently lives and telling us about her experiences watching a Bedouin weaver at work.

From books and images on the internet to suddenly finding myself seated next to Ngach, watching her bobbins twirl as she gracefully applied weft twined patterns to her large blanket piece off the loom, listening to her stories about her desire and determination as a young girl to learn to make the traditional kteh patterns. It was a dream come true.

Once back home, I stirred the tricks and tips I had witnessed with Ngach about color changes, hiding the ”bump” and other details into the pot and made my own kteh designs on my backstrap woven piece which you can see above.

I did it on the loom as my off-loom techniques still really needed some work! The advantage with off-loom twining is that several backstrap woven pieces once off the loom can be joined together and then the weft twining can be added along the edge of the entire piece. I have yet to do that and will definitely do so one of these days. I have my bobbins and thread ready!

Much later, the following year, came a golden gift in the form of bag made from pieces of Bedouin weaving that Tracy sent to me through a friend who was visiting Bolivia.

Once again, imagine the thrill of getting to feel and smell the real thing…forgive me but that coarse handspun wool is just begging to be smelled! The bag is pictured above on the right next to the cotton piece that I made.

As you can see below, the floats that form in in the shajarah pattern area (the black and white design strip) are really very long! Some of them are even broken from possibly having gotten caught on things.

Now back to the sample I am weaving for the fourth wall hanging. I want to do a Bedouin-style piece but I do not want the long floats on the back. Tracy showed us images of pieces from a co-operative in Oman in which the weavers had found a way to tie down the floats in the al’ouerjan parts (the checkerboard patterns) of their weaving possibly to make the pieces more attractive to foreign customers. It didn’t take long for me to see that they were using a second fine weft to do so. This makes the woven cloth more practical too.

You can see the long floats that you typically get on the back of the fabric in the lower right hand corner of the image on the right and see how the appearance improves when the second fine weft is used. Unfortunately the second fine weft does not do much for improving the appearance of the shajarah patterns (the larger back and white patterns).
The solution to that is to go once more to the ingredients on the shelf and add some of the Bolivian highland weaving technology that I mentioned earlier to the mix. So I added embedded double weave to my sample, a technique I learned while studying with weavers in Potosi, Bolivia.

This technique allows you to weave sections of double weave alongside plain weave in the one piece. It is essentially the same warp substitution technique but with an extra step or two which basically insures, with the use of a second weft, that all the warps are interlaced with none left to float on either face.

The two-color center section of the band at left is double weave alongside a plain-weave single-color border.

What I sometimes don’t like about the embedded double weave technique is the obvious transition in the fabric from plain weave to double…the climb from single layer to double layer and back again which naturally has to occur….it is sometimes more obvious than at other times depending quite often on the kind of yarn used, and I have been experimenting with various things to help soften that. I don’t want to make the entire piece double weave either.(The three-color double weave that would be required to weave the al’ouerjan pattern is bulky and unattractive). And that is where I throw my very own bit of spice into the melting pot!

It is still in the experimental stage but what I am trying to do is combine double weave with plain weave, add the thin weft for tying down the al’ouerjan warp floats and make the transition from plain to double weave section as subtle as possible with a trick I am trying out.

There is my first Bedouin piece on the left and the new sample on the right. The upper surfaces of both look the same and I don’t think you can tell that the center of the new sample is double weave.

The big difference is the back side of the fabric. My embedded double weave sample is on the left and my first sample with its long floats on the right. If this goes along well, I shall use this technique for my fourth wall hanging using the deeper shade of red that I have used for the other piece and incorporating more traditional Bedouin patterns.

So, enough red, black and white for goodness sake! Bring on some other colors. Here are projects from Ravelry group members and other online friends to save the day…

Oops! My bicycling friend Anna in Australia just happens to be using the same colors in a double weave piece. This is a Mapuche design from the book in Spanish by Enrique Taranto.

A new member to the Raverly group, Rob, showed us what he has been doing with simple warp floats inspired by a Guatemalan piece that Jennifer found on the Education and More website. You may remember that Bobbie wove a very large version of this in naturally dyed Guatemalan cotton thread that she bought from Education and More. Rob has added his own twist to the pattern at left.

Here are some of his other bands with simple warp floats and supplementary wefts. He used two supplementary wefts in different colors at the same time and says that one color stands out more than the other depending on the angle at which you view the piece….

Another new member, Tracy, blew us away with her first ever piece made from her own handspun wool…we love her loom set-up!

And Xav dove straight into double weave and the llama figures that I have charted here on the blog…her first ever backstrap woven band!

Jeen used her pebble weave experiments as embellishments on a couple of bags she completed. I love what she calls her “ball bag” and I think her use of variegated yarn for the border of her plain pebble weave band is so cool.

From Sweden Camila sent me pictures of her bands….

Some fun and clever designs with simple warp floats….she wove a pattern which is traditionally woven in a complementary- warp technique in the two-color simple warp float technique instead and it looks great!! On the right she has a pebble weave design from my book on her backstrap loom.

Well, I am off to continue my small sample as I think I can make something with it, weave a few rows on the third big wall hanging piece and see what unusual combination of ingredients might inspire the next piece on the loom…..

Backstrap Weaving – The ‘Tis-Done and the To-Do

I bought myself a good old fashioned acrylic board last year to write my “To-Do” list and hung it on the bedroom wall. It is not that old fashioned when I remind myself that my teaching colleagues are still using blackboards and chalk where I used to teach English here but it is indeed old fashioned in the world of IPads and such gadgets. I really need to have that To-Do list up there in front of me with a list made in brightly colored marker pens. It is so satisfying erasing something and saying ‘Tis done! What I really wanted to do was start the year with a fresh gleaming clean white board instead of one still covered with colorful scribbled lists.

These two weaving “To-Do”s were still hanging there from 2010 and I am pleased to say that one of them is about to be erased…well almost.

The double weave belt at left went on a nice trip with me to the US recently. It came out once for a weaving demonstration with a group of Bhutanese weavers in North Carolina and then went back into its bag for the rest of the trip. So, I was determined to at least get this off the loom. You may remember that this belt is a result of my twining investigations with Montagnard weavers which led me to Bedouin twining and then Bedouin warp substitution designs which I then decided to reproduce in double weave on this belt…quite a journey!

You can see the Bedouin design piece I wove above right. The warp substitution technique (see the tutorial here) produces crisp designs on a background of solid color with long floats on the back. The same designs can be produced in warp faced double weave (see the tutorial here) without the visible floats and with the patterns reversed on the back of the band. I have all the hardware ready for the belt and just have to put it together now. I need to thread one end of the belt through the buckle which means having to cut a slot in the band. What I usually do is paint the area to be cut with diluted white glue which acts as “stop fray” and then go ahead and cut.

The finished belt, with buckle in place, in the picture has been woven with simple alternating warp floats using a design from a yurt band (see the tutorial here). So, I am just about to erase this 2010 project from the board.

The other unfinished project that you saw photographed above is the sample I made after visiting Guarani weaver Angela. I had just wanted to see if I could get my head around the Moisy technique she was using so, basically, that was a mission accomplished, but I still think that I could make something useful from this piece and don’t feel like discarding it. So, that is next.

Of course I still won’t be able to wipe the board completely clean as it is now filled up with 2011 stuff. And that is the way it should be!

While I was immersed in double weave finishing off my belt, I decided I would make a video showing how to warp for this technique to add to the existing tutorial. Those of you who subscribe to Handwoven may recognize these double weave keyfobs which are shown in the Jan/Feb issue…

This will probably sound completely ridiculous to those of you who are used to winding warps of several yards or meters for multiple projects on your large looms…I wind a tiny warp for each and every keyfob. Warping for double weave and making string heddles across such a narrow warp is such a breeze for me that it doesn’t bother me at all to have to repeat the process for each and every fob. I love the opportunity to play with colors and not have any two fobs the same. I can create a third selvedge for every fob and save time not having to deal with hemming a raw edge which is tricky and often unsightly in double weave. I did weave thirteen identical fobs on an inkle loom once and won’t do that again.

And, as I always say, the only trouble with double weave is deciding which side you prefer…

Decisions, decisons…which side do I prefer? Here are the backs of some of the keyfobs shown above.

The big problem for those learning double weave is that it can be painfully slow. There are a lot of steps and, until you understand why you are making the moves, it all seems like a terrible amount to have to memorize.

It is easy to miss a step and make a mess or lose your way if you have to leave it for a moment…just part of the learning process.

I have been told several different versions of what this little design represents by weavers here in Bolivia and I wrote a little about this here. In any case it is a simple neat design, easy to memorize and fun to weave.

The pattern chart is on the left.

I made several pieces of video covering warping, creating the third selvedge, making string heddles and putting in a second cross to stabilize the shed rod. This week I am trying to just post the warping and third selvedge segments. These videos take so long to upload and my internet connection is not cooperating today. I will add others each week and have them stored on the double weave tutorial page. I hope you find them helpful (once I get them up there).

While on the topic of warping, we have started the Weave Along in the Backstrap Group on Ravelry and, hopefully, participants have read my three little tips from last week’s post particularly the one about the importance of having a good stable set up for warping. Some photos of improvised warping have been posted in the online weaving groups in the meantime…

This is from backstrap weaver Fliegenpilz in Germany, whose idea it was to have this Weave Along in the first place. She has warped for a pebble weave band following the instructions in my book.

Phil has himself nicely set up to weave in his rocker. Check out how he wound his warp with stakes lodged in kitchen drawers.

I caught the next picture in another weaving group on Ravelry…

Pancha says that her idea for warping, pictured above, originally sprang from her desire to try backstrap weaving. She has used it for other looms too but is now fed up with bending and walking up and down and has ordered a warping board.

Other weavers from Weavolution have shared their finished projects with me…

Deanna wove these bands decorated with Andean pebble weave designs on her Leclerc Dorothy 15″ table loom following the draft in my book. She also backstrap weaves and ties up her loom to her 40″ sixteen-shaft Macomber loom…a nice sturdy place to attach a loom bar.

Speaking of which, here is Jennifer’s pebble weave warp tied to the castle of her floor loom…

She has it angled steeply upward which means that she has the warp threads quite close to her for doing pick up and does not need to bend. Each weaver will find their own way. I prefer a gentler angle.

Marsh Knox of PandulaArts has been following the tutorial on simple warps floats and weaves on a Gilmore Mini Wave loom. I have shown many of her finished bands here. Recently she had some of her bands, which she made with alternating floats, sewn into a mini tote bag for a friend…She calls this the “one-skein project” bag.

I had a few things going on this week. Firstly we got a short reprieve from the heat and humidity and were able to turn off the a/c and have the windows open for a whole day. This gave me the chance to boil up the nasty llama bones I have had lying around since my friend Anna brought them to me from the highlands a few months ago. These are the wichuñas, the bone tools used by weavers here to beat in the weft and pick up warp threads for patterning. They are also used in Peru where they are called rukis.

Several boilings and changes of water were needed to get them cleaned up. The smell!! There they are on the right – white and gleaming. The tips could do with a bit of refining but otherwise they are good to go. Several years of use will have them take on the lovely hue of old ivory and I have seen some very old ones that have the tone and shine of polished wood.

That was another 2010 task to gladly erase from the board.

As for the ongoing twining obsession, I started a loom bag project and am twining its strap with letters. Just when I started thinking that I was taking the twining obsession a little too far with this lettering fad, I was shown these fabulous images of Batak twining…The Batak people live in northern Sumatra in the hilly region of Lake Toba.

These amazing textiles are part of the collection of Pamela Cross and she has allowed me to show them to you here on my blog. She describes the above piece as a Toba Batak sadum (a woman’s shoulder cloth). Twined lettering! This twining is so very different to that done by the Jarai and Rhade weavers with whom I studied. How beautiful.

Here are some more images that Pamela shared of the twined bands on other Batak textiles…The following one is a ragi hotang which I understand is a shoulder wrap.

Gasp!

The following is a surisuri. Pamela says that the surisuri is one of three types of indigo-dyed textiles used for Toba Batak rituals.

Here are twined bands from several different types of Batak textiles. The design on the second one from the top is so Andean-looking don’t you think?!

It is exciting to know that there is a book available now by writer/researcher Sandra Niessen, PhD on Batak textiles:

“Legacy in cloth: Batak textiles of Indonesia offers the first definitive study of the woven heritage of the Toba, Simalungun, and Karo Batak.

The most complete analysis of Batak textiles ever published, it provides a record of more than 100 different design types, including archival and contemporary photographs showing how the textiles are woven and how they are used in Batak culture.

Legacy benefits from fieldwork conducted over two decades and consultation of all major European collections of Batak textiles and private collections in Indonesia.”

Even more exciting for me was being able to make contact with Sandra.

She kindly shared some pictures taken by MJA Nashir of a Batak woman twining. The process is not at all like that practiced by my Montagnard friends.

The weft appears to be tensioned between the toes and a small stick seems to be used to aid in the twisting of the two wefts. No doubt Sandra’s book thoroughly discusses the process and I am itching to get the book and have my curiosity satisfied and learn more about the Btak people and their textiles.

Sandra tells wonderful stories on her blog of how she has been returning to the villages where she conducted her research to present copies of her book to the weavers.

Well…after all that eye candy here is the humble twined bag strap I have been making with twined letters.

The idea is to twine the word “weave” in several languages. I have just begun the German version. I hope to do French, Portuguese, Quechua, Aymara, Guarani, Russian, Jarai and many more, if they will fit, with each word in a different font. I would love to hear from blog readers around the world who can tell me how to say “weave” in their language.

The letters are a munched version of those in Linda Hendrickson’s book Please Weave a Message. Remember that Linda’s letters have been designed for card weaving, not twining, and are far prettier than the ones I have used here. Check out Linda’s page to see her gorgeous lettered bands.

So this will be the strap for the loom bag in which I will carry my backstrap on future trips. The shape will be based on the camera tripod bag which I have been using until now. I haven’t put much thought yet into the body of the bag but I will weave it on my backstrap loom using a heavy-ish black mercerized cotton and some of my new Tahki Cotton Classic thread for patterns and embellishments.

And continuing on the lettering theme, weaving friend and blog visitor Sharon Kersten completed the chart of letters for the Montagnard warp float lettering tutorial that I did last week and has sent it to me to pass on to all of you. She saw my photo below of various bag straps woven with letters and used it to chart what she thinks the missing letters could look like as well as the numbers. Many thanks!

I will leave you here for this week with this new Bolivian beverage…

Peru has its Inka Kola and now we have”Coca Colla”! It’s a play on words, not bad spelling…”colla” being the word to describe people of indigenous origins here in Bolivia (pronounced coya- the oy sounds like the oy in “boy”). It is made with coca leaf extract, is heavy in caffeine and slightly carbonated. All I can say is that…weeeel…. it tastes as good as it looks. 😉 Cheers!

Backstrap Weaving – Weft twining with the Montagnard backstrap weavers.

But first a look at gorgeous rural Maryland where I am currently staying with friends on the first day when it has felt really cold out. There has been talk of snow on Friday…I hope so as we are putting up the Christmas decorations here that day! while Santa Cruz Bolivia in the meantime experiences a “cool” change with temperatures dipping below 30C (86F). Most of the leaves have fallen here and it’s interesting to see the turkey vultures perched in the gaunt leafless tree across the street every morning.

Last week I was down in North Carolina where the weather was mild and the neighborhoods were still awash with red, gold, yellow and brown.

I was down there revisiting the Montagnard (Vietnamese hill tribe) weavers whom I had met on a visit last August about which I wrote in this previous post. I had discovered Betsy Renfrew’s videos and photos on her blog about the group of Montagnard people in her community and her project to help them integrate and find sources of income by teaching them English and making it possible for them to gather the materials and resources necessary to build looms, buy thread and practice their traditional weaving skills. Betsy was more than willing to extend an invitation to visit. She has also allowed me to use some of her photos in this blog post.

last visit — Betsy and weaver Ngach together on the left during my first visit. On the right a scene from my first visit with Lisa and Maurice in Betsy’s home with weavers Ngach, Ju Nie and her husband Thomas. It was a chaotic afternoon with lots of chatter, sharing and interaction which cleared away all language barriers. Backstrap looms and textiles covered the floor of Betsy’s front room and, as this was my very first encounter with these kinds of textiles, it was impossible to wade through and take it all in during our short visit and I left with many unanswered questions knowing that I would simply have to return one day.

JU and me last visit — We got to see Ju warping and setting up her loom and Lisa and I both got to try out her warping technique where she adds string heddles as she winds the warp as well as weave on her backstrap loom. I tried to photograph as many woven pieces as I could – skirts, blankets, baby carriers bags and belts so that I could figure out the woven structures when I got home. Ngach put on skirts for us and Ju modeled the baby carriers. Many of the structures I immediately recognized and it was fun to show Ju and Ngach pieces woven with the same techniques in South America. In fact that was the most fun part of the visit…comparing and sharing our different experiences with the textiles, patterns, tools and looms and seeing for what purpose the textiles were intended. I was able to study and figure out some of the other less recognizable techniques when I got home.

Some of the different patterning techniques which include simple warp floats, cross knit looping, supplementary warp and weft can be seen below…

I like the supplementary weft patterned piece on the right as it reminds me very much of some flower motifs that I recently wove using Guatemalan supplementary weft and warp wrapping techniques. The similarities in the designs across cultures are astounding.

If you have been following my blog, you will know that the technique which really grabbed my attention was the following one which both Ju and Ngach, who are from different tribes, call kteh.

Above you can see two pieces with the kteh weft twining technique that Ngach has worked around the warps on the edge of her woven blankets. The upper left picture is a loin cloth which Susan Stem showed me when I made inquiries about this technique on the Tribal Textiles forum. I think that Ngach’s pieces are every bit as fine as the example photographed by Susan.

So this was the technique that I really wanted to learn more about and I got to see even more amazing examples on this most recent visit.

When I got home I was keen to try weft twining and made examples in different colors using Montagnard designs that I had photographed and seen online. (at left)

I learned a twining technique from books on Maori Taaniko..You can read more about this here and here.

I was surprised on my visit last week to see the use of yellow in the main design in one of the pieces as, by coincidence, I had chosen it to use in my own experiments at home.

All the pieces I had seen on the previous visit as well as in books and online had been patterned in only red and white with only the stripes done in green and yellow.

In weft twining, strands of “weft” are twisted around warps. When weft strands of two colors are used, patterns can be formed by controling which of the two colors appears on the upper surface of the piece after each twist.

Here are some more examples of Ngach and Ju’s work in kteh technique.

The above piece of kteh adorns the edge of an extremely fine skirt which Ju wove and which H Ni Buonya modeled for me.

Instead of being wrapped and tucked as traditional skirts are, this skirt had hooks sewn into its waist band which held the folds in place.

The twining was flawless and the selvedges impeccable. I think this was the finest of all the pieces I saw.

Eventhough I was able to reproduce the designs in my bulky cotton thread, I couldn’t feel convinced that I was on the right track until I could compare the reverse of the kteh pieces to my own twined work.

Besty sent me a picture of the back of a piece and I was finally able to see for myself on my visit.

What I really wanted to do was learn how to do the twining alongside Ju and Ngach and Betsy was able to organize classes for me with both ladies. Ju and Ngach, as I said before, are from two different tribes, the Rhade and the Jarai and both Betsy and I thought that it would be interesting to see differences in the way the two ladies did their twining.

classes with Ngach and Ju — LEFT: Twining class with Nagch at Betsy’s house. At right, Ju shows me how she gathers the warps in groups and sizes them before twining.

I first met up with Ju at Betsy’s house where a collector was coming to see and possibly purchase one of Ju’s woven pieces. Ju, who I gather never likes to have idle hands, had brought along a finished piece of weaving that was to be sewn into a bag. She was busy twisting the fringe dragging the warps through a wad of sticky cooked rice that she carried in tissue and then rolling them on her leg to set the twist. She would select four warp ends, divide them into two pairs and then, with one quick movement, roll the two pairs away from her on her leg and then swiftly roll the two twisted strands back toward her to unite them.

She used this same kind of sizing to twist and group the warps ends together for twining which, as a beginner, I found very helpful . Ngach on the other hand does not size the warp ends.

The first class was with Ngach. After having seen pictures of Ngach warping outdoors on Betsy’s blog it was nice to see the enormous tree where she does it in her front yard right on the edge of a very busy street.

Here you can see the different set ups that both ladies use. Both fold and tack the woven cloth so that it can be suspended on a rod or bar with the weft ends, or fringe hanging down. Ju, at left, has a lovely stand built by her husband especially for twining. Ngach suspends her work on a metal rod which she has supported on two chairs. Ngach is twining the end of a child’s skirt while Ju is twining the ends of two small bags, something which she is only doing in order to be able to teach me on a small piece.

Here are pictures of Ngach twining on warmer and brighter days courtesy of Betsy. The pictures we took this time around tended to be somewhat darker unfortunately.

The wefts are stored and carried on bobbins. Ngach says that they are made of clay in Vietnam while Ju used to use wooden ones. Both ladies have had to improvise their bobbins in their new homes.

Ngach has lovely bobbins fashioned from cement.

Ju’s were heavier and made from wood. Her husband bought a pestle from a Laos store from which he carved them. I bought a pair from her. Both use Cebelia size 20 thread.

Below you can see Ngach at work holding the warps under tension with her left hand while she twists the wefts on their bobbins with her right…one twist to change color in the pattern and two twists to continue with the same color.

Her movements are so fluid, graceful and rhythmical and she uses her one long thumb nail to separate each group of warps around which to twist the wefts. This was the part that really slowed me down…separating the warps into correct groups of three. What was nice was that Ngach and I could sit side by side and work together. I would struggle along trying to match her rhythm. We could both work simultaneously on different rows of pattern.

Here is a rather dark piece of video which will at least give you an idea of the movements. Ngach is making a pattern in red and white. Her movements are very graceful and I love the soft “clack clack” of the bobbins as she works. You will see her doing double twists when she wants to continue with the same color and a single when she wants to change colors. I have brighter but longer videos which need to be edited when I get home so I can upload in another post.

Above, Ju is twisting warps on a piece so that I can take it home and practice. I really think both my teachers enjoyed showing me this. Ju, even with her very limited English, was very talkative and eager to show me the entire process while Ngach was very keen to make sure that I learned it just right, constantly correcting and adjusting the way I was holding the warps and not letting me get away with anything. At one point when I had made a mistake and untwined to fix it, I asked her if she always undid her errors. She looked at me over the top of her glasses and said “no mistakes!”. I am not sure if that means that she doesn’t tolerate them or that she doesn’t make them but there was definitely a twinkle in her eye. I liked Ngach!

Results:

We finished a tiny design on Ju’s small piece but didn’t get as far on Ngach’s larger one. However, I enjoyed working more on Ngach’s piece for some reason. I think sitting and working alongside Ngach made all difference as I was able to watch closely and try to follow her movements and rhythm.

Each twined row always starts on the left and moves to the right. When the right edge is reached, the weft ends are knotted and cut leaving a small “fringe”. This was something I had been very curious about as the instructions in my Taaniko book indicated that one needed to ambidextrous and twine in both directions back and forth across the piece.

Ju’s enthusiasm for showing me all about the weaving arts from her home in the hills of Vietnam didn’t stop at twining. After I had become tired from twining and the concentration it required, she brought out a wonderful spinning wheel that she had had sent over from Vietnam.

What a sweet little spinning wheel this is. It is made from simple bamboo wood and wicker and all held together with hand carved wooden pins.

Ju set to spinning cotton, which had also been sent over from Vietnam, with her foot thrown over the beam of the spinning wheel to anchor it down. She really seemed to be enjoying showing this to us.

Once she had finished with her small quantity of prepared cotton, she brought out a funny little tool that looked much like an archer’s bow to prepare more. Below you can see this tool and Ju skeining on a niddy noddy.

The following video will show you how it works. I would love to show this to the cotton spinners that I stayed with in coastal Ecuador.

On another day, I got to see a bit more of Betsy’s work with the Montagnard ladies. A few weavers gathered with their looms in a local church. Its congregation has kindly allowed its space to be used for possible weaving demonstrations. The idea was to see what would be required to enable the weavers to set up their looms in those facilities . Not only would they need a strong and stable place to tie up their looms but also a way to set up the foot braces against which the weavers push to tension their warps as they weave.

Ju and H Ni attended and finally managed to get their looms set up and foot braces in place. While I find a foot brace nice to work with, I am glad that I am not dependent on one and, therefore, have more freedom to set up my loom easily in different places.

H Ni is weaving two bands at once on her loom which will be straps for shoulder bags. Weaving two straps at once helps balances out the very wide loom.

ha nies awkward set up — H Ni’s set up was a bit awkward. We had to improvise adding books and bits to her bamboo poles in order to have her foot brace within reach.

I am thinking that one of those wonderful ergonomic benches designed by Synergo Arts with its built in foot rest/brace would be a solution to this problem. I wonder if they break down in pieces for transport.

A close up of H Ni’s two straps.

Ju was weaving a narrow pick up patterned piece which will be a scarf – not one of her typical woven pieces but it has occured to her that scarves may be popular small items that visitors to her demonstrations may like to buy as opposed to skirts and blankets.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Ju and H Ni enjoyed seeing pictures of the designs from various Montagnard tribes in books that Betsy brought to the meeting.

The other purpose of the meeting was to give the weavers booklets which Betsy had put together with pictures and weaving vocabulary in English.

Khin attended the meeting to act as translator and it turns out that she too is a weaver. The problem is that many of the ladies in the community who have these weaving skills simply do not have the means to have looms made and buy thread to get started.

Betsy also made tapes for each weaver to go along with the booklets with the pronunciation of the English words for them to listen to and practice at home.

The idea is to have the weavers eventually feeling confident enough to be able to give presentations and demonstrations of their weaving to small groups in the future. I would love to return for the day when that happens and see these ladies enjoying sharing their skills with even more people with same good humor, generosity and enthusiasm that they showed me.

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Back to what I like to call the World Wide Cyber Weaving Guild….

It seems that the cold weather has brought on a flurry of weaving activity and so I am able to show you some finished projects from online friends who have visited my blog.

Anna (who is cycling from Alaska to Ushuaia and who is currently in Santiago Chile) sent me this picture of her latest pebble weave bands and Kim, whom I met at Convergence wove the pebble weave keyfob on the right. Both used the instructions from my Andean Pebble Weave book.

These are more of Kim’s bands on the left, again in pebble weave with one in simple warp floats in the middle, and Lavitaaj made this amazing supplementary weft sampler on the right using the pattern charts from my blog. There is also a section with a yurt band design in simple warp floats.

And finally, here is Marsha Knox’s band made with simple warp floats using two color combinations in the same piece while Helena in Brazil has taken the Bedouin patterning one step further with a large strip of diamond pattern bordered by the classic triangle motif. I will definitely add a tutorial on this technique to the blog soon.

UPDATE: Marsha uploaded a picture of her finished band. She reversed the scrolls and did them in brown. It looks super!

Last Sunday I got to quickly pass through the Central Asian ikat exhibit, which was stunning, at the Textile Museum in DC before attending Ann Rowe’s talk on ikat rebozos and ponchos in Latin America.

I hope to return next Saturday to take the guided tour of the exhibit, use the library where I want to look at David Fraser’s book on weft twining, and maybe pick up a few more Textile Museum journals in the gift shop.

There is hardly a journal there that doesn’t have something of interest to me. I think that eventually I will own them all.

This week Claudia and I had skills exchange. I taught her to make the tubular woven bands that I learned at the tinkuy and she introduced me to the wonderful Weavette. Yep, this was the first time I had ever seen one of these little marvels and Claudia even has an old Jiffy Loom in its original box and a plastic Weave-It. My eye was immediately caught by the cool long weaving needles that come in the kit. Aha…just the thing for weaving in the wefts for my four-selvedge warp faced pieces and so I ordered some online.

These would be just the thing for making little amulet bags…love them!

And speaking of learning new skills, here is DY, still in Peru, picking up some new techniques – drop spindling and backstrap weaving. I think she has been taking Spanish classes too.

Finally, a very happy Thanksgiving to all. I spent it Claudia and family and friends…only the third Thanksgiving I have ever had. We watched the Macy’s parade this morning and I declare the sweet potato casserole with butter, brown sugar and pecan topping my favorite dish of the day.

Backstrap Weaving – Vietnamese Hilltribe Weavers in North Carolina

VIETNAMESE HILLTRIBE WEAVERS IN NORTH CAROLINA

The colors and motifs of the Jarai and Rhade tribes of Vietnam have found their way into my work this week thanks to an amazing visit with two of these Montagnard weavers in North Carolina during the end of my US visit. Montagnard is the name that the French gave to the various hilltribes of Vietnam.

I have had to resist writing about all my fun fiber adventures with my good weaving buddies Lisa and Maurice during my stay in North Carolina and limit this post as much as I can to the two wonderful afternoons we spent with master weavers Ju Nie and Nach Rahlan.

Unfortunately on this trip I didn’t really have time to dawdle in North Carolina but we did manage to pack a whole lot of activity into my short time there.

n caro scenes — When not warping four-shaft looms, backstrap weaving, spinning and wrestling with sheets of felt, we went blueberry picking, hung out with the family, made s’mores (first time for me, okay they weren’t made over a campfire but they were still gooood!) and spent time with Maurice who made this warping board and beaters for us to play with.

felting 5 — Lisa makes beautiful felt pieces like the one here on the left. She took me through the steps to making my own simple piece on the right. Mine has an animal on it too but not a felted one! I had made felt before when I lived in Chile. Now I realize, thanks to Lisa, that I hadn’t felted it enough and that explains why I have to give it a haircut every now and then. Photos of the fun and physically demanding process will be in next week’s blog post!!

renate and lisa — We gathered a group of friends for a day of backstrap weaving. Renate here is showing off her warp while Lisa works on a yurt band design in two-color simple warp floats.

We warped up Lisa’s four-shaft loom to weave a guitar strap patterned with designs in Andean pebble weave. I will have more pictures of this next week too.

And as if that wasn’t enough….

The highlight of this visit was the trip we made to spend time with the Montagnard weavers. I was lucky to have been able to make contact with Betsy Renfrew, at left with weaver Nach Rahlan, some weeks before leaving Bolivia for this US trip. She invited me to her home where she and her husband Andrew arranged for us to meet two of the Montagnard weavers with whom she has been working. Read about Betsy and Andrew and their goals for working with the weavers here.

The first day was a “show and tell”. Maurice, Lisa and I took examples of our own fiber projects to share with weavers Ju Nie of the Rhade tribe and and Nach Rahlan of the Jarai tribe. Ju Nie’s husband Thomas Tlur Eban acted as Ju Nie’s translator at the times when she struggled to express herself in English while Nach’s English was a lot more fluent. I have to say that I was quite nervous on the drive there. Betsy had told me about Ju Nie’s lack of English fluency and had also mentioned that Ju and Nach were from two tribes that did not particularly get on. I envisioned a very awkward gathering with difficult communication and perhaps a cold stoniness between the two weavers. This couldn’t have been further from the truth!

The room virtually exploded from the very start with lots of excited chatter and movement. We were a group of weavers sharing our mutual passion!

And then it was our turn to be shown. The room that was already packed with eight people, filled to overflowing as enormous looms, blankets, skirts, carrying cloths, bags and straps were brought in to cover the floor and every available space. It was overwhelming and it was hard to concentrate on any one piece and hold back the urge to touch and examine everything at once.

The supplementary weft patterning technique used is the same as that described here. It is a single faced technique and both Ju and Nach were delighted to see Bolivian examples of this. Above you can see how panels of blankets and skirts are often joined using single columns of cross knit looping which I am used to seeing here in Bolivia in double and triple columns to edge coca leaf bags and other items. The lower picture shows simple warp float patterning where single warps are floated over a background of horizontal bars to create this striking pattern.

montagnard textiles 1 — The most astonishing pieces for me were the ones decorated with a twining technique called kteh. Seen in the example on the right, red and white threads are twined around the fringes at the end of large woven pieces to form intricate patterns and then adorned with beads.On the left you can see gun and airplane motifs which often appear among geometric, human and animal figures.

kteh samples — More fabulous examples of the kteh work.

temple and bags — The weavers have lately been making shoulder bags to sell and experimenting with traditional and non traditional color combinations. They weave straps for the bags placing two warps on the loom at a time (picture at left) as they are not used to weaving such narrow pieces on their enormous looms. Having two bands on the loom at once helps balance things out. At left you can see the tiny temple fashioned from a piece of bamboo much the same as that used by the weavers in coastal Ecuador with whom I studied.

figures and letters — Words and phrases are also woven into the bag straps. Some of these appear to be lines from scripture and a google translation turned up such words as “peace” and “wisdom”

baby carrier — Ju here is showing us how to wrap the baby carrying cloth. This piece was more warp dominant than truly warp faced and profusely patterned with suplementary wefts.

I was coaxed into donning the traditional skirt and blouse. At right is a photo in Ju’s home of young girls in similar costume wearing woven headbands.

So, that was day one! I have no idea how much time we spent there but the time just flew by and I arrived home thinking, why didn’t I take a closer photo of that and how did I forget to ask about this? I am very grateful to Maurice and Lisa who took photos when I was not able and allowed me to use some of theirs.

Are you ready for day two?

Day two found us at Ju Nie’s home where she was set up and ready to warp. Ju’s husband builds all her tools and he has made her a very nice warping arrangement which fits conveniently in the house beside the bed to which she attaches her backstrap loom. It reminds me of my situation here at home where I weave attached to my bed and warp on the floor nearby.

In the blink of an eye Ju was off and warping and it was very hard to keep up. Not wanting to interrupt her, as I know how important it is to concentrate when warping, I struggled to follow her quick movements which at first weren’t making sense to me. I had mistakenly thought that the cross was that shown in the upper right hand photo but later realized that it wasn’t. My sketch of the process had to be frequently modified until I finally caught up with her.

Ju makes a circular warp and uses two strands of yarn at once much the same as I do in my four stake warping, separating out the doubled threads only around the cross post and at the place where she pulled the string heddles through. The cross shown above is made of doubled threads and serves as the place where she later inserts her “rolling stick” or “coil rod” as it is sometimes known.

Her movement with the string heddles was so quick that only after having studied the video I had made multiple times am I able to follow it and reproduce it on my warping board here at home. All the warp ends where color changes occur are tied in slip knots which are untied and retensioned once on the loom. This results in an intimidating mess of yarn ends and even the heddles looked loose, uneven and scary! Of course eveything was under control!

learning to warp — Ju was kind enough to let me try warping. I would never let anyone touch my warp!! She, however, took control of the heddle string at each pass but I was slowly coming to understand what was going on.

rollig stick coil rod — Warping finished, safety ties were added to the warp and it was slipped off the warping stakes and the rolling stick was put in place. Ju closed the end “cross” around the rolling stick and then put the main loom bar in place which was attached to her bed, just like mine!

Ikat weavers that I have seen in Ecuador told me that the rolling stick helps stop their warps from slipping and blurring their design. I have seen other weavers use it to help space the warps. I imagine it also stops the warp threads from slipping in together as they often do on the far loom bar and keeps them in order.

loom bar and sword — The weaver’s loom bar seen at left has prongs around which the backstrap cords pass. The sword has a hooked end which is used for picking up threads for patterning. All these pieces have been fashioned by Ju’s husband Thomas. Ju had warped a sample band for us to witness the process. Her loom is normally used for much wider pieces which explains how oversized and unwieldly everything looks.

starting to weave — The thick roll against which Ju braces her feet then had to be placed at just the right distance. Having something against which to brace one’s feet is a big help. I have sheets of wood under my bed which serve this purpose and this helps spread the load of tensioning the warp between one’s back and legs. Once Ju had untied the knots in the warps ends and retensioned the warps, she sent Thomas out into the yard to cut some thin bamboo sticks which she inserted in the sheds to get the weaving underway. She then carefully moved each and every warp into place with the point of a stick before passing the first weft.

opening heddles — Ju opens the heddles by grabbing hold of the shed roll and a bamboo slat which she places on top of the warp. She then rolls both away from her while pulling up on the heddles.When I use a second cross in my warp, I use this method by rolling the shed rod and the second cross stick together. I enjoyed showing Ju another way that I use to open my heddles by rolling them over my hand. At first she was anxious to show me that I was doing something wrong but then saw that it worked and laughed, pointing and saying “new way”. Her shuttle is a simple stick around which the weft yarn is wrapped. These photos were taken by Maurice Blackburn.

I was dying to get into the loom and finally asked Ju’s permission to do so.

me at the loom — What a wonderful birthday gift! A day spent with a master backstrap weaver! There I am happy as a baby. The picture at right shows my view up the warp!

We went home with images spinning in our brains! It wasn’t until I got back to Bolivia that I sat down and went through my notes and sketches, watched the videos and managed to sort it all out. I bought a 12 ft long band from Ju that she had intended using as straps for many bags but was happy to part with. I liked this piece as it gave me many examples of the motifs that they weave with warp floats. I was able to examine it to figure out the technique. This is a new one for me! And so, to work. I wanted to reproduce the structure and make something useful.

First to sample. I could see that Ju’s white and red warps had a 3:2 weight ratio but I wanted to see if I could get away weaving it 1:1.

sampling vietnamese weaving — In the photo on the left, Ju’s band is the one on the right. My first 1:1 sample is on the left and my second sample, in the middle, where I also used a 3:2 weight ratio looked far better than my first attempt.

So I went ahead and wove more motifs on this sample band until I was convinced that I had the technique down. I decided to weave a wider piece so I could make a couple of zippered pouches and tried to copy the traditional colors used by my new weaver friends as much as possible. Here is the piece I made on the loom. By cutting between the two white horizontal bands in the center I woud have two pieces which I could fold and sew into bags.

Here is the piece off the loom, then cut and folded. I sewed two lines of stitches in the center of the piece and cut between the two.

Once the bags were made (I kept the cross knit looping in the end and really like it), I decided that I would try to make something using the blue and black color combination that Ju and Nach also use in a lot of their pieces. I warped up for a band in these colors wide enough to make a cellphone case and chose some motifs from my photos.

blue band — I had trouble settling on the colors for this band and had to pull out warps and replace them once it was on the loom. I decided to keep it very plain and dress it up later with cross knit looping.

cell phone pouch — Here it is finished. I am not sure about working the cross knit looping on the flap as well.

I can’t thank Betsy and Andrew enough for making this visit possible. The work they have done teaching English to the members of this community and documenting these traditional techniques and processes is wonderful. Together they are building a blog which will document this journey.

I hope that I will be able to contribute something to this project by perhaps helping with the documentation work or maybe helping to develop small woven products that the weavers can sell. This was part of my reason for experimenting with these bags. The other part of the reason was my insatiable curiosity and love of the backstrap loom and traditional techniques! Betsy hopes to inspire younger people in the community to want to learn the traditional weaving techniques.

This article gives further insight into Betsy’s work with Ju Nie and you can view a stunning photo essay on Jue Nie at her loom here.

And once again, the “worldwide weaving guild” that is the internet has led me to a new weaving acquaintance, Susan Stem, who lives in northern Thailand and who has generously allowed me to use this image of a Rhade loin cloth which has the twined kteh technique.

Let me leave your here with what Jennifer has made on her inkle loom using Andean pebble weave technique.

She has a really nice inkle loom which has plenty of space in front to have the two string heddles controlling the pebble sheds, allows her to use the saver cord and she uses the loom’s heddles to form her picking cross.