looms – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – The Sounds of our Craft

It’s been a while since I last heard the scritchy sound of hairy warp threads releasing their grip on each other as I open sheds on my backstrap loom. I am hearing it now because I have taken on the challenge of weaving with mill-spun wool singles that I bought from a farm while traveling in California. I don’t really know what I had in mind when I bought that yarn. I had just wanted to buy something as a souvenir of that part of my travels from the lovely people who had allowed my friends to gather and weave in their barn.

Because traveling to far off places to buy yarn like this is off the table at the moment, this is another case of my exploring my dwindling stash and enjoying the new challenges that this presents. My idea is to use this yarn to weave the body of a bag that will go with the strap I just finished. I used a three-color reversible Andean Pebble Weave structure for this strap and the wool yarn that I had been spinning and plying on a drop spindle during pandemic Zoom gatherings.

**Despite the dark colors, I think it’s a happy garden scene of flowers and hummingbirds**.

I did start off with the idea of creating an orderly, cohesive pattern layout but the temptation to play with the three colors and pop those hummingbirds wherever I wanted took over and I had a lot of fun doing just that.

One thing that I had wanted to do was use one color for the pebble spot that represents the hummingbird’s eye and another color for all the other pebble spots that sit within the figure’s body…but you know, I forgot to do that every single time! Well, almost every single time. I was determined to remember to do two things before I eventually finished the band…take a picture of myself at the loom working on it and get those colored eye spots in!

I once met a bird photographer that told me that it is really important to capture the little spot of white light in a bird’s eye in order not to have it appear lifeless. I have looked for it in every bird photo I have seen since. In the same way, I think the different colored eye spot on these last two hummers makes an enormous difference.

I didn’t hear any woolly scritchy sounds while working with this hand spun of mine. I had been concerned about how well it would stand up to this rather dense structure but realized after a while that I had completely forgotten all my concerns and was able to enjoy how friendly it was and how lovely it felt.

I remember the first time I wove with my hand spun. It was with some rather nasty dry and dusty llama fiber that I had bought from the animals’ owner up in the highlands. At the time, the scritchy tearing sounds were freaking me out and the yarn I had spun was anything but soft and lovely to handle. I had put a tremendous amount of twist into it so that it would stand up to warp-faced weaving. I don’t do that any more.

And now, there is a new experience…weaving with these mill-spun singles. This is a first for me. Yes, there’s some “scritchiness” but I am actually finding it pleasant…almost like the warp is whispering to me. That llama fiber had seemed to be screaming at me in that first-ever experience. I made adjustments to the way I was spinning it, it became friendlier, and I was able to enjoy weaving with it more. 🙂

This is my sample for the bag fabric that will follow. I wound a warp of 27″ length and 160 ends. The idea was to weave and allow it to settle into a consistent width so that I could then make calculations for the bag fabric. I most typically start off too narrow with new-to-me yarn and have to let the piece gradually widen and settle. Once I am happy with that, I put it aside and work on the real project. This time, however, I was enjoying working with this wool so much, I decided that this piece really needed to be something and I figured that my cell phone, which currently sits in a case, could do with a pouch. So, I unwove a good 3″ of fabric so that I could start over at the correct width. The fact that I was able to unweave the warp-faced cloth woven with wool singles yarn without losing my mind, tells me that this yarn and I are going to have a happy weaving relationship.

And I decided to use some of my plied hand spun as supplementary weft to weave in a pattern. This is some of the thicker “Zoom” hand spun that I first created and used to weave a wrist cuff before deciding to try and go finer. It is making a very nice supplementary weft. I am using the outlining technique of supplementary-weft patterning in which the weft does not travel from selvedge to selvedge. I can make my hand spun yarn go further that way. It is precious to me and I don’t want it to be just hidden away between the layers of warp as it travels to the selvedge. I can’t tell you how much fun I am having with this!

**Wrist cuff with the initial run of hand spun.**

A couple of observations: There had been a tendency for me to think that the action of the heddles against the wool would be the cause of most of the abrasion and subsequent pilling or shredding. Lately I have found that with good loom-operation technique, this isn’t so. There is actually a point of layer exchange that sits between the heddle and the shed rod where most of the abrasion is occurring for me. This exchange happens when the threads that lie on top of the shed rod are lifted and brought down through the heddles to the weaving line. (I keep my shed rod stationary and don’t slide it forward to the heddles as some backstrap weavers do which explains why the point of layer exchange on my particular warp is in that position.) That abrasion point is the one I need to watch and I notice that a little bit of fluff accumulates there. I am particularly gentle there and tend to spread the threads with my hands and lift them through that point in sections. It is also important to advance the warp as often as possible so that the abrasion point is constantly changing position.

**I love the multiple tones in the warp and its rustic look. I had considered a hummingbird pattern but decided that this one better suits these natural earthy colors.**

But despite all that gentle handling, the warp does continue to whisper to me in its scritchy voice, possibly just as a reminder not to get cocky and careless when I open the sheds. This talk of sound playing a part in our weaving, reminded me of some thoughts I had posted way back in 2013 that I thought I would revisit and share with you.

Back then, something a weaver had posted on the Weavolution website had resonated with me. An Australian gentleman, Hakim, was learning to make cut pile knotted rugs with an Iranian teacher in Australia. He said that when he is at home working on his practice piece, he can tell that the tension of the warp threads is correct if they make the same sound when he handles them as they do when he is working on his learning piece with his teacher in class.

What a piece of priceless knowledge!

(At left you can see an example of a set of tools that Hakim was able to get for me from his teacher for the day when I try this technique. It’s on that long, long to-do list).

Hakim’s comment made me think about the different sounds that are connected with weaving on simple looms and how much I enjoy them.

I am not one for placing things in my ears and listening to music while busy with something else. I can’t stand that. I like to be in touch with the sounds around me. They form a very important part of my memories of places and experiences.

In my skiing days, I would wonder at people who skied with headphones on. I would never give up the pleasure of hearing the wind and the swish of the skis on the snow, or the sudden change of sound as snow turned to ice giving me time to react and adjust position. Back then, no one wore helmets. I am told that the helmets being worn now don’t affect the skiers ability to enjoy those sounds.

I learned to fly a glider when I was 19. There is nothing like the sound of an engine-less craft rushing through the air. There was so much with which to be occupied while learning (especially for someone like me who was so utterly un-coordinated at the time!) but I could always simply rely on my ears for certain information. For example, if the sound of the rushing air suddenly disappeared it was a sure sign that I had the nose up too high and that told me that I had better do something quickly before the glider stalled!

When we first went into pandemic lockdown here in Bolivia, I remember finding the sudden absence of sound really disturbing and almost frightening. Then I realized that what was missing were familiar sounds of human activity and that they had been replaced by much more pleasant ones…bird song and the sound of leaves being blown across the cobbles…sounds that normally were drowned out by the hum of city living.

As for sounds while weaving, I love using multiple big swords. I so enjoy the musical tok tok sound they make as they knock together in the sheds. And I love the chuckling chatter of all the sticks on the loose as they fall together when I release tension and roll up the warp at the end of the day. Below, you can see the sticks I used in a wall-hanging piece….many different kinds of wood making interesting sounds. It can become quite a collection.

Then there’s the plink plink sound as the tip of a delicate Guatemalan pick-up stick slides from one taut warp to the next as the weaver counts out threads for supplementary-weft inlay.

The dancing dangling bobbins used in weft twining go clackity clack as they twist and jiggle.

And they enable my teacher to create such beautiful work as this:

**Examples of *kteh* work by my Montagnard weaving teachers.**

I loved the opportunity to drag the llama bone tool across the strong highly-twisted wool threads that my teachers in Peru had prepared below…scritch, scritch, as I strummed to help separate the warps. Only warp threads with certain characteristics will tolerate this.

Listen to my teacher doing it…

If you stroll around a village of weavers in a certain part of the central highlands of Bolivia, you will know in which houses a weaver is at work by the LOUD THWACK!! THWACK!! of the llama bone hitting the sword as the wefts are slammed into place. That sound is one that is not really pleasant, at least not to my ears, when I am seated right next to my teacher. Here is one of my teachers in Candelaria at work at her loom:

When I stayed in the stilt-house home of my weaving teacher in Ecuador, I was often awoken at dawn by the muffled thump, thump and accompanying vibrations as Trini drew down her heavy beater while working at her vertical loom. This was combined with various house shaking and creaking sounds as the loom was connected to floor and ceiling beams…a part of the house itself. You can see that big sword/beater lying across Trini’s leg below and get an idea of the muscle that goes into operating this particular set-up.

The sound of threads in a warp-faced weaving rubbing past each other as a shed is opened can range from a soothing smooth swish to a seemingly painful tearing protest depending on the yarn being used and how it has been prepared.

When weaving with new backstrap weavers, we even learn to be amused by the constant clatter of swords jumping out of their sheds and hitting the floor. Each sword has its own musical tone…nowhere near as much fun on a rug! A cement floor like the one in this picture greatly enhances the melody.

Joan following a pattern chart at the Mannings.

By the way, I am in charge of picking up the fallen swords….gives me something to do. It is funny that as time goes by we have people weaving in silence. What happened to our musical accompaniment? Well, new weavers, without even realizing it, get a feel for the right amount of tension and the sweet spot in the warp where the sword will sit happily upright and not leap to the floor. Or…they just get rather good at catching the sword on its way down!

Maybe one of the nicest sounds for me is the fwip fwip fwip fwip in rapid succession as I pull my heddle string quickly but carefully (or else it will tangle miserably!) off its heddle stick. This means that the piece is finished.

And with that soft, happy sound in your head, I will leave you.

Until next time.

Backstrap Weaving – The View from the Driver’s Seat

Twice during my recent trip away I got to sit in the ”driver’s seat” to experience what a weaver from another culture sees as they sit at their backstrap loom gazing down the length of their warp.

First, I got to spend the day with Yan Zhang, a woman from mainland China who went to study with backstrap weavers of the Li minority group who live on Hainan Island, China. She kindly brought her loom and warping frame and we, along with my good friend Deanna, talked about all things backstrappy for a good part of the day. You may remember Yan from a previous post of mine in which I embedded a beautiful video that she made of herself warping and weaving with her teacher on Hainan Island. I had also written about a loom and patterning process from Hainan Island when I crossed paths with Megan in this post. some time ago.

Unrolling the warp and feeling excited as the beautiful cloth and tools are revealed.

Soaking up everything Yan has to tell me about the process…and hoping that I might have a chance to try!

Here’s my view as I sit at Yan’s foot-tensioned loom with its circular warp. While I have woven many a time using my big toe to tension my warp, this was the first time I had had the opportunity to sit at one of these awesome foot-tensioned backstrap looms. Yan’s legs are shorter than mine which meant that we needed to unroll the woven cloth from the beam and adjust length. We didn’t take the time to get it quite right and, as a result, I didn’t have the full range of movement in my feet that was necessary to be able to operate the loom comfortably. Nevertheless I got to use the loom and throw some shots of weft and it was thrilling!

The pattern structure is what I call ”simple warp-floats”. Floats form the patterns on one face of the cloth but not on the other. The loom was set up to create all the pattern sheds with heddle rods and other sticks in place and so no pick-up was required. I loved having my feet be part of the loom. I loved the feeling of curling my toes around the beams. Of course it requires lots of practice to make just the right amount of tension adjustments with movements of the feet. Quite often, I moved my feet too much and had the far beam slide down off the balls of my feet.

Look at Yan’s feet flexed toward her so that she can relax tension enough on the warp to enable her to raise a heddled shed. She is adding the threads that are held on her pattern stick to the main heddled shed.

The tools that Yan used were all beautiful in their simplicity. She told us that some weavers on Hainan Island have introduced materials such as pvc pipe and I often see these also being used in the highlands here in Bolivia and Peru. Yan’s tools are all natural traditional materials.

Like backstrap weavers in many regions around the world, the shuttle is a simple stick. I love the shape the yarn takes as it is wound onto the shuttle and Yan showed us how the Li weavers create that. Look at that gorgeous sword on the floor! The heddle rods are doubled pieces of bamboo and weavers look long and hard to find bamboo that grows in such a way. Once found, these pieces very much cherished. They are formed when a thin off-shoot of bamboo grows parallel to a piece of larger girth. The larger piece holds the heddles while the thinner piece closes around them and secures them. Yan does not use a temple. When I asked her about that, she indicated that the coil rod is what is used to help maintain consistent width.

When we asked Yan about the thread she was using we all had a chuckle when she said it came from the craft chain store Joann! My Vietnamese weaving friends in the USA were never quite comfortable with the thread that they bought locally. Whenever a family member traveled back to Vietnam they were asked to bring back thread.

Yan showed us her handwoven skirt fabric and the way it is wrapped and pleated to fit the user.

Yan also learned how to spin cotton with her Li teachers and showed us a beautiful piece that she has woven using her own hand spun cotton. Here it is removed from the loom still in its uncut circle…

One of the other many fascinating things for me was the frame that Li weavers use to measure their warps. The loom can be set up anywhere and held between the body and the feet. In the same way, the warp can be measured anywhere on a simple hand-held device!

The particular warping path shown in my photo is what Yan calls ”four point” and creates the shortest possible warp. She showed me how to wind this shortest warp for what she says might be used to make a scarf. We separated the colors at the cross sticks in much the same way I was taught to do using my four warping stakes. The heddles are only made once the warp is off the frame and on the beams. However, the threads are turned in such a way as the warp is wound on the frame to allow the immediate insertion of the coil rod when the warp is removed. You can see the way the warp threads wrap around the upper right corner of the frame.

I shared some of my weaving with Yan and we compared warp-float techniques as well as the techniques used to create patterns using supplementary weft. She liked my wrist band with my leaf pattern in supplementary weft and I was happy that she accepted it as a gift. Here she is wearing it while warping.

She showed us some fabric that was woven by her teacher which is considered particularly precious because it is embedded with slivers of mica. You can see one sliver glinting in the light in the next picture. Follow that column down and you will clearly see the pieces of mica sitting under the red warp threads.

It was an absolute delight meeting and weaving with Yan. It was just a few months ago that I first saw her beautiful video on Youtube. I am grateful to my friend Deanna for opening up her home for this visit. Deanna is my backstrap weaving buddy and she of course was just as interested to meet Yan and spend the day with her.

A week or so later, I got to sit in the driver’s seat at another backstrap loom, this time from Guatemala. Susan had been to Guatemala and bought a loom with a couple of yards of cotton cloth already woven and wound onto its beam. She asked me to give her some tips on how to operate the loom so that she could finish off the weaving.

Single-layer warps are used in Guatemala rather than the circular ones that the Li weavers use. This one is made up of lively cotton stripes. Two colors have been used to create horizontal bars on one half of the warp. There is even some variegated thread in use on one edge. Variegated thread was also used to make the colorful heddles. Susan did not know for what this piece of cloth was intended but I think the sturdy cotton fabric could be made into tote bags.

Unlike the Li weavers, Guatemalan weavers use a simple temple which is made up of a length of bamboo with open ends that spans the width of the cloth and two small nails. The piece of bamboo sits below the fabric. The nails are pushed through the edges of the fabric from top to bottom and then turned into the open ends of the bamboo.

The loom came with a good ol’ hefty sword…not as smooth and polished with use as the sword Yan was using but it certainly does its job in propping open the sheds and beating the weft firmly into place. I used the two cross sticks that are typical in Guatemalan backstrap looms as ”twisty sticks” to help raise the heddle shed.

One thing I found particularly interesting was the way the weaver had settled the far end of her warp. This is the second time I have seen this. My Guatemalan teachers taught me to start out by weaving an inch or so at the far end of the loom before turning it around and starting from the other end. The inch of weaving at the far end locks the two layers of threads together around the far beam and also sets the width at the far end of the loom. I noticed that the weaver who was using the loom that Susan bought had simply placed a metal rod in the second cross, lodged it up against the far beam and firmly lashed it into place. This is a quicker and far less fiddly way of achieving the same result, although perhaps not quite as pretty!

Yes, I had a very nice time sitting in the driver’s seat of these two looms and am so grateful for these opportunities. I think both Yan and I show it in our faces…the joy of weaving on a backstrap loom! The wonder of “being the loom”!

Right now, I am happily weaving on a 180-inch-long narrow warp, creating the straps for my blue pocket bag. I bought the wool yarn I needed to finish the project while I was away. It’s just a plain blue strap in the sturdy intermesh structure and it is a nice way to get back into the loom with an easy task which gives me head space to plan out my next project while I weave. I will get to use my shoulder bag with its quirky pocket on my next trip away in late July.

Oh, and if you happen to subscribe to Spin Off magazine, the summer issue has an article by Devin Helman to which I was excited to be invited to contribute.

You will also see Sara Lamb’s contribution to Devin’s article, Honest Cloth, as well as words of spinning wisdom from Kristin Merritt whose work I often show here on my blog.

And…here’s the ten-month grey hair update.

DON’T FORGET: While Patternfish sales will cease on May 31st, you still have until June 30 to download and save your purchases to a safe place. I’ll be announcing the new home for my ebooks in my next post.

Backstrap Weaving – The Music of Weaving

A weaver posted something on Weavolution recently that stuck with me. An Australian gentleman, Hakim, is learning to make cut pile knotted rugs with an Iranian teacher in Australia. He said that when he is at home working on his practice piece, he can tell that the tension of the warps is correct if they make the same sound when he handles them as they do when he is working on his learning piece with his teacher in class.

Priceless knowledge!

(At left you can see an example of a set of tools that I hope that Hakim can get for me for the day when I try this technique! It’s on that long, long to-do list).

Hakim’s comment made me think about the different sounds that are connected with weaving on simple looms and how much I enjoy them.

As for sounds while weaving, I love using multiple big swords. I so enjoy the musical tok tok sound they make as they knock together in the sheds. And I love the chuckling chatter of all the sticks on the loose as they fall together when I release tension and roll up the warp at the end of the day. You can see below the sticks used in the last wall hanging piece….many different kinds of wood making interesting sounds. It can become quite a collection!

Then there’s the plink plink sound as the tip of a delicate Guatemalan pick-up stick slides from one taut warp to the next as the weaver counts out threads for supplementary-weft inlay.

The dancing dangling bobbins used in weft twining go clackity clack as they twist and jiggle.

I love the opportunity to drag the llama bone tool across strong highly-twisted wool threads…scritch, scritch, as I strum to help separate the warps.

Listen to my teacher doing it…

If you stroll around a village of weavers in the central highlands of Bolivia, you will know in which houses a weaver is at work by the LOUD THWACK!! THWACK!! of the llama bone hitting the sword as the wefts are slammed into place. That sound is one that is not really pleasant, at least to my ear, when I am seated right next to my teacher. Here is one of my teachers in Candelaria at work at her loom:

When I stayed in the stilt-house home of my weaving teacher in Ecuador, I was often awoken by the muffled thump, thump and accompanying vibrations as Trini drew down her heavy beater while working at her vertical loom. This was combined with various house shaking and creaking sounds as the loom was connected to floor and ceiling beams…a part of the house itself. You can see that big sword/beater lying across Trini’s leg below and get an idea of the muscle that goes into operating this particular set-up!

The sound of threads in a warp-faced weaving rubbing past each other as a shed is opened can range from a soothing smooth swish to a painful tearing protest depending on the yarn being used and how it has been prepared.

when weaving with new backstrap weavers, we even learn to be amused by the constant clatter of swords jumping out of their sheds and hitting the floor. Each sword has its own musical tone…nowhere near as much fun on a rug! A cement floor greatly enhances the melody!

Speaking of finishing…the wall hanging is off the loom and away in the closet until another time when I can face braiding all the warp ends. I will show it to you when that is done.

In the meantime I am circular-warped and coil-rodded in my purple scarf project! Thank you teachers Felipe and Ju Nie.

Check out that coil rod! If you are wondering what all that fuss is about, read last week’s post. I am using my studies with Guatemalan teachers to weave the supplementary weft patterns.

The pattern you see above will appear at both ends. I am resisting the temptation to fill the middle with designs and hope to weave one long continuous pattern in the narrow area bordered by gold along both outside edges. I may place very widely-spaced small individual motifs in the center panel as I go.

I am inspired by the colors in the above picture that appeared on my Facebook news feed. I do hope to be able to give you its source later. I can’t find it for the time being.

I like the circular warp. It took a while to clamp it well enough so that it wouldn’t just slip around the loom bars with every movement. I am not yet sure what role the coil rod is playing but it isn’t getting in the way of anything so there it shall stay.

I can see the merit of the triangular set-up that my belt weaving teacher in Ecuador uses with his circular warp.

That set-up opens out the circular warp (into a triangular shape) separating the lower layer from the upper. I am not using the triangular set-up and I find it a little off-putting seeing the lower layer immediately below where I am weaving. The unwoven threads fan out a bit wider than the woven fabric and makes it a bit harder for me to clearly see and control what is happening at the edges of the upper layer. It is also more difficult to get to the back of the weaving, which is necessary when dealing with the tails of the supplementary wefts. I have to work my hand between the two layers to do so.

But, I have just started and will, no doubt, get used to this just as I am now used to the fineness of the thread with which I am working.

As I get used to this I am hoping to find out more about the coil rod and what it is doing. Until next week….

Backstrap Weaving – Prototypes, Samples and Keepers

It’s been a week of bits and pieces…trying out new patterns, practicing new techniques, making width samples and prototypes and then putting everything together into something I can keep and use.

Cochabamba and my teacher Maxima seem far away now as I sit here in shorts with the temperature and humidity rising. Only two nights ago I had the down sleeping bag on the bed. It makes me yearn for the “eternal spring” weather of the Cochabamba valleys but, then again, today I walked outside to the street and bought big glorious golden dripping slices of pineapple, saw tiny green mangoes up high in the trees and realized that the markets will soon be brimming with the tangy achachairú. I read recently that this fruit is now being grown in tropical areas of Australia with its name changed to the more manageable achacha.

This week I tried out a supplementary warp design that was on a bag at the PAZA stand in Cochabamba. This piece had not been woven by Maxima who seems to specialize in pebble weave. I hadn’t even noticed the pattern when I was there. It was, as usual, a bit of a case of information overload…a very intense three days of weaving, sights, colors and sounds.

It is fun for me now to slowly review the videos I had taken of Maxima weaving and listen to the birdsong and the melodies made famous by the Cochabamba band Kjarkas playing in the background…details that were obscured by my concentration on all that Maxima was teaching me. For that reason I did not see the lovely supplementary warp design until I came home and went through my photos.

You can just see the design on the bag on the ground in the picture above left. Supplementary warp is not one of my favorite techniques and I guess that is why I had not paid much attention to it but I was quite struck by the pattern when I got home and had time to examine my pictures. If I had run across this design on the internet I would never have thought that it was Andean.

I wove it into a small piece which I sewed into an eye glass case and then used it as an opportunity to practice a tubular band in pebble weave. Not wanting to complicate things too much, I just did plain pebble weave (that is, a pebbled background with no motif) for this band setting up the warp as I was taught in Peru and thus avoiding having to do any pick-up.

Maxima’s way of doing pebble weave would have her picking up threads even for a plain pebble band. The advantage of her method is that it can be worked more easily using just finger tension rather than having the band attached to the body by way of a backstrap. No doubt I will discover other advantages as I delve further into her method.

Here is the chart for the supplementary warp design if you would like to try it yourself. I have no idea if there is a standard way for charting these supplementary warp designs but this way works for me. I have also started a new page here where I will put charts for designs in this technique.

I have not done a tutorial on this pick-up method as there are plenty of good resources out there already. I believe that most inkle weaving books include it and Sue Foulkes recently did an online workshop in the Yahoo braids_and_bands group on Sami band weaving which uses the same technique.

If you would prefer to have a “real live” teacher with whom you can interact, Daryl Lancaster will be teaching an online class on this pick-up method for inkle loom weavers on Weavolution. Check out the details here.

You can just see the pebbles on the tubular band in the picture above.

So, this particular sample found a use. I would like to weave this design again having the pattern extend right to the edge of the dark blue section. I think that would look even nicer.

This meant that two of my three pairs of glasses were nicely accommodated in woven pouches. I had made an eye glass case from a discontinuous warp experiment many months ago. I figured that I may as well make the third one which would give me a chance to try out another experiment.

I wanted to make a pouch taking advantage of the fact that weaving a warp-faced double weave piece that doesn’t have motifs woven into it will create a tube. This meant that I could weave the front and back of the pouch simultaneously as two layers of cloth joined at the edges…..”instant pouch”!

It’s no big deal really! All this meant is that I would be saving a bit of seam sewing but I thought it would be fun to see what I could do with this. The tube, of course, is beautifully seamless! You can see, above left, a little sample I made a few weeks ago with some left over warp. There is no motif in that piece and so what I have created is two layers of cloth joined at the edges…a tube.

I sealed the bottom of the tube by weaving a pattern of triangles. Weaving motifs is what bonds the two layers in warp-faced double weave.

Although there was no need to do so, I decided to try to weave the triangles up the sides as well but soon discovered that the difference in take-up between the patterned and plain areas was considerable and that I would not be able to continue with that.

So I threw in a couple of supplementary weft figures woven in one of the ways I was taught in Guatemala with the turns of the weft outlining the motif. Then I just managed to get away with squeezing in three more triangles to balance things out. I was really just making it all up as I went…not like me at all!

I created another row of triangles at the top with a supplementary weft (next time I will put the weft turns on the inside of the tube so they won’t be seen). I couldn’t weave them in double weave as they would have sealed up my tube. Finally, I twined along the bottom to secure the weft and then I cut a fringe.

Probably the most fun part was creating the “flex” closure and I have my online weaving buddy Bobbie to thank for that.

When I met her in Portland last year, she showed me a bag made by a friend in which a closure had been created using pieces of an old tape measure. You probably know this kind of closure….you squeeze the sides of the bag and the top pops open. I am trying to show that in the picture above left.

My boyfriend patiently dismantled our tape measure, cut off a length from the inside end, wound the tape back up and put the case back together. No harm done. We didn’t need all ten feet!

I cut two pieces of the tape a little shorter than the width of my pouch. I then cut them down to about two thirds of their original width and rounded the ends. I turned down the top edges of the pouch and sewed them with the lengths of tape within and yes, it works! Above you can see a picture of a commercially available and far more sophisticated version and one of our Ravelry group members provided this link to various sources of these “flex frames”.

That was another experiment that can be used. Nevertheless I think I will make another taking into account lessons learned and with much more planning in the design.

I resisted starting on that straight away as I had another idea bouncing around and so, this is a prototype for a new set of mug rugs that I would like to make…seen here dappled with sunlight…

Actually the prototype turned out pretty well and so it may be a keeper.

I edged my little 4 x 4 1/2″ piece with a tubular ñawi awapa. I am thinking of mounting the mug rugs on cork as the reverse color combination on the back doesn’t really work alongside the other colors in the tubular edging.

The cork will also serve to hide the raw end of the tubular band.

It was so nice being able to sit beside Maxima in Cochabamba last week and weave tubular bands. I had already learned how to weave and sew them but mostly through various brief observations of indigenous weavers over the years as well as through a large group class I took at the Tinkuy last year.

It was wonderful being able to have this one-on-one experience and watch how Maxima held her work, placed her sewing needle and tensioned the warp, smoothly coordinating all the moves. I was so absorbed that the sewing part was the one part of my instruction that I completely neglected to video or photograph! (although you can see a Bolivian and Peruvian weaver doing so in my videos here).

However, I did take video of many other things and have put some bits and pieces together for this post.

This first clip shows Maxima using her spindle to put extra twist into some plied yarn so that we would be able to weave with it.

I had been complaining during the Tour de Fleece of an aching thumb which developed from the way I was turning my spindle for plying. I really need to practice the Andean way of setting the spindle in motion for plying or respinning commercial yarn.

Maxima tied for first place with a Peruvian lady in the speed spinning contest which was held one night during the Tinkuy de Tejedores in Urubamba, Peru last year. The two ladies spun over six meters in two minutes.

The various segments in the next video show the stages of setting up a warp for weaving. Maxima winds a warp using her finger and big toe as warping stakes. You can see her winding two colors together with which she will pick her designs and then the final single edge warps. After tucking the end of the warp into her waist band she rearranges the warp cross separating the two colors into different sheds. Then she makes her heddles.

This final piece of video shows how Maxima opens her sheds and then forms a picking cross from which she selects the colored warps for her pattern. Not a stick in sight!!

If you would like to hear more of the music that can be faintly heard in the background of some of the video segments, check out this powerful live version of Wayayay by Kjarkas.

Before we leave Cochabamba, I would like to pass on Dorinda’s thanks to all those who visited the PAZA blog last week some of whom helped out with donations. Postscript: I see that Dorinda has just posted a thank you note on the PAZA site.

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The Ravelry Backstrap Group Weave-Along starts next week. We have a good bunch of people all ready to go. I am especially happy to see an old online weaving buddy Franco joining in.

Sharon aka Fiberaholic1 wove a bunch of 8-rev patterns from my Andean Pebble Weave book and did a beautiful job but this is a pre weave-along project as there will be no pick-up patterning in this latest weave-along. We are going to play with stripes and color.

And here are some more pieces to inspire our Weave-Alongers….my online weaving friend Caroline, in Australia, sent me this picture of a striped and ikat patterned textile from East Timor and JaQueline Keller on Weavolution allowed me to show her cheery bag made by sewing several plain-weave inkle bands, made with yarns of various weights, onto canvas. Such wonderful things can be made with plain warp-faced weaving!

And to finish I was just given this link from a Ravelry member to a book by Mirja Wark of The Netherlands about the weaving of a special belt called the si’ira by the Wayuu people of Colombia and Venezuela. Colombia seems to be making its way bit by bit into my life…a little contact, a little information from here and there. I wonder where all this may lead?!

Backstrap Weaving – Cool Tools and Implements

“All those sticks! Where in the world do they go and what do they all do?”

I have written posts about all those mysterious sticks and wooden implements, from the basic loom bars to the heddle sticks, shed rods, coil rods, stabilizing rods, shuttles, beaters, swords, pick-up sticks, even “poking sticks” (my own name for an implement my Guatemalan teachers used to create inlaid brocade).

Last weekend I went to the highlands to the city of Cochabamba to experience the ultimate in “stickless” weaving – what I named “barefoot weaving” in a previous post and am now able to add yet another handy dandy tool to my backstrap weaving kit….my humble big toe!

I used to have rather fierce-looking, blister-proof ready-for-anything feet in my old trekking days. They carried me up and down mountains in many places across the globe but I am ashamed to say that they have now gone “soft” on me even though I rarely wear shoes in this climate that I find myself in. So, I didn’t last long with the hard-spun coarse wool chafing my toes and I shall have to put them into training for barefoot weaving.

maxima soraida and nilda — Maxima, daughter Zoraida and granddaughter Zuni were my weaving companions for my three-day stay in Cochabamba. Maxima was my teacher while little Zuni played at spinning on her "pushka". Zoraida was making a hat for daughter Zuni in tapestry crochet.

I met Maxima at the Tinkuy de Tejedores in Urubamba, Peru last year. She was my roommate along with American ex-Peace Corps worker Dorinda Dutcher. Dorinda, who lives and works with the weavers in the town of Independencia here in Bolivia, had raised funds which had enabled her to take Maxima to the event. You can read about Dorinda’s work and her PAZA foundation here.

Dorinda, Maxima, Zoraida and Zuni were in the city last weekend selling weavings from their cooperative at a handcraft fair and this was a great opportunity for me to make a quick visit and have some classes.

PAZA stand — The weavers are recovering the art of dyeing their handspun wool with natural substances and creating large and small bags, pillow covers, hair bands, belts and other woven items which they sell at three such craft fairs that are held in Cochabamba each year.

handspun alpaca for knitting — I was excited to be able to buy almost a kilo of handspun and plied alpaca yarn from a neighboring booth at a very nice price . As it has been spun for knitting, I will need to respin it for warp-faced weaving on my backstrap loom. I hope to be able to dye a lot of it too.

cristo and view — I spent the mornings walking around the city on this my first ever visit to Cochabamba. I went up the hill to see the Christ the Redeemer statue which is just that little bit higher than the more famous one in Rio de Janeiro. Although the location is not quite as exotic as Rio, there was a nice view of the city in its pleasant valley surrounded by mountains.

That left the afternoons for weaving classes. Our only tools were our fingers and toes, scissors (am I the only one who uses her teeth when no one is looking?!) and a needle for sewing the tubular bands or bordes that we made.

Here are the lovely yarns we got to play with…handspun and dyed with natural substances. A few of the colors were not ready to weave with yet as they had only been lightly plied and so Maxima picked up her large plying spindle and gave the yarn the extra twist needed for weaving. I have some nice video of Maxima doing this seated on the ground using that typical sweeping motion between her two hands to set the spindle in motion. I will show the videos in a future post once I have edited them.

You can see the very high amount of twist in this yarn. The bands, when not under tension, will spiral and the unwoven yarn curls up on itself in an alarming mass.

Above left, Maxima is twisting the yarn and on the right she has started warping for a tubular band using her forefinger and big toe as her warping stakes. As she does not have two central stakes around which to separate her colors, she winds her two colors together as doubled strands and then rearranges the cross once she is done. She tucks one end of the warp into the waist band of her skirt while the other ends stays wrapped around her toe. This leaves her two hands free to rearrange the warps into their two sheds.

Maxima then secured one side of the cross in a shed loop and made simple string heddles around the warps on the other side. Once the set up was complete, she removed the warp from her waistband and tensioned it between her forefinger and her toe…no backstrap or waist string was used.

what I learned — On the first afternoon, I asked to learn tubular bands. I was so absorbed with filming, photographing and noting everything down that I didn't realize that the first band she taught me was actually pebble weave! Her set up and way of doing the pick-up is so completely different to the way I had been taught in the western part Peru. It threw me off at first and I got really confused! Fortunately we started with the design which is known in the Cusco area as "mayo k'enko" and which Maxima calls "linquito" and so it wasn't all totally foreign to me and I was then able to pick it up quite quickly. Maxima's method definitely has its advantages for weaving pebble weave as a finger-tensioned tubular band.

You can see the first pebble weave edging we made in the picture above left. The yarn was way too chunky for the little bag we were edging but it served as a learning exercise. Then we made a much simpler style for the second project. Above right you can see the three pebble weave bands, or huatos, on which we worked on the second and third days of classes, starting narrow and gradually working up to wider designs.

weaving together — Weaving together on the grassy area behind the market stalls was cool and peaceful. Last Saturday was my birthday and this was a lovely way to spend it. There is a reason why these sensible ladies always wear hats. My poor lips are now a swollen mass of blisters from the dryness and high altitude sun.

While Maxima finishes off my edged pouch, I am weaving the first narrow pebble weave band. You can see how Maxima taught me to use my two fingers in the warp as my “picking cross” (I explained a little about the picking cross in last week’s post).

rearranging the cross and weaving — On the left Maxima is using her fingers as cross sticks to rearrange the warp cross. I took my bands back to my hostel to do my homework...yes, there was homework! My bed had a convenient bar to which I could tie up and there would always be my toe if I hadn't been able to find anything that would do. On the third day we worked on wider motifs on the band pictured on the right. Some of the motifs were completely new to me and fun to learn with this "new" way of doing the pick-up.

In my Andean Pebble Weave book I show how I was taught to create a border for pebble weave of the same thickness as the design area. Maxima also creates a thick border but in a completely different manner. This is the fourth way that I have seen pebble weave being woven…all so VERY interesting!

CdcGroup — Maxima with the Club de Chicas. This photo is from the PAZA Bolivia blog written by Dorinda Dutcher.

Maxima was a wonderful teacher. When I asked her if she enjoyed teaching she laughed and told me that when she had taught her daughters she would lose patience and want to slap them! Now she says that she is used to teaching and enjoys starting the young girls in the “Club de Chicas” in Independencia on their first weavings. I have made a tentative date to visit her in Independencia next March during the peach season.

I gave her a couple of key fobs, one of which was in double weave and I think she would like me to teach her that when I visit. I was surprised as there were double weave belts on sale in her stall but she told me that they had been made by other weavers. I have come across this before…weavers learn what their mothers and grandmothers can teach them but are unwilling to ask non-related weavers and their weaving peers to teach them other techniques.

Back at home I wanted to put things I learned into practice but I started off slowly by simply using one of the new designs I had learned in a cell phone pouch. I have made many cell phone pouches and realized that not one of them has been made with a pebble weave design which is, after all, my favorite technique.

Here is my latest cell phone pouch with the new design. You can see it on the pink bordered huato. I wove and sewed a red tubular edging and used a snap closure. I know that we like to apply nice names to these motifs but, of all the designs that Maxima taught me over the three days, only one had a name, the aforementioned linquito and she had no name for pebble weave either to distinguish it from the other weaving techniques practiced in the area.

cell phone pouch on shadow weave — Here is the cell phone pouch on my other finished project for this week - the shadow weave piece.

The shadow weave piece also came off the loom this week. You might remember that I had only wound a one-yard warp as it was an experiment. I am ridiculously pleased with it! However, no matter how I tried to photograph it I couldn’t get the shadowy three-dimensional effect to show up so, here it is looking rather flat.

shadow on loom — Here is the warp on my backstrap loom with its bamboo reed, three sets of string heddles and shed rod and on the right you can see it in progress.

off loom and wet finished — On the left you can see it as it came off the loom and on the right after having been wet finished.

The two doubled black edge ends I used looked a lot better after wet finishing but I am still not sure if doing that was such a good idea. Now, what do I use this piece of cloth for? I am actually thinking of using it as the lining for a bag…would that be nuts?

I LOVED making this! I have another four-shaft draft that I might tackle and then there is the eight-shaft one that has been calling to me for some time now…do I dare?

We are less than two weeks away from the start of our Ravelry group weave-along and I found some wonderfully inspiring pictures today from the Education and More site. Kareanni who works as a volunteer for this organization is in our backstrap group on Ravelry.

education and more guatemala — These bags are just a few of the latest fair trade products from Guatemalan weavers being offered by Education and More and are wonderful inspiration for our weave- along which will be all about using color and stripes in plain-weave.

I have had a wonderful array of completed backstrap projects coming into my inbox as well as posted in the Ravelry group this week. Where do I start?

And here are his simple warp float pieces…beautiful!!

You will recognize some of these designs from my tutorial while others were designed by Andreas. I do hope that we keep in touch as it would be great to learn about traditional weaving in Greece. Andreas told me that there is no warp-faced tradition. How in the world did he shape the bottom of that center band?? That is so cool!

Amber aka lavitaaj on Ravelry has been weaving outdoors making a renaissance design pouch for her sister using the “warp floats galore” technique.

And I am happy to see that she has just posted the finished pouch so I can share it this week…

All that is left to add is the toggle. She has edged it with a tubular band and I love the tassels she has added.

Here is what Jerome aka HeyZ has shown us in his first appearance in the group…a great combination of small pebble weave motifs and a simple and very effective warp float design of his own invention.

anne kateri yonat — Anne and Kateri are working their way successfully through the first lessons in pebble weave while Yonat, who wove with me in Santa Cruz California last spring, has been doing a study in simple warp float patterns with beautiful results.

Speaking of simple warp floats, I received some pictures this week of the weaver who taught me this technique in coastal Ecuador. Kathleen Klumpp, who continues to work with Trinidad and her family to document the ancient spinning, dyeing and weaving techniques used in the coastal region and find markets for their products, sent me these pictures of Trini’s latest work.

trinis new bags — In addition to the large satchel-like shoulder bags that Trini has been making she is now producing these cute purses using tagua nut buttons as closures. You can see her on the right weaving and sewing the edging band to the finished textile using her mother's handmade rigid heddle. I would so love to have Maxima see this way of making the "bordes"!

To finish, I would like to make an appeal on behalf of Dorinda, Maxima, Zoraida and little Zuni and the weavers of the Independencia area in Bolivia. The PAZA project is currently experiencing a funding crisis. Sales at the fair last weekend were disappointingly low. I would love for you to visit the PAZA site and see for yourselves that this is a project worthy of support. Even the smallest donation will be very much appreciated. If you have used any of the tutorials here on my blog and enjoyed reading my posts, remember that all the information I am providing comes via weavers like Maxima and Trinidad and this is one small way that we can all give back a little.

Thank you! 🙂