Montagnard – Page 3 – 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 – Weaving Wanderings and Wonderings

The Worldwide Weaving Web brought a new book into my home last year which has inspired my third wall hanging project.

If you can’t bear to look at yet another of my red, black and white warps on the loom ready to be woven, you had better look away now because here we go again!

There isn’t a whole lot to show for a week of work, is there? What you don’t see is the reading, sampling, un-weaving, re-warping, charting, erasing and Googling. In fact, as I sit in front of this warp, I have the uneasy feeling that I may be jumping the gun and launching into the big project too early. I have actually unwoven the first line of pattern twice and made adjustments. Clearly my sampling didn’t cover all I had in mind.

I am using the work of the Wayuu people of Venezuela and Colombia as my inspiration for this project through Dutch author Mirja Wark’s book Si’ira. A lady in one of the Ravelry weaving groups posted about the existence of this book in the middle of last year and I was on a mission to get hold of it. My friend Anna in Australia, who is from The Netherlands, took care of the local payment and then offered the book to me as a birthday gift. Thank you, Anna!

It is a beautiful hard cover book full of drawings and photos of the si’ira which are worn by men, their designs, the weavers and the vertical looms that are used to make them. The skills required to make a si’ira include weaving, twining, braiding and tassel making.

This image is from Mirja Wark’s web page.

The Wayuu live on the Guajira peninsula which is the northernmost border between Colombia and Venezuela. Wark describes this area as a flat, dry semi-desert over which a continuous hot wind blows. It is always interesting to me to know more about the people, weaving and textiles of lowland regions of this continent.

Many different colors are used and I especially love the pictures of the si’ira in the book that comprise a red and black background on which yellow motifs have been woven. Other belts are black with red motifs…very striking…and so they are perfect for the color theme of my wall hanging project.

It is also interesting for me to see that the Wayuu weavers use the same style of joined loop heddles used by the Guaraní weavers, another group that inhabits lowland regions, here in Bolivia.

At left you can see my Guaraní teacher, Angela, showing me the unusual way her string heddles are chained together.

What I would like to see is how the Wayuu weavers manipulate the heddles and if it is the same method that Angela and other Guaraní weavers use.

Angela most often has three sets of string heddles on her loom which are required by the technique she employs for the kinds of structures that she weaves. Watching Angela do her pick-up work jumping between two sets of the string heddles is fascinating!

The Wayuu weavers use one set of these kinds of string heddles on their warps but I imagine that they would need to work them in a similar fashion to the way Angela does.

I can’t help but notice some small similarities in some of the motifs of the Wayuu and Guaraní people although the weaving structure employed is different.

So, this will be the basis for wall hanging number three in the red, white and black series.

Another of the many interesting things about the si’ira is that they are woven with what Wark calls a “hollow selvedge” which serves to strengthen the edge of the belt. It is funny that on a visit with my friend Pam in Massachusetts we had talked about a rolled selvedge that Harriet Tidball describes in Shuttlecraft Monograph 26. Pam was trying it out on a band of her own.

Tidball writes that it was used by the ancient Peruvians and that available evidence shows that it was used on bands and belts.

The rolled selvedge creates a thick tubular edge.

Separate tubular bands like the one on the edge of the purse pictured at left are often applied to Bolivian and Peruvian weavings for various reasons, one of them being to strengthen and reinforce the edges of the textiles.

You may be able to make out the thick edge which is the hollow selvedge on this image from the cover of the Si’ira book.

How clever to think of a way to form the tubular edging from the band itself so that it forms as weaving progresses and does not need to be added later. I wonder why this technique fell out of use in Peru.

I love seeing how these things turn up here and there, disappear here, remain there, evolve further there, are replaced by something even more ingenious somewhere else…The fact that these heddles are used by the Wayuu in their arid lowland home and also by the Guaranì here in steamy jungly lowland Bolivia, so far away, fascinates me.

The Worldwide Weaving Web, about which I often speak, means that I can have a new online weaving friend in rural Turkey asking me about backstrap weaving and telling me about the catalog of woven Turkish motifs that his mother has while a weaver and clothing designer in Bangladesh shares with me what he knows about backstrap weaving in his country. Techniques and information are shared instantly across the globe. I wonder how in ancient times designs and techniques were transported and shared and adapted among the weavers of this continent.

And then you have weavers who live along the relatively short length of Ecuadorian coastline who apply bands to strengthen the edges of their cotton saddle bags. Different techniques are used to both set up the loom to create the patterns and finish the woven pieces in different areas along the coast.. I am familiar with the way the members of one family of weavers in Manabi province finish their work by applying a woven band using a home made rigid heddle which I have shown many times here before. Yet it is worth looking at again..it is so cool!

This picture, taken by Kathleen Klumpp, shows my weaving teacher Trinidad weaving and sewing a band to the edge of a small bag.

This is how the edging looks on the fabric.

And then I see from an article in the Textile Museum Journal that further north on the Ecuadorian coast, on the Santa Elena peninsula, weavers also apply bands to the edges of their saddle bags but use a very different method which requires an extra pair of hands.

While one person sews the band to the fabric, another person manipulates the warp threads passing the warps which are looped on the fingers of their two hands from one hand to the other. The extra pair of hands would look like mine above (modeled on a drawing in the Journal article).

These are two very different ways to add a reinforcement band to the edge of a woven textile and both are being used within a relatively small area.

Do similar techniques develop independently or do they travel and get shared and eventually adopted and adapted? Why do some methods remain so different within relatively small areas? I know there are people who devote themselves to studying just this kind of thing. Me? I sit here and ponder!

Something that seems common in certain areas of Asia is the addition of string heddles to the warp while the actual warping is in progress on the stakes. Was it developed simultaneously in various areas or did it travel and get adopted? It seems like such an ingenious and time-saving thing to me. However, it is not something I have ever seen in use in my part of the world.

I know how to do it as I watched the Montagnard weavers warp when I visited them in North Carolina and, more importantly, filmed the process so I could study it over and over when I got back home….it was all happening so fast!

Even though I say it is clever and time-saving, I have not adopted this technique for my own weaving. I stubbornly cling to my favorite way of making heddles with the extra hitch which has the heddle loops held snugly on the heddle rod.

In the same way, perhaps the weavers of Manabi province in Ecuador and those on the peninsula further north are aware of each other’s techniques yet stick with their own methods believing them superior…who knows? My anthropologist friend Kathleen Klumpp no doubt can tell us that.

Here is the video I made of Ju Nie warping with two colors and making her heddles around one of the two as she goes. That is followed by a video I made in which I do it slowly and explain the process.

Angela, my Guaraní weaving teacher, certainly didn’t hesitate to ask to be taught how to make the kind of string heddles I use when she saw them on my loom and she started using them on her warp to replace one of her sets of chained string heddles straight away. She had seen string heddles on a stick before, wondered about them, but didn’t have anyone to show her how to make them.

And she was keen to learn how to do the three-color version of the technique she employs when an Aymara weaver visited from highland Chile.

And so, techniques and methods travel and get shared and then I guess one day no one will remember anymore how that particular technique managed to cross the Andean high plains and descend to the Bolivian jungle.

Well, enough pondering. Let’s see what has been happening in the Ravelry group where some weavers are still having fun with the Bedouin techniques.

Here’s Jennifer’s wall hanging which uses the al’ouerjan pattern and shajarah techniques. Many of the motifs in the central section were created and charted by Jennifer herself.

Traudi provided us with helpful pictures of her piece before and after washing. She made a placemat and had some tension issues and a bit of puckering, which didn’t all come out in the wash but, what is nice to see, is that the severe ridging that had formed in her cotton cloth disappeared with washing and pressing.

She used weft twining on both ends before leaving the fringe and her center pattern is the traditional Bedouin al’ouerjan design.

And to finish, I ‘ll just let you know that I put one more tidbit on my RESOURCES page this week. I am slowly but surely gathering up all those links.

Backstrap Weaving – “Al Sadu” and Warping a Bedouin Pattern

I would like to share something that Alaa wrote in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group this evening quoting from the book published in Kuwait Al Sadu: The Techniques of Bedouin Weaving.

“The word Al Sadu in Ibn son of Mandhurs’ Lissan* Al Arab* The Tongue Language of the Arabone of the earliest known encyclopedia dictionaries of the 13 C denotes the extension of the hand towards an object, as when camels move forward with their forelegs. The word Sadu equally implies the movement of the head as in the way camels and horses move their heads thrust forward. Earlier, Al Jawhari (d. 398 Hijri) in his book Al Sahah also means the long and gentle stride of the camels. Al Sadu is the term used for warping and means what is extended.

In its widest linguistic meaning Al Sadu means: to extend or to stretch and spread, and, as used by Bedouin of Kuwait it means the process of wool weaving, the actual woven objects as well as the loom itself. Thus, it is an old Arabic term that evokes images and meanings derived from the desert environment and the Bedouin traditions.”

Extending, stretching and spreading…fitting words to have in mind when one thinks about the process of warping or even to apply to this idea of the Worldwide Weaving Web that I often refer to…which allows designs and textile techniques from people thousands of miles away in a dry sandy desert to enter the home of someone in humid jungly lowland Bolivia.

I read so many comments in the online weaving groups about the “joys and traumas” of warping. I don’t think I will ever think of it in quite the same way after that lovely description of the meaning of Al Sadu….that graceful extension of head and limb and thread….beautiful!

Some people love warping and see it as relaxing, some detest it, while others fear it. And then there’s the old “back-to-front” versus “front-to-back” debate…that’s floor loom talk…I have little idea of what all that means but I do know that there usually isn’t just one right way to do things.

I love learning about the way warps are created for the simple looms I see in use here in South America and around the world, whether they be for backstrap weaving, or for the horizontal, vertical loom or leaning loom.

Sometimes all it takes is a toe and a forefinger…two points around which the threads can turn and measure out the length of the warp with a simple cross between.

For certain woven structures a startling amount of stakes are required so that the weaver can carefully place all the threads in their correct positions before the warp is transferred to the loom. Of course it also depends on whether the weaver is creating a circular, dovetailed, discontinuous or single-plane warp.

For those not familiar with circular warps, think of the inkle loom. You can see above left the very short sample warp I wound on my inklette and removed for this picture. When the band on the inkle loom has been woven, it is cut and opened up to its full length. Above right you see the same circular warp next to a warp that was created in a single plane for my backstrap loom. The finished inkle band will open out to be longer than the other one. Both kinds of warp are commonly used for backstrap weaving. A circular warp provides a practical way for long pieces to be woven on a backstrap or other loom without needing a large space in which to work.

Warping for a large single-plane warp-faced piece may require two very long stakes between which the weaver walks carrying the thread. The weaver who was creating this warp in Chinchero was working alone. I have been told that often two weavers will sit, one at at each stake, and roll the ball of yarn to each other.

A belt with a complementary-warp pattern might need four stakes for its warp with the weaver sitting and carrying the threads at full stretch…

Some weavers, like my Montagnard teachers in the US, have a permanent warping set-up that stands on its own which they can pick up and transport from place to place. Below, Ju Nie is teaching other Montagnard ladies to make a circular warp in a community center. (picture by Andrew Young)

Her process will create the circular warp that you can see here…

The warp end nearest the weaver must be clamped or stabilized, as you can see, so that it won’t slide around the loom bar as the weaver beats.

I love the improvised warping set-ups…

Indoors at a gathering of weavers in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Chinchero weavers used table legs around which to warp practice bands.

The same table was even used by a Guarani weaver to demonstrate the dovetailed warp that she uses on her vertical loom. The dovetail warp occupies one end of the table while an Aymara weaver from Chile winds her single-plane warp on the other.

Often warping can involve more than one person. Above, Hilda and I in Potosi Bolivia, are warping the horizontal loom for warp-faced double weave embedded in plain weave. She is about to roll the ball of yarn to me so that I can turn it around the loom bar before rolling it back to her.

Mapuche weaver Marta and I warped together at the recent exhibit in DC which meant I couldn’t get a video of the process but warping with her rather than filming was much more fun!

Beth from Beer Sheva in Israel gave us a link to a wonderful set of videos on Bedouin weavers in Lakiya village in Israel. One of the videos shows how it takes three people and a lot of walking to warp their long horizontal looms for the making of warp-faced carpets.

You may remember the next video that I posted some time ago of the poncho weaver from Paraguay warping her tremendously long single-plane backstrap warp, carrying the thread up and down on her own for three hours.

I love watching that weaver at work!

Which all brings me to the warping tutorial I promised this week for the Bedouin al’ouerjan patterns which are woven with the warp substitution technique.

Tracy in Qatar and Helena in Brazil have been playing with these patterns as well as a couple of other members in the Ravelry backstrap group. You can see Tracy and Helena’s work above. We have all fallen in love with these patterns.

We had fun playing with one of the many versions of this pattern when I wove with friends in California. We combined the technique with weft twining.

And look at Tracy’s latest project!!

You will find the tutorial on warping the al’ouerjan patterns here. The weaving technique (warp substitution), which you will need to learn first, is detailed in a tutorial here. A tip for securing the warp floats that are typically created on the backs of pieces woven in this technique is within this blog post.

And, thanks to Alaa in Jordan and several other people who pointed out to me the Interweave newsletter this week that included a link to a video on Bedouin weaving on the UNESCO site which is definitely worth watching. UNESCO were kind enough to give me the embed code but WordPress doesn’t like it! So, here’s the link. I just love how the loom is perched over mounds of desert sand. Nothing could be further removed from this moist jungly place in which I live.

Earlier I mentioned a link that Beth in Israel provided which leads to a page with several videos on the Bedouin weavers of the Lakiya Negev Weaving Project.

The one on finishing techniques is very nice. And here’s the link to the page with all eight videos.

I have a feeling we will be seeing many more projects inspired by Bedouin textiles in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving group…a lot of black, red and white which also happens to be the color scheme of my latest pebble weave project. It is coming along…

Here it is all rolled up and reaching the end. It will be a wall hanging so it doesn’t need to be any specific length but I would like to weave as much as I can on it. I will change those thick cross sticks for thin ones and replace the end loom bar with piano wire and then lash that to the loom bar. That will give me more working space. I am still thinking about twining a design into the end.

In the meantime I am itching to warp up the next wide piece in these same colors…another wall hanging inspired by the Chilean chamantos.

And more things come into my inbox to inspire future pieces in this color scheme…

Roman K sent me this image of this beautiful man’s wool sash that he owns which is from western Podilia which Wikipedia tells me is in south-western Ukraine.

This sash has been woven in the simple two-color warp float technique but we are not sure as yet what kind of loom was used. Roman is a great resource for information on traditional folk clothing and embroidery. My online friend Sharon first sent me a link to his post on Central Asian embroideries and, while looking around his extensive website, it occurred to me that he may know something about the origin of the complementary warp weaving technique on some of the Russian Old Believer belts that I have been studying.

He has sent me pictures of other gorgeous sashes and belts which I will save for another post.

I know that my weaving friend Annie will be eyeing that sash. She is building a nice collection of sashes from around the world which I got to admire when I stayed with her this last fall. On top of that she weaves guitar straps and sashes of her own design on her inkle looms…emphasis on the plural…I think she has about seven inkle looms and is forever creating new and unique patterns.

It really seemed to me that her creative process was completely natural and effortless. There was no charting and not a calculator in sight. She just seems to pick up this color and that, move her skeins and balls of yarn around and then come up with something fabulous.

I think it is a wonderful opportunity to add a splash of color to the end of this blog post by showing you some of the guitar straps that Annie, aka AspinnerWeaver, creates and sells in her Etsy store.

These are done in plain weave with all the patterning created in the warping, letting the colors do the talking.

She has taken the supplementary warp technique and really run far with it working it into her own unique patterns.

Color!! She has made minimal but very effective use of the simple warp floats technique in these next two straps and turned out two gorgeous designs.

Mental note: never fear the half revolution on the warping board…a lot of these clever warp designs that Annie has created require half revolutions when winding a single-plane warp which is something I usually just don’t bother with to avoid having knots at my starting end (not a problem with circular warps)but, then again, not really a problem with single-plane warps either especially if you plan on starting with a fringe.

More plain-weave beauties…

And one last supplementary warp color burst and a two-color warp float strap that is one of my favorites.

Have this got you all keen to warp up something on for your inkle or backstrap looms? If you are in need of even more inspiration check out Annie’s Flickr guitar strap album.

I was asked recently to make a guitar strap for a friend. I chose to make it in my favorite pick-up technique…you guessed it, pebble weave. I added in a couple of extra heddles which made it quite fast to weave.

I happened to mention to Annie that I had to make a guitar strap and the fact that I would need to buy the hardware to finish it. In the mail arrived a package from her with all the pieces necessary to complete my project. What I didn’t realize at the time is that she actually cut the leather pieces and put it all together herself. Better still, she is selling this now here so you can weave your own guitar strap and have everything you need to finish it off beautifully.

I definitely owe my boyfriend a new guitar strap. The pebble weave one I made him is constantly being confiscated and taken with me on the road to show friends.

There has been some buzz in the inkle and backstrap groups about Anne Dixon’s book which is due out next summer I believe.

I am happy that I will get to meet her at the Braids 2012 conference in Manchester next August….400 warp-faced weaves. Imagine!

It seems so far away now but time is bound to fly. And what about Convergence and Maryland Sheep and Wool? Are you planning to go? I hope I will meet some of you at at least one of these events.

Well, back to my red, black and white pebbly Starry Night piece and hopefully I will have the start of piece number two in this series to show you next week.

Backstrap Weaving – To Float or not to Float

An inkle loom? I bet you didn’t expect to see that here! I have been playing with my Ashford inklette this week…but more about that later!

I have this star motif memorized now! You would think so after having woven seventeen of them and then another seventeen of the mirrored version.

I am really enjoying weaving this wide piece.

I love using the big swords and hearing the clacking sound they make as I insert one to hold the picked-up warps while withdrawing the other. I like the feel of the chunky polished wood and I like the look of all those string heddles neatly lined up across the warp.

The wideness of the warp which is very close to my body width makes me feel even more that I am part of the loom itself and I like that the opening of the sheds feels more natural now and less of a workout.

I guess that I am just over halfway now…at least with the weaving part. I am thinking of finishing it with weft twining and trying to work a similar star pattern into the twining. And then I wouldn’t mind adding a tubular woven band to the edges.

So, this may not be truly finished for some time.

In any case, I am already charting my design for the next piece in this wide red, black and white set and am taking inspiration from the chamantos which are ponchos worn by the huasos of central Chile.

An online friend who lives in Chile has allowed me to use the picture she took of a chamantera at work at her loom.

I am excited about this next project as I have not woven designs like these before and can’t wait to see how they turn out. Of course there will be a good deal of sampling beforehand.

And I can’t help but think ahead to the next pieces after that!

We will be starting a new weave-along in the Ravelry group in January. One of the themes that I have suggested so far is ikat so I will try to incorporate some of that in one of the pieces in this set.

Again, much sampling will be done before I try ikat in one of these large pieces. I have only done three or four ikat experiments so far so, naturally, there is still A LOT to be learned .

I guess I have been a fan of this bold color scheme for some time. Here’s another pebble piece I made some time ago with these colors.

It certainly keeps appearing in my life…the Montagnard weavers use a lot of black which beautifully sets off the red and white twined designs that adorn the edges of their pieces.

Many of the Bedouin pieces I have seen online and in books make a lot of use of these three colors. My online friend Tracy, who lives in Doha Qatar, is constantly sharing pictures of Bedouin textiles she sees with us on Ravelry . The ones below, which Tracy photographed, are from Oman, (on the left) and Syria.

I remember back in 1993 or 1994 when I first went to live in Chile, before I could learn Navajo weaving or make my first trip to Peru, I knocked together a wooden frame, hammered in some nails and made some small tapestries using a cardboard rigid heddle, (it wasn’t very rigid!) cotton warp and acrylic weft yarn.

I had no resources at the time and all I knew was that I wanted to weave something “ethnic” and so the cover of the Split Enz CD with its Maori designs was my inspiration!

I made a small tapestry pillow cover using the motifs. I so wish I still had those early weavings. Many things got left behind when I moved up to Bolivia.

Only last month I was in the library of the Textile Museum in DC and found a book with charts of a lot of twined Maori pieces including ones with very similar designs to those on that old CD cover. I expect I will be making something with those one of these days.

There are a lot of curves in those Maori motifs and that is one thing I learned from twining letters…it is not too difficult to make figures with curves.

That’s another reason to love the warp substitution technique whether it be the single layer or the double-weave version…with enough threads to work with, you can produce all kinds of shapes.

I have been sampling for a future double-weave project and trying to get the scale sorted out for the #10 crochet cotton that I want to use. For example, I have been trying to figure the ratio of warps to weft shots to make a square, sampling to see how the thickness of a two-warp vertical line compares to that of a single weft-shot horizontal line among other considerations.

Again…I am just loving the backstrap loom and the way it enables me to make small samples.

At left you can see the Abba Yohanni motif that I wove some time ago. The original card-woven motif on the curtain in the cave church in Ethiopia is pretty much square whereas you can see that mine is elongated.

Can you tell that I didn’t sample before I wove this motif into the wall hanging?

The solution was pretty easy after all. All that was needed was to weave only one row for the horizontal lines instead of two and that was enough to change it into a more square-ish figure.

Below is the improved Abba Yohanni motif now looking more like it should. The diamonds in the four corners are my own invention.

Figures that comprise pure horizontals and verticals are fairly easy to chart and I have been finding other interesting knot-like designs with these features online.

It’s the curves that are troublesome!…trying to get the horizontals and verticals to behave in such a way that they give the illusion of a curve. Even getting the right angle for diagonals can be challenging. It seems that the vast majority of Celtic knot designs in my books include these pesky curves.

Fortunately I really like messing around with these kinds of things.

I went through all this when I did tapestry weaving in Chile and was trying to figure out how to make just the right angles for diagonals so that I could weave the design on a Mexican piece that I had seen in Joanne Hall’s book.

The resulting piece is at left. I would have used red for the background, to have my favored red, black and white combo, except that my Wild and Woolly yarn order to Chile somehow got messed up and that pinky color arrived instead of the Ganado Red that I had wanted.

So, I have been sampling…only one sample done so far and still a long way to go to get the desired result but I expect I have learned enough from this to get it pretty close to right next time.

Yes, I love double weave…those clean crisp designs on the solid color backgrounds on both faces. It is, after all, just two layers of plain warp-faced weaving with substituted warps. It is easy to chart and I find it one of the easiest patterning techniques to “read” as I weave.

I have had a lot of fun using it for African and South American inspired motifs….

…as well as designs from Mexico (again from Joanne Hall’s book).

Supplementary weft inlay motifs like the ones from Bhutan on the bag I made above right can be easily woven in double weave. They conveniently use exactly the same charting system (although the reverse is not always true, that is, not all double weave designs will translate well into inlay as the floats in the inlay technique need to be kept short).

I have been able to take elements of motifs woven in other techniques like the simple warp float patterns I wove on the placemats above and weave them into matching mug rugs in double weave.

Cell phone pouches are nice double weave projects. The designs on the one on the right, which are based on Guarani motifs, are quite curvy.

Here are a couple of projects made by my online weaving friends Traudi and Sharon.

Traudi charted and wove the designs on her green and yellow mug rugs. Sharon created a series of butterfly motifs for double weave projects. This is just one of four that she showed me.

And how did Traudi reach this point? She started off with the warp substitution technique. Below you can see a band that she made using the Bedouin shajarah motifs charted here as well as the Bolivian flowers charted on the double weave page. She also created designs of her own.

I think that the word “double” in double weave for some people may immediately bring forth ideas of something complex and difficult. In warp-faced weaving, it isn’t!

You are basically doing plain weave with two sheds as you would normally, except that you are using doubled threads, one in each of two colors.

To create patterns, you simply drop one of the two threads…the color that you don’t want to have appear in your pattern. The solid color borders will also be warped with doubled threads as shown above.

You only need to drop warps to create the shed for the upper layer. After doing a special maneuver, the pattern shed for the lower layer forms automatically. Only one weft is needed to weave first the upper layer and then the lower.

This technique’s “little brother” is the simple warp substitution technique which Traudi used to weave her band. The same kind of warp is used except that the solid color borders are not warped with doubled threads.

As in double weave, the pattern shed is created by simply dropping the warps that are not needed to form the design. The warps that are dropped simply hang below.

While I recommend the simple warp substitution technique as a good warm-up before moving on to double weave, it is those discarded warps that form long floats on the back of the textile that most people don’t like.

I guess that’s the price you pay to have a smooth “float-less” front face on the band.

You can see at left how long and awkward the floats can be.

If you read my post last week, you will remember that Tracy showed us a beautiful textile from Oman which has been woven with the simple warp substitution technique. I showed it earlier in this post but it is worth seeing again don’t you think?…

Both the bands of patterning on this piece have been woven with the warp substitution technique. The Bedouin call the style of patterning in the center band shajarah and the checked pattern al’ouerjan. You can see some close-up examples that I wove below. The al’ouerjan pattern is a partial warp substitution design in that only the red and white sections are warped as doubled threads. The blacks are all single warps.

My samples would have unsightly floats on the back if Tracy had not shown us the back of the Omani textile which showed how the weavers use a second fine weft to secure the floats. This is the first time that Tracy has seen this in use and she suspects that designers in the cooperative store that sells these weavings are encouraging the weavers to use this second weft to make the textiles more attractive. The technique is not used in traditional Bedouin pieces.

So here is how it is done…very simple!!

I decided to put this on my Ashford inklette, just for something different. Here is the draft…(the split squares show where two threads are wound together as one. The borders are not included).

(I am sure that inkle weavers are familiar with this style of draft. Winding a circular warp on the inkle loom or for a backstrap loom with this pattern is very straightforward. I will create a new page on this blog for next week showing how to wind this for a non-circular, or single-plane warp, for the backstrap loom using both two and four stakes.)

…and I used non traditional colors.

Above you can see the cross. Note that the yellow and blue threads have been warped together as one thread.

Above left you can see one of the sheds opened. From each pair of yellow and blue warps, one warp must be dropped and one kept to form the pattern shed. Then the weft is passed as shown above right.

Then I reopened the original shed and passed a second fine weft (I used some tatting thread which is about sewing thread weight). You can see on the back how this fine thread secures the warp floats. Compare it to the following samples where the floats have not been secured…

And what about the shajarah style of patterning where all the warps are substituted? This is how it would look front and back as the Bedouin traditionally weave it…

And here it is using the system on the Omani co-op textile where the floats have been secured.

While the extra weft serves to secure the floats, it doesn’t really create a pretty second face. However, I think that it makes enough difference to enable you to use this patterning technique and create a very much more practical piece even though you would probably still prefer to have the back hidden from view. So, although you may not want to use it for a guitar strap, you may find it works well for a bag or cell phone pouch. You won’t have to worry about things getting caught on the floats. Bear in mind that the resulting band is fairly thick as you are, after all, using doubled threads.

I hope that I have inspired you to try this technique. (See the tutorials for simple warp substitution and double weave). Give the simple warp substitution a try and maybe you will be tempted to go on to double weave so you can have two pretty float-less faces.

I am in the process of charting more beautiful designs from my friend Pam’s gorgeous rug from Uzbekistan to add to the warp substitution and double weave pages. They will go up soon.

Backstrap Weaving – Finnweave, Funweave and Finishes

FINNWEAVE, FUNWEAVE AND FINISHES

My finnweave piece is off the loom and is just the right size to make my storage bag. It will be a basic bag construction, simply folded in half and sewn together at the sides.

Then I will let it sit for a while to see what ideas I get about dressing it up….a strap will be needed, maybe some large tassels on each bottom corner and some kind of edging.

It is going to hold all the cds with photos from my recent travels. These are currently in a pile on the floor under my computer table which is on top of another pile of charts and booklets which is on top of another pile of….well, you get the idea.

Which is why I need another system. I am currently rearranging my wall hangings so I can hang my woven storage bags out of the reach of my cat.

I am hoping to have a bunch of these in different colors and structures to add to the “textile bazaar” feel of my room.

While this will be made into a usable product, I still feel that it should be filed in the category of “sample” as there are a few things about it with which I am not all together happy.

I have made a couple of other useful items from my samples such as, the two purses pictured at left, and I have all the pieces I have made here as reminders of how to chart designs or what to do and what not to do next time.

Give me some time and will probably sew all the samples up into something!

So, what am I unhappy about? Firstly, as I mentioned last week, my warps in the center of the piece were spaced wider than those along the sides so I know next time that I need to pay more attention to that.

The other thing is the separation of the layers. I know from doing warp-faced double weave that the two layers of fabric are not joined in places where there is no pick-up pattern but you really have to pinch the fabric and try to pull it apart to feel the separation of the layers in the warp-faced fabric.

However, in this balanced double weave structure, the separation of the layers is far more apparent and not something I like too much. I think it was a mistake weaving those long columns of motifs and leaving those long plain spaces between them. While, thankfully, the fabric doesn’t “billow” in the places where the layers are not attached (I have read that this is something that can happen), it does somehow feel unstable in those places.

The above sample designs have the pick-up better spaced across the width of the fabric. The narrow brown and white band, above right, is a reproduction of a pre columbian piece from Peru and you can see how the weaver has added small spots, crosses and squiggles in the negative spaces around the bird motifs in order, I would imagine, to bind the two layers of cloth.

The lattice design in black and white (from an issue of Prairie Wool Companion) holds the layers together beautifully.

So, my next piece in this technique will have an all-over design and I have already found the one I would like to do on a Huichol bag. Now to chart it…I am not yet at the point where I can read the design straight off a photo but am getting closer! I might be able to do it with the actual cloth in my hands.

Of course, the fact that the layers in plain double weave don’t bind can be used to your advantage if you are wanting to make a seamless pouch (see the eyeglass case I made in this blog post).

From here I move on to what I call in the title of this blog “Funweave”. All weaving is fun for me but Jennifer in the Ravelry Backstrap Weaving Group reminded us all this week about how fun and satisfying it can be to weave using heavy yarn.

I wrote a post entitled Big Bang and Big Thread some time ago about this topic when I made four backstraps very quickly using 12wpi yarn – Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale together with doubled Tahki Cotton Classic.

These were fast and fun to make with their pick-up patterns: pebble weave and simple warp float patterns but, hey, who needs pick-up patterns to make beautiful designs?

Look at that bag…what a beauty! Here is what Jennifer calls an ”eight-hour project” using Tahki Cotton Classic. The checkerboard design is programmed into the warp so that once the warp is on the loom it is all plain weave. She even did some weft twining. I have to tell you that weft twining is SLOW but not so bad when you are using yarn of this weight and can work your way from one edge of the warp to the other relatively quickly.

She also made a backstrap using Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale which is heavier than the Tahki Cotton Classic.

So, I decided this week to show you a little about basic weft twining and made a couple of videos.

My interest in this technique goes back a long way starting with Cheryl Samuel’s beautiful book on Chilkat dancing blankets and I have written about this in several previous posts.

What got me out of the book pages and into the technique was seeing the twining on textiles made by the Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) backstrap weavers. They call this twining technique kteh. Some of their traditional designs can be seen above left.

On my first visit I only got to see the designs and didn’t see how they were created and so I started on some off-loom twining experiments using thick yarn as weft twined around cotton string.

I copied some of the Montagnard designs as well as woven motifs from Bedouin textiles and played with one, two and three-color twining.

I also started some one-color textured twining but got distracted when the opportunity came to actually go and learn twining with the Montagnard weavers and so I will return to the textured twining one of these days.

The Montagnard weavers twine their pieces off-loom. They twine the edges of their skirts and blankets. To make these large pieces, several panels are woven and then sewn together. Then the twining is added along the edge of the connected panels. I also understand after having spoken with Ngach that there are specialists to whom weavers take their cloth to be twined. Ju Nie often sends her skirt fabric back to her sister in Vietnam who twines the edges and returns it.

Even small pieces are twined off loom. The fabric is hung on a specially made stand or on a bar which is rests on two pieces of furniture.

Here I am learning to twine with Jarai weaver Ngach. This is a beautiful way to twine. The thread that Ngach uses is fine and she has her wefts wound on bobbins. Her movements are fluid and graceful.

There is more detail on my second visit with the Montagnard weavers in this post.

Here is a short video I made of Ngach twining. After you watch the instructional video I have made, you will better understand what she is doing in the different movements. Watch how she twists the wefts sometimes once and sometimes twice and note how tightly she holds the warps under tension. She has her woven piece sewn around the metal bar so she can pull down on the warps. This is something I couldn’t do with my off-loom lap twining.

I have tried both on and off-loom twining and find that I much prefer twining while my woven piece is still on the loom. For me, it is easier to twine around warps that are held under tension. This also allows me to twine in the middle of a weaving as the Bedouin often do.

Something I have yet to try which I have seen in Bedouin textiles is twining a design that is completely embedded in the cloth, that is, it does not travel from edge to edge but sits in the middle completely surrounded by weaving. (see here…although I can’t be sure if this is twining or in fact wrapping, soumak or some other technique that is worked in conjunction with a ground weft which would bind the whole piece of fabric together). What do you all think?

I have made two videos showing two-color twining as I do it on the loom (not as I was taught by Ngach.) The first video shows how to twine with two colors and determine which color shows on the surface to create your pattern.

I am twining in the middle of a narrow band woven with yarn that is very similar to Plymouth Yarn Fantasy Naturale. I use the same yarn as the warp and weft for the twining and I twine around groups of six warps.

I am working sitting in my backstrap loom with the warp under tension.

I start by tying the two strands of weft in a square knot. The Montagnard weavers twine from left to right leaving the weft tails hanging decoratively at both edges. If you are planning on sewing your piece and hiding the weft tails, you may want to start with a slip knot which you can later easily undo and therefore not have a bulky knot interfering with your seam.

If you look at the large picture of Jennifer’s bag earlier in this post, you will see that the twined wefts sit on the surface of the cloth at an angle.

The next video shows how to create two rows of twining at once with the wefts lying at opposite angles creating little “v”s.

To have this show up well, this kind of twining should be separated from the rest of the two-color twining by a row or two of single color preferably in a third contrast color. You can also stack several rows of this for a very nice effect.

You can see it in red and white on this piece I made surrounded by black.

I start by hooking the two threads together. By doing this, you won’t have starting tails.

If you prefer to have tails, you can just knot the four strands together. As for the length of the wefts, I will leave that up to you to figure by trial and error. Unless you really want to avoid wasting yarn, I would go with long wefts which can be trimmed later. Having long pieces of weft to hold and work with in your hands is easier than having short ones which you can’t quite grasp.

As you can see, the weft builds up around the warps in vertical columns. This means that any motif that has been drawn on a chart that is based on columns of squares can be used…motifs designed for cross stitch or knitting, for example. I choose to hide the little “bump” at the back of the fabric. I have seen Indonesian textiles that have the bump exposed and used as part of the design almost like little beads.

In the videos I am twining up and away from the weaving line but I have also on occasion, done it the other way around. I finish my weaving and then return to the start and twine around the unwoven warp ends at the beginning of the piece. The twining grows towards me rather than away. Both ways work equally well for me.

And what’s on the other side when you twine motifs? This is how the piece in the heavy yarn looks on both sides….

And here is the finer twining I did on the Montagnard-style piece that I wove…front and back. You will notice that the twined band is slightly wavy. As I had twined around groups of four warps, the twining actually turned out wider than the woven fabric. Since then, I have twined around groups of six warps and always used the same yarn as my warp and weft for the twining wefts. That works out perfectly.

An entire piece can be made up of twining. Those off-loom pieces that I made with the chunky yarn, with a bit more practice, could be used for mug rugs or sewn into bags. You can twine around a piece of cardboard and form a tube to create a seamless bag as my friend Franco did.

I twined around single strands of cotton string for those. The close-up at left will show you the material and a first attempt at some textured twining. For the piece in this picture I have used doubled strands of #3 crochet cotton for the weft.

Twining on a woven piece adds a nice bit of decoration and can strengthen an edge. I have not seen exactly how the woven Bedouin tent dividers are hung but wonder if they are hung from the twining in the mid sections of the weaving. I imagine those tent dividers are very heavy and perhaps the stronger, more rigid twined parts can support the weight of the hung weaving (pure speculation on my part).

I used twining in a single color to edge these placemats and mug rugs just for something different.

I wanted a sturdy shoulder strap for my loom bag and so twined the whole thing with #10 cotton. I twined in the word for ”weave” in different languages. The twining was done width-wise and all the weft ends were sandwiched between the twined band and another woven one which were sewn together.

Remember the “sausage” bag I made last week? Well I finished it by sewing in the zip and am still lamenting the fact that the twining ended up on the bottom!

It really holds a lot of stuff and will make a great toiletries bag for travel. The twined motif has three colors in the center and with practice you will see that it is not any harder to twine with three colors than with two.

And speaking of decorative finishing techniques, Tracy in the Ravelry group showed us the pretty herringbone stitch that she is working along the edge of one of her Weave Along projects. Tracy lives in Doha, Qatar and has made contact with a Bedouin weaver there who uses this finish on her woven pieces.

On the left you can see a pebble weave piece she is also currently working on using her homespun yarn.

Here are other Weave Along projects from the last couple of weeks…..As you know this Weave Along is all about PLAIN WEAVE.

Peg and Cindy made their first bands. Cindy used her handspun. Ellen and Jenny made backstraps. Jenny used a semi rigid heddle on her backstrap loom.

Janet has both balanced and warp-faced projects on the go.

Marsha is doing both balanced and warp-faced double weave.

Ellen made a bookmark from her first supplementary weft band and Traudi made mug rugs charting her own design in warp-faced double weave.

Susanna is weaving her first ever backstrap piece while Dyggvi is planning a Tibetan-style bag with bands made using the simple warp floats technique.

So, I hope you use the tutorial, twine away…and show me what you have made.