Montagnard – Page 6 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Building skills and resources.

BUILDING SKILLS AND RESOURCES

I have been busy behind the scenes building the resource pages on this blog. I am about three quarters of the way to finishing the “Frequently Asked Questions” pages which will deal with fifteen or so topics related to making your own backstrap loom and weaving on it.

You can access the index by clicking on the FAQ INDEX tab on the header image. There you will find links to the finished pages or you can go directly to each page by clicking on one of the topics on the sidebar.

The pages include explanations with photos, links and images. I hope that you find them useful and please feel free to ask any questions, add information from your own experience or suggest other topics by leaving me a comment here on the blog or the relevant FAQ page.

And….I will be translating all the tutorials to Spanish and putting those on new pages too. (Y….voy a traducir todos los tutoriales a español y los voy a poner en paginas nuevas también).

So, that was my keyboard activity for this week along with writing an article and getting some pages done for my next book!

As for 0n-the-loom activity, I was asked to weave some bookmarks for a friend. I was told what design to use but the colors were left to me. I got to use some more of the Turkish cotton that I bought recently and I can’t say enough about how beautiful it is to weave with. It is only for special projects, though, definitely not for sampling as it is a bit pricey. Details can be found on the FAQ 3 page which answers the question “What yarns are suitable for backstrap weaving?”

These have been woven in double weave. As the borders are plain weave I used two wefts. One weft wove the borders and upper layer of the double weave and the other wove the lower layer. Lettering is really easy to do in double weave and although these letters I invented are very basic, they can be very effective. I have charted them out for you all to use. Most of the letters are in the following two images and I am sure that you can invent the ones that are missing. You can, of course, weave the letters after following my tutorial for one weft double weave.

Other woven messages can be done in the Montagnard style lettering. I learned this warp float weave by studying a band I bought from some Montagnard weavers that I met in the US on a recent visit.

This is a “looser” weave and the resulting band is quite flexible unlike the double weave which is very firm.

Next week I will do a tutorial on this warp float lettering.

You have probably heard me mention before my love of the letters that Linda Hendrickson has charted in her book Please Weave a Message.

I got this book hoping that I would be able to use the charts for double weave but found that the “stitches” produced in card weaving sit one on top of the other as opposed to those in double weave that are staggered from left to right. This meant that I would have to adapt Linda’s charts for double weave. I did adapt many of the letters but they were seriously altered and just did not look as nice as Linda’s but now I have had an idea!

I realize now, after my recent experiments with weft twining, that weft twined “stitches” also sit one on the top of the other and that I should, therefore, be able to use Linda’s charts to twine letters and messages. I am not sure how much the slant on the weft twined stitches will affect the appearance of the letters but I can’t wait to try it out.

I haven’t done so yet as I am still building my weft twining skills while working on another project this week with slightly finer yarn.

This time I am using three and sometimes four colors at a time and it is a little cumbersome but I do like the results. The design has been inspired by pieces in a book on Bedouin weaving. From a distance this looks pretty much like a piece of tapestry. Many things amuse me about this technique….firstly, it is something new, secondly, it helps me to better understand what the Montagnard weavers are doing at the edges of their warp-faced weavings and thirdly, it is an off loom technique that does not require tools apart from one’s own hands.

I am grateful to Bonnie Datta who told me that a chapter of Peter Collingwood’s book The Techniques of Rug Weaving is devoted to twining…both warp and weft. The book can be downloaded for free here. The opening line of the chapter reads….Twining is not weaving,… so that settles that debate!

It shows some ways to turn the wefts at the edges for rug making which I must try as that is something with which I am still battling. The piece that I am working on now is still a “skills builder” but, who knows, I might be able to make something useful out of it.

As far as lettering goes, my boyfriend’s mother asked me a long time ago to make something for her. She is from Cochabamba in the Bolivian highlands and, although she was raised speaking Spanish, both her mother and grandparents were bilingual, speaking both Spanish and Quechua. She told me that there are three lines that comprise the “Law of the Qechua” which go…

which translate to… Don’t steal; Don’t lie; Don’t be lazy. She would like me to weave these words into a wall hanging for her. Well, I might not weave them, I might twine them.

What I am really leading up to with my twining experiments is weaving a double weave piece on my backstrap loom with twined edges where the design on the twined edge matches the double weave motifs. There is much skill-building to be done before that point. Hmm…I am not sure if I am less adventurous now or wiser. I am sure that in years gone by I would have launched myself straight into this and not bothered with the “skill-building”!

In the meantime I have been admiring some ikat pieces from Sumba which I found online which have very broad twined edges. They leave the wefts tails hanging out at the sides as fringe. I am trying to hide the weft ends so I can have smooth neat edges, without much success, I might add!

This has led me to look at other twisty twined off loom techniques and especially one that is practiced right here in Santa Cruz where I live by the Ayoreo people. Actually, I have always wanted to learn about this but gave up some time ago trying to find a willing teacher. Maybe it is time to try again.

Information about the Ayoreo people is sketchy. Population estimates in different sources range from seventeen hundred to four thousand Ayoreo people, distributed amongst seven to ten clans living in the area known as the Chaco. They use off loom netting, twining and knotting techniques, sometimes with the aid of a needle, to make a type of shoulder bag called utebetai using a fiber called garabatá fino from the Bromelia Hieronymil plant. The fiber is twisted by rolling it on the thigh using ashes to take away some of its stickiness. It is plied and may be also dyed before use.

I have three of these bags but have opened them out to use as wall hangings.

According to a booklet put out by CANOB (Central Ayorea Nativa del Oriente Boliviano), the designs used in the pieces represent seven clans. The motifs include representations of the patterns on armadillo shells, clouds, snake skins and the eyes of a jaguar.

Miniature pieces are also made which are said to be used to carry talismans.

Even if I don’t make something like this myself, I would like to sit down with the ladies and watch the process and document it. Sometimes they are seen working with the fiber in the street but unfortunately I have not found them very open to my questioning or hanging about in the past.

The Ayoreo also use weft twining to make bags and carve beautifully simple bowls.

My friend Kathleen sent me pictures some time ago of bags called chácaras, which are said to be of Mayan origin, being made in Panama by the Ngöbe and Buglé people. The fiber is from the Aechmea magdalenae plant and is also twisted by rolling on the leg. The netting method appears to be the same although their color palette is quite different.

To finish this week I have some projects to show you from Marsha Knox who is in the Backstrap Weaving Group at Weavolution and Eladio Salas Torres who lives in Mexico and follows my blog.

Marsha used a tapestry loom to weave a band patterned with simple warp floats. I know that Marsha had a few false starts with this but she persevered and I thank her for showing us how warp faced bands can be woven on a tapestry loom.

Eladio has woven a wide piece incorporating three strips of simple warp floats using patterns from my blog. The red and black together look stunning!

He is using the double bird design from coastal Ecuador and a hook design that I adapted. He also sent me a picture of himself at his loom. I LOVE getting photos like this!

It looks like he is using a cardboard roll for his shed rod and maybe pvc pipe or wood for his loom bar and roll up stick. I wish I could sit cross legged like that! He has just bought my pebble weave book and I am sure we are going to be seeing pebble weave bands from him soon.

NEWS AND STUFF…

Here is the link to the most recent Synergo Arts newsletter about their latest progress with the ergonomic bench in Guatemala.

Backstrap Weaving – Weft twining: the learning process

WEFT TWINING: THE LEARNING PROCESS.

It has been a long time since I have learned something fiber related that it is completely new to me. As fun and interesting as it is, it has reminded me of just how much time is involved in practicing something so you can get to the stage where you are making something even half decent.

It is great finding weavings from different cultures online, finding that I know the technique and being able to chart and weave it like the Tarahumara band that I wove last week. When I visited the Montagnard weavers I saw a variation of a pick up technique that I already knew so it was not difficult to come home and weave it.

tara and viet — Tarahumara design band and Montagnard pick up patterned piece

However, I also saw that the Vietnamese ladies were working with weft twining, something that I had not tried nor seen worked before. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see the process and so I needed to come home and dive into my books in order to learn something about it.

This is a technique that has interested me for a long time. I bought Cheryl Samuel’s gorgeous book on weft twined Chilkat blankets from that wonderful newspaper-like catalog that Unicorn books used to put out back in the 90s. It is a stunning piece of work with beautiful illustrations – a joy to look at even if you don’t actually use it to make anything. Making a Chilkat blanket was perhaps a little daunting and so later I got a book on the Taaniko weft twining practiced by the Maori people of New Zealand. This seemed a lot more manageable. The book has fabulously clear step-by-step drawings but the disappointing lack of a variety of traditional Maori designs left me uninspired to try the technique.

More recently, my friend Caroline in Australia sent me a monograph on weft twining by Virginia Harvey and Harriet Tidball which has proved to be very useful.

Seeing the fine designs worked by the Montagnard weavers into the edges of their woven blankets and shirts was the motivation I needed to finally get down and learn how to do weft twining. Being able to touch the textiles and meet the weavers made all the difference.

kteh twining — Susan Stem shared the image above left with me of a loin cloth with a red and white weft twined edge. The other two examples were made by Montagnard weaver Nach Rahlan.

I remember being amazed when Betsy Renfrew, who is working with the Montagnard weavers, told me that this weft twining called kteh is worked off the loom. However, after reading my books and searching online, I have found that this is more often the case than not. Now that I have tried the technique myself, I don’t see any need to have the warps stretched out taut and can just hold everything in my lap. Maori weavers apparently have the top of the piece stretched out between two vertical stakes with the warps hanging down loosely.

And how is this for wonderful timing… the book you see at left, which I had ordered online and which has information about weft twining, arrived today. I can’t wait to get into this! Author Joy Totah Hilden has a wonderful website on Beduin weaving (she chooses to use that spelling) with seven pages devoted to weft twining which include images and instructional diagrams on the technique. The roll of cotton string which you see on top of the book is what I used for my warp and the yellow ball is Sugar and Cream cotton which served as my weft.

In her book Joy Totah Hilden describes weft twining as “the oldest weaving technique known in the world”. She quotes Mary Atwater who says “Twined weaving is so ancient that it may be said to have no history”. There is a discussion in a forum online about whether it is , in fact, classified as weaving. In any case, the results are beautiful!

So after a considerable amount of reading and trying to visualize the process, I got my materials together and started. This is one of the lowest tech techniques ever! That roll of string, the ball of yarn and my hands is all that I needed…no needles, pins, stakes or hooks. Okay, you do need one more thing in abundance: patience, as this is a slow technique.

I would liken it to learning to knit or crochet. The basic moves are not difficult but you have to figure out how you are going to hold and tension everything and you need to practice it a lot to get into a rhythm and settle into your own personal tension. You are all thumbs at first, tension is all over the place and the results are not too pretty! Basically you are taking two wefts, generally in two different colors, from one edge of the warp to the other twisting them as you go so that they encircle each warp.The twist is single or double depending on which color you need on the upper surface of the piece to form the pattern.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Working without a loom, the loose warps are controlled and held under tension by the left hand while the right hand twists the wefts.

I soon got bored with my first red and black piece with a small design from the Taaniko book. What I really wanted to make were some of the Montagnard designs. The good thing is that the designs are really easy to chart on basic squared paper. You can see the great variation in tension between the two red and white samples above as I slowly got used to doing the twining and settled into a consistent rhythm and tension.

The Taaniko book teaches you to first twine from left to right one row at a time tying off the yarn once the right hand edge is reached and then beginning again from the left side. This results in a series of knots down the right edge. This has you twisting the yarn with your right hand while holding the warps with the left. The idea is to eventually become ambidextrous in order to be able to reach the right edge, turn, and go back in the other direction twisting instead with the left hand.

Well I am sorry to say that I simply don’t have the patience for this part of the learning process and so I just flip the work over and return with the back side facing me twisting with my right hand all the way. You soon learn how to read the pattern equally well from the back side (this is a single faced technique).

As you can see above, the resulting “stitches” are slanted which means that diagonal lines in the design take on a different appearance depending on which way they are slanting. I thought at first that I must be doing something wrong but a close inspection of the Montagnard pieces showed that their designs have exactly the same appearance.

Getting increasingly adventurous I created a wider warp and charted one of the motifs from the photo that Susan Stem had given me. This is not a completely faithful reproduction as I could not see the details well enough in the picture. I chose some small border motifs from the Montagnard pieces, a Maori border and another main Montagnard motif and lumped them all together in the one piece.

Ideally, you would work with weft long enough to twine back and forward and finish the whole piece but this length of warp would be very difficult to handle. You eventually have to finish at one edge and knot the wefts there, take more weft and start again.

Now what to do with all those knots and tails? From what I have read, it is common practice to cover the knobbly knotted edges with braid or add a fringe or tassels along the entire edge. In the picture below, I added a fringe along one edge to see how that looked.

That doesn’t look too bad although you can see that the edge in general needs a lot of improvement. What I might do for the next piece is add a Navajo-style twining down the side.

My first weaving experience was with Navajo-style tapestry and this is one of my early pieces. I always loved the way this twining looked on the sides. I would like to see if this helps smooth out some of the lumps and bumps in the edges of my weft twined work.

So now I have an even better appreciation of the work that the Montagnard weavers are doing creating the weft twined edges on their weavings. Of course they are working with much much finer yarns and their warp is the fringe of their woven piece. They use several strands of their fine warp yarn as one warp for the twining.

Maybe I will get down to finer yarns eventually but for now I am content to continue with the chunky stuff and I would like to make some of the designs from my new book. I love the colors of these pieces..all those sun faded reds, blues and mustard yellows that work so well together. Now to start planning a piece that can be made into something useful. The result is very sturdy and would actually make a brilliant backstrap, belt or bookbag.

That was my week of practical work and then there was the charting. I have plans to reproduce the Huichol piece at left that I photographed at the National Museum of the American Indian. It has been woven in balanced double weave.

I have woven this technique only once before from a ready made chart but I don’t have enough experience with the structure to be able to chart it directly from a textile so there will be a lot of experimenting and sampling before this project gets off the ground.

Actually there are some charts in an old issue of Prairie Weave Companion which I should probably weave first to get my hand back in. One of the charts is of a Chinese lattice work design – gorgeous!

As usual I will leave you with some work done by members of the online backstrap groups on Weavolution and Ravelry.

Kimberly, whom I met at Convergence, has taken to Andean pebble weave in a big way following my book…

The band on the left is made with size 3 crochet cotton and the one on the right size 10 – Coats Royale – beautiful rich colors.

Carinefile in Belgium made a backstrap following my article in WeaveZine and Evelyn has been pebble weaving.

I see many more days of weft twining and charting Middle Eastern designs coming up hopefully with improvements in my technique. If all goes well, I will have a balanced double weave project underway too and there is a supplementary weft piece taking shape in my mind after having seen a yurt band online. Oh and there’s another Tarahumara piece that I would love to tackle….!

Backstrap Weaving – Warp floats and Woven Words

Rain at last!

Widespread scrub fires in the countryside here in Bolivia got a dousing recently so that the atmosphere here in Santa Cruz, which looked like that pictured at left during the height of the fires about a week ago, is once again relatively clean.

And just in time for the month of September which is a month of celebration in Santa Cruz.There will be all sorts of cultural activities and fiestas culminating in the Feria Expo, an annual international event, and September 24th, Santa Cruz Day which marks the day of the initial call to take up arms against the Spanish in the fight for independence. This year will be particularly festive as the city celebrates the bicentennial of this event. Along the way the first day of spring will be marked on the 21st which is also Students Day as well Bolivia’s answer to Valentine’s Day.

This week I have been studying the letters worked into the bag strap woven by the Montagnard weavers of Vietnam that I met while in the US. Once again I marvel at the possibilities that the simple warp float technique presents and the way it has been used by different weavers around the world.

warp float examples — From left to right: simple warp floats decorate a cotton saddle bag from Manabi province in coastal Ecuador, the same patterning technique on a blanket woven made by Montagnard weavers of Vietnam and a simple but very effective piece made in Sagada, Mt. Province in The Philippines. The latter was sent to me by Trish who lives in The Philippines. We met and spent many hours together in Los Angeles airport on one of my standby flight sagas.

In the examples above, the technique is seen in its very simplest form, floating single or paired warps of one color over horizontal bars of alternating light and dark warps.

As we have seen here before, the technique can be taken a step further by floating both the light and dark warps in succession, filling in the background to the main motif and thus covering the horizontal bars completely.

While doing a bit of a desktop clean up this week I came across an image of a Central Asian piece that Lisa had photographed at one of her reenactment events and sent me about which I had completely forgotten.

yurt hooks — The photo on the right is the one that inspired the small bag that I wove. The picture on the left is the new buried desktop discovery and it is nice to see the same hook design that I copied on this piece too.

Here is a quick summary of the difference between the single color and two-color versions of this simple warp float technique.

Basically, when you weave the single color version, the weaving sequence can be summarised with four “S”s:

Shed….Open the dark shed and pass the weft
Select..Choose the dark warps that you wish to have floating and forming a pattern
Save….Save these chosen warps on a stick
Shed….Open the light shed, add the saved warps to this shed and pass your weft

We could even add a fifth “S” to the sequence which would be Start again.

Here it is again with pictures…

The dark Shed has been opened and the weft has been passed. The dark warps to be floated have been Selected. The selected warps have been Saved on a stick.

The light Shed has been opened and the dark selected warps added to it. The weft is then passed. Then you Start again, that is, open the dark shed etc etc…

Moving on to the two color simple warp float technique, the sequence changes to: (this time I start with the light shed for no particular reason)

Shed…..Open the light shed and pass the weft
Select…Select the light warps that you want to float to form your pattern
Save…..Save the chosen warps on a stick
Shed…..Open the dark shed and add the saved light warps to it. Pass the weft
Select…Select warps from the dark shed which will float and form the design
Save…..Save the selected dark warps on a stick
Shed…..Open the light shed and add the saved dark warps to it. Pass the weft. From here move on to the second step: Select.

In pictures:

After passing the weft through the light Shed, two pairs of light warps are Selected, Saved and added to the dark Shed.

Dark pairs are then Selected from the dark shed, Saved and added to the light Shed.

Here is the pattern chart for the hook design taken from the yurt band and woven piece that Lisa photographed.

Full tutorials for both the single and two color warp float techniques are here on my blog.

The single color version has videos too.

Click on the TUTORIALS tab at the top of any blog page here and scroll through the list of tutorial links.

As always, things should be taken in steps and so, before attempting this hook design, I suggest weaving samples in single color floats first. There are so many possibilities for this simple technique using a single floated color and so there is no need to rush into the two-color version until you are good and ready.

With some experience in the single color version under your belt, you can then try the two-color “S” design for which a full step-by-step tutorial is provided here.

I wove the above pouches in order to reproduce some of the motifs woven by the Montagnard weavers with whom I got to spend some time in North Carolina. The technique is a twist on the basic simple warp float technique. Their way of arranging the sheds and selecting the warps produces warp floats on the back of the weaving and exposed weft on the front but the basic steps in the weaving sequence are the same. The resulting bands of pattern are more flexible than those produced by the Philippine and coastal Ecuadoran weavers as they are not truly warp faced.

This week I worked on extracting and charting all the woven letters that I found in the photos I had taken during the visit. I then wove up a sample band.

There are a few unorthodox moves that they use to form nicer curves for the letters. Betsy Renfrew who is working with the Montagnard weavers tells me that someone wove a banner with the words Montagnard-Dega Association for their office. I am looking forward to seeing that as the letter “s” is amongst the five or six that I am missing. I have been wanting to weave nice letters ever since I saw Linda Hendrickson’s beautiful book on card-woven letters Please Weave a Message. All I have done so far myself is devise a simple stick alphabet which I sometimes weave in double weave. Now I have another alphabet for my repetoire.

Another source for beautiful woven letters is Annie MacHale (aspinnerweaver) who weaves a line from musicians’ favorite songs on the guitar straps she makes for them on her inkle loom.

Some weavers who employ the simple warp float technique choose to float single warps, others pairs. As the weavers in coastal Ecuador are weaving with their homespun cotton, they float pairs of doubled strands of cotton to form their designs.

Hoja de Naranja alforja dsz — This photo was taken by anthropologist Kathleen Klumpp and shows one of the completed saddle bags or "alforjas" . This particular design is called "rosa y hoja de naranja", rose and orange leaf. The piece was woven on a vertical loom using a circular warp.

Kathie is with the weavers right now and has been urging me to go and join her with Doña Luz and her family whom I met on a three-week visit back in 2007. Knowing the amount of laughter that shakes their stilt house every evening when the extended family gets together, I know that they must be all having a wonderful time. Unfortunately I could not get my program to fit with Kathie’s and I am unable to accept her invitation.

kathie with luzs family — In 2007, sharing prints of photos from the 1976 visit.

Kathie has enjoyed a long, close and warm relationship with this family over the last four years visiting them to document the entire process that takes them from cotton boll to finished woven saddle bag and commissioning pieces to encourge them to continue weaving.

However, the story of her contact with these talented weavers started back in 1976 when Kathie was in Manabi province collecting data on village pottery making. She happened to see a gentleman on one of the rural buses carrying a most unusual saddle bag. It immediately stood out from other saddlebags that she had seen which were patterned with simple warp stripes as it was covered with geometric designs in indigo blue.

Her enquiries led her to Doña Luz Parraga and her family, master spinners and weavers in the settlement of Zapote and a friendship was formed.

At left you can see Luz’s daughter Trinidad, at fourteeen years of age in 1976, weaving and sewing an edging onto a finished saddle bag using a wooden rigid heddle fashioned by Luz herself.

After this visit, life interrupted, as it often does, and Kathie had to put her anthropological work aside. It wasn’t until her retirement that she was able to return, thirty years later, to the very same family, rekindle her friendship and continue her research.I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall of that stilt house when Kathie emerged from the vehicle and walked up the dusty slope to meet once again with her old dear friends. The following year I was able to join her.

dona luz 30 years apart — Photos taken by Kathie of Luz in 1976 and during her return visit in 2006.

dona2 — Here we are in 2010 with Luz and Trini at the loom. They have set up the warps which will go into twelve heddles to weave the orange leaf design after several days of studying the samples and struggling with the warps. This is a design which they had not woven for some time and were on the point of forgetting. Luz's eyesight is at the point where it is almost impossible for her to select the warps and Trini had great difficulty at first relating what was on her woven sample to the loom. Her perseverance paid off and, thanks to Kathie's encouragement, this design has been revived.

zapote weaving — The rose and chalice design at left is probably the one that is most often woven. This design requires eleven heddle sticks. The warps which are programmed into each of the eleven heddle sticks are recorded on the woven sample at right.

trinis bag — On this latest visit Kathie is helping Trini to develop new products as the market for traditional cotton saddlebags is now virtually non existent. This shoulder bag with a zippered outside compartment and made with factory cotton, has an adaptation of another traditional design of the coastal area. With Kathie's help the family members have planted and are raising 150 cotton plants on their property so that eventually they will once again be able to use their own handspun and pass on the spinning traditions to future generations.

Here is an edited version of a video that Kathie has made during this visit showing Trini making her string heddles and weaving a piece. You will see how she uses a flat stick to help ensure that all her heddles are made the same length. Those of you who have studied the simple warp float tutorial will recognize the moves when she starts weaving although she doesn’t have to select her warps to float as they are already in the heddles. The full version of the video can be viewed here.

I love the way she opens the heddles! They open relatively easily as she is using a smooth factory cotton.

It was never so easy when I was with them in 2007 and we were using their homespun thread.

At left is a flashback to 2007 when I was with the family. I wove quite a lot of this piece as part of my “training” so here you see the two proud weavers in front of their finished work!

Speaking of opening heddle sheds, I have put together a video of my own this week to show a couple of ways that I use to open a sticky shed as well as how I open each of the two sheds when doing Andean pebble weave.

The warp in the Andean pebble weave segment of the video is the one that Maurice, Lisa and I set up on Lisa’s four-shaft loom in North Carolina. I had intended doing something a lot wider but had not anticipated the amount of warp length that was required for the four-shaft loom and so had not bought enough yarn. So I ended up with a piece that happens to be just the right width for a guitar strap and I already know a guitar player who will love it.

As you can see, it ended up back here in Santa Cruz on my backtrap loom and wasn’t as difficult to retension as I had imagined.

mess and order — Setting up on the four-shaft loom was a bit freaky. Maurice, however, was completely unphased by this mess and soon tamed it into submission. The two dowels you see at left in the picture are part of a previous abandoned project and were later cut out.

Using that big loom to weave a narrow band may seem a bit strange but, if this is the only loom you have, you are not keen on trying backstrap weaving but really want to try Andean pebble weave, then all I can say is, why not?

What’s in the mail and the inbox?

Speaking of Andean pebble weave on other looms, Jennifer is weaving another pebble weave band on her inkle loom and has sent me pictures..

marydargies inkle loom — Inspired by Jennifer's progress, Marydargie on Ravelry warped up her inkle loom to weave the band in lesson one in my book.

In a discussion in the inkle weaving group on Ravelry we all agreed that mini inkle looms are not well suited to weaving pebble weave. A heavy-ish with a lot of room in front works well for this technique. My Ashford Inklette needed to be clamped to a table as it was too light and felt very cramped. Although I managed to weave a band on it in pebble weave, it was not very comfortable.

Francois in California, who has been following this blog, sent me a picture of his finger weaving, at left. I dabbled in finger weaving many years ago attracted by the Peruvian bands Ifound in a book and was surprised to see the enormous piece that he has created. I imagine that this comprises several bands sewn together. Another great technique requiring few or no tools.

Another small discussion on Ravelry was started when someone asked about whether people preferred backstrap or inkle looms in general. I could find advantages for both, naming as one of the inkle loom’s advantages the fact that the heddles are put in place as the warp is wound but…now I have learned a cool way to do that while winding the warp for backstrap weaving thanks to the Montagnard weavers…

vietnamese heddles — I made a video of Montagnard weaver Ju Nie making these heddles, at left, as she warped and, after watching it many many times was finally able to catch her quick movements and make sense of it. On the right are the heddles I made this way using thick yarn so that I could photograph the process for my journal. I have also made step-by-step diagrams and a video of my own showing the process very slowly just in case I forget! I doubt, however, that I will ever use this technique on my own warps as I am a big fan of the extra hitch on the heddle stick bteween heddle loops.

inbox imges — From the inbox and the mail box...Quiltparalegal sent me this picture of a loom that her son bought for her in Laos with its incredibly fine bamboo reed and string heddles. It amazes me that these bamboo reeds are still being made. What a piece of work! Weave2, sent me a lot of thread made in Jordan where she lives. Here are some examples of the rich colors she chose. AJM showed me a backstrap loom he made for a friend even before he can get one for himself finished! Anna, who is cycling from Alaska to Ushuaia, is weaving on the road after having classes in Huancayo. She downloaded my book along the way and has been weaving some of the motifs from it wich you can see on the right. The designs on the left were woven with her Peruvian teacher. She is now in Santa Cruz and is coming to weave with me tomorrow!

Above you see vivacious, no, REALLY vivacious Lyn Lucas and David Anderson of Red Corn whom I met at Convergence. I showed you one of the beautiful huipiles of Chichcastenango that they had on their stand in a previous post. Recently I discoverd their Facebook page and I highly recommend taking a look and “liking” their page. There they post two to three videos on Guatemalan weaving every week. It is a real treat!

And to finish, I have created a new tab at the top of the page named FAQ INDEX. That is all it is at the moment…an index. What you will find there along with the index is the following notice….

It will take some time to put this together but I am really looking forward to having all this information which I have posted in various places online all in the one place once and for all! Curious about the questions? Hit the FAQ INDEX tab at the top of the page. Maybe you have some questions to add.

Backstrap Weaving – Vietnamese Hilltribe Weavers in North Carolina

VIETNAMESE HILLTRIBE WEAVERS IN NORTH CAROLINA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And as if that wasn’t enough….

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

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

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

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

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

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

kteh samples — More fabulous examples of the kteh work.

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

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

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

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

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

Are you ready for day two?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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