Tag: pick up patterns

Backstrap Weaving – Pick-up or Wrap Up?

Before I get into the Pick-up Vs Wrap Up question, I’ll show you the completed expandable folder that I was constructing in my last post. All that was left to do was find some buttons and braid some loops. Rather than go out hunting for buttons, I stole one, a good heavy one, from one of my many wrist cuffs. I then I found two small ones lurking in my sewing box purse. I had originally been planning to use them on that little purse but ended up going with snaps instead.

The sewing box purse with its snap closures.
The finished folder with one large central button and two side buttons to keep all the bulk contained.

I guess I’m in a weave-and-construct phase and have had the idea to create a wallet. I just use a simple plain-weave zippered purse here for notes and coins (it’s still pretty much a cash society here) but upgrade to a proper leather wallet when I am traveling and need to carry more stuff like Yellow Fever vaccination card, public transport passes, credit and debit cards etc.

Plain-weave zippered purses that were fun to create.

I want to use some of my handspun cotton singles for the wallet project. It won’t take much to create such a small piece of fabric and there’ll be plenty of thread left over for other more ambitious things. I finally got all the white handspun boiled and ready for use.

This is my supply of the Upland cotton variety.

So far, I’ve only used my handspun cotton singles in plain-weave ikat projects….three small pieces, a zippered purse, a draw-string bag and a slip case. The cotton stood up well and I love how the simple warp-faced plain weave shows it off.

I have another ikat project in mind using a soft butter yellow, burgundy and black and thought that this would make a nice wallet. But then I thought that perhaps I should use the cotton in another way this time. I’ve already tried it in ikat and know that I like it. Maybe it’s more interesting to try something new? It would be good to know how well the singles thread stands up to a pick-up technique like the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave, for example.

The process of creating both options is pretty intense! Ikat involves plain weave. That sounds so simple. However, it’s all that goes into the creation of the warp before it even hits the loom that makes it so complex. There’s the winding of the warp, the sectioning, folding and wrapping. Then comes the dyeing, more wrapping (if you’re dyeing more than one color) and dyeing again. This is followed by unwrapping, the careful settling on the loom and heddle making. Then you get to the weaving part which goes relatively quickly.

Wrapping the folded warp for the zippered purse project.

I’ve always liked these kinds of time consuming projects. These days I like them even more. They give me a whole lot of satisfying creative mileage out of just small amounts of materials.

As for pick-up, well that can be super intense as well, depending on the kind of pattern that I choose. As I’ve never used my handspun cotton for the Andean Pebble Weave structure, I needed to weave a decent-sized sample to gauge width. First, I dyed a small quantity black and wound a short warp of 320 ends.

That’s what it looks like on the loom.

I thought that I may as well go with a very busy pattern and give the thread, my fingers (and my brain) a good workout. Two threads broke. I’m quite used to working with black in pick-up and am pleased that these older eyes can still manage, although I think that my left one is doing most of the work.

Lately, I’ve been looking at textiles and basketry from the other side of the world….East Timor, Indonesia, Borneo…I guess with the idea of perhaps spending time in that area when I return to live in Australia. The pattern that I created for the cover of my folder was inspired by the shapes I have been seeing and in the same way, so was the pattern that I drew for this current project. It’s very busy!

The two faces of the band using the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave.

It was a good call weaving a sample (it always is) as I’d started off slightly too wide. It soon settled into a consistent width. I used the method that I was taught by my very first teachers from Ayacucho which involves two sets of heddles with pick-up being done at a permanent cross. I used the “saver cord” which they taught me to use (although, to be honest, I had no idea at the time what purpose it served!) I soon learned that it is the instrument that helps me to read the pattern and saves me from having to handle and count each thread one by one. Having a permanent picking cross (rather than constantly creating and re-creating a temporary one) saves the warp from a considerable amount of wear and tear.

I figure that if the singles thread can stand up to this amount of handling, it should be okay with any other less complex pattern that I happen to choose. Hopefully, I’m not getting too cocky here. If I were to use this pattern on the wallet, it would be aligned sideways like this.

I changed the last part of the pattern (on the right) as an experiment to see what it looked like with a bit more open space.

I’m very satisfied with this sample. It’s answered my question about the suitability of my handspun for working with this structure but I still have the urge to create the aforementioned ikat piece. I haven’t come up with a pattern for that yet, just the three colors. So the question remains…Pick-up or Wrap Up? Of course, the solution is to make two wallets! Why not? That will certainly keep me out of trouble for a while.

In the meantime, I’m doing something I’ve never done before…I’m using up leftover scraps from other projects. I usually can’t bear to throw them away immediately after completing a project. They hang around until I turn them up six months later and think… why the heck am I keeping this?…and throw them away. But these I’ve kept. Perhaps I’ve been watching too many HandyMum videos (she often uses the tiniest scraps of fabric from her vast stash of commercial fabric to make sweet projects). I’m making a sample wallet with them so that I can test my ideas for putting one together. It might even be good enough to keep and use.

I have bits left over from ikat projects using my handspun cotton (that black scrap, for example, is the end of the ikat drawstring bag project). There’s a bit from the ikat cross-body purse that I wove in 20/2 cotton. You’ll recognize the stitched shibori leftovers from my folder project. The other side of the stitched shibori rectangle that you see in the picture (which is the inside of the wallet) is leftover plain blue Andean Pebble Weave fabric from this project….

I thought I’d finish this post with a little bit of book promotion, which I haven’t done for a while! The structure that I used for my latest project is the one that I call Andean Pebble Weave. This structure creates patterns that are double-faced. Of course all cloth has two faces. What I mean by double-faced patterns is that both faces of the cloth are structurally identical with colors reversed. That’s how I created one face that has a white pattern on black with the same pattern on the back in black on white.

This is a characteristic of a larger category of structures that are known as Complementary-warp. The structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave is just one variety that sits within this category.

Some of the varieties of complementary-warp weaves.

In the picture, above, you can see at top left both faces of a pattern in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave with its “spotty” surface. The image top right shows another complementary-warp structure which is known as intermesh. It gives a very smooth, solid color appearance. In some places it is woven more open so that it does indeed have a very mesh-like appearance. However, my Guarani teacher here in the Bolivian lowlands weaves a very dense version which closes all the spaces between the warp threads. At bottom left, you can see the two faces of another variety with its characteristic diagonal twill lines. The image bottom right shows how a pattern can sometimes employ multiple structures, in this case, both pebble (center) and twill structures have been used side by side.

As for my books, here are two that I can recommend to those who would like to learn how to do this kind of pick-up. I wrote them for those who are already competently and confidently weaving warp-faced plain-weave bands and who would like to try one of the many kinds of pick-up patterning structures.

If you use what I call a standard inkle loom (the Schacht and Ashford models are examples), this is the book for you…..Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms…

This book teaches three methods for weaving these patterns to suit different learning and weaving styles. It includes access to supplementary instructional video clips.

If you use any other kind of loom or set-up that allows you to create two sheds and weave warp-faced bands (including standard inkle looms) this is the book for you….Complementary-warp Pick-up…

This book shows one method that allows you to weave any kind of complementary-warp structure. It includes patterns in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave as well as other complementary-warp styles.

Once you’ve learned the methods in either of these two books, you’ll be able to weave the patterns that I offer in both my follow-up pattern books… Complementary-warp Pattern Book and More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns. All my books are available as PDFs or as spiral-bound books (shipped from Washington state, USA) at Taproot Video.

I wish you all the best for your celebrations and will see you in the new year with, hopefully, at least one new wallet.

 

Backstrap Weaving – Putting it All Together.

This post is about the second expandable folder that I’ve been working on….the weaving, the stitching, the ironing and the gluing. I’m posting all this as much for my own future reference as for the folks who have asked me for an explanation. I have written my notes in my weaving book but there aren’t accompanying photos as there are here. If the process doesn’t interest you, I hope that you will at least enjoy scrolling through and seeing the photos in this post.

The folder is only 99% finished because my box of random buttons that I’ve picked up here and there over the years is now living in Australia. Silly me hadn’t thought far enough ahead to select one or two to bring back to Bolivia with me for this project. I’ve never actually been button hunting here in Santa Cruz. Who knows what I might discover.

The button-and-loop closure that I used for the first folder. I’d like to use two such closures on the new folder, one on each of the plain weave side panels, as this second folder is going to be quite stuffed full of charts.

What did I learn from this project?…..that the cotton fabric I bought for the stitched shibori project that I planned to combine with my woven cloth shrinks a heck of a lot in the hot dye bath. I had to adjust my overall folder design to accommodate that. I’ll keep that in mind for future projects.

In my last post I showed you how different the two faces of this cloth turned out…both attractive in their own way. I eventually decided on using this bolder face for the folder project.
First things first…finish the main pattern fabric. At this point I was celebrating passing halfway.

Next came the weaving of the plain-weave side panels. I chose to weave these separately as the wool singles are particularly grabby in plain weave and I need to operate the loom in a certain way to minimize the amount of abrasion. The sheds are much easier to open when I work with warp floats in the pattern area and so I find that it’s an overall smoother and more efficient operation to just weave the plain and patterned areas separately.

I prefer to weave the two strips separately rather than as one long band which I then cut in two. That saves me having to set up to accommodate the longer warp in my limited weaving space. It does result in a bit more waste, though.

The woven pieces were then ready to assemble into one wide piece for the folder.

Just as I had done for the first folder, I joined the three panels using the cross-knit-loop stitch that my Vietnamese backstrap loom teachers use to join panels for skirts and blankets.

I hemmed the completed piece and lined it with my stitched shibori fabric. I also inserted two pieces of stiff card between the woven fabric and the lining….one for each half…..and added a line of sewing across the center of the piece as well, thus keeping the two cardboard pieces separate. I stitch by hand and I love doing this kind of straightforward stitching. At this point I discovered that the amount of stitched shibori fabric that remained was not going to be enough for my original construction plan. Well, we just have to adjust and make it work, don’t we?

These will be the fan-folded pieces that make the expandable sides of the folder. I use two for each side…one for each half… and join the two halves together as the very last step of the process.

The sides of my first folder extend all the way from bottom to top…

You can see the line in the middle of the fan-folds where the two halves are eventually glued together.

In order to fit the full height of the folder I needed 11″ of length for each piece of shibori fabric. I only had enough fabric for 9 1/2″. It’s more than enough to contain the sheets of charting paper that will be housed within the folder so it’s not a big deal…still, I think the side panels look much nicer if they can extend all the way to the top of the folder. It’s hard to believe that the cotton cloth shrank so much in the dye bath. I’m wondering if I perhaps failed to take into account seam allowance when I originally measured out the cloth. I didn’t take notes!

I ironed fusible interfacing onto the reverse of the four stitched shibori pieces and then created the fan folds. This cotton cloth is quite a bit heavier than the fabric that I used on the first folder and I had to coax it into holding nice crisp folds. It really didn’t want to.

And now, this is where it all starts to get a bit fiddly and I’m afraid that my photos aren’t great. I hope that my descriptions don’t sound as clumsy to you as they do to me!

The four fan-folded pieces are then sewn to the inside of the folder. The first folded section in each is sewn down flat along the the edges of the folder. That piece of cardboard is only there for the photo to help distinguish the folded pieces from the background lining cloth.

And now, out comes the iron and things get even fiddlier! I have a burn on the inside of my wrist to prove it. The next step is about inserting the cardboard dividers. Here’s a photo of the sides and dividers in position in the finished folder….

Think of the side pieces as being folded into a series of valleys and mountains. The dividers extend across the folder from mountain peak to mountain peak. There are two mountain peaks on each half of each side.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you come up with a much better way to do this which will have me slapping my forehead, but this worked well for my first folder and I haven’t since been able to come up with another option.

I cut five pieces of stiff card (8″ tall) and twenty 8 x 1 1/2″ strips of heavy fusible interfacing. I ironed about two thirds of the width of each interfacing strip to the two edges of each card, one to the upper face and one to the lower.

I hope this photo gives you the idea. This isn’t the tricky part, by the way!

My cardboard divider pieces now look like they are edged with an “open jaw” of interfacing ready to clamp down on and enclose something. They need to be ironed onto the fan folds so that they grip the mountain peaks. Yep, that’s the fiddly bit. For the most part it works really well, especially if you manage to keep your body parts out of the way of the iron. I used Wellbond glue for any parts that weren’t quite within reach of the iron. It’s good stuff and works really well. However, I prefer risking the iron to the mess of the glue. Plus the glue requires a much longer “cure” time than the ironed interfacing.

This process will utilize four of the five pieces of card. The fifth gets inserted at the end when you join the two halves of the side panels together. I used the Wellbond glue for this and could then sit back and give it the required amount of time to cure before placing my pile of pattern charts into their new home.

You can see the center join which forms another mountain. The interfacing tabs on the last cardboard divider are glued in and sandwiched between the two sections.
All I need to do now is braid some loops and find two nice silver buttons.

That just about finished off my supply of Petaluma wool. I have some left to use in my next venture into dyeing with cochineal which could well be my next project. I’ll be able to weave a (very) little something with it. If not that, I’ll weave cotton ikat cloth, using my handspun, and make another stitched shibori project for a wallet.

And here’s a reminder that Dorinda is in the States and will be able to mail orders of beautiful cloth and products created by my weaving teacher, Maxima, and the other ladies in the co-op they operate in the central Bolivian highlands. She can do this until December 6. The pieces ae made from the weavers’ own hand-spun and naturally-dyed wool. Take a look at the gorgeous range of colors they are able to create from local dye plants and cochineal. Finished products are available as well as just the cloth on its own for you to use in your own sewing projects. These are snippets of pieces that I have bought over the years.

You can contact Dorinda directly at dkdutcher@hotmail.com or via the PAZA Bolivia blog. I hope you’ll consider making a purchase for yourself or friends for this holiday season. And many thanks to those who have already done so. Dorinda keeps me updated!

Backstrap Weaving – Hitting the Ground Running

I traveled and now I’m back home trying to get my sleeping patterns back in order. I’ve found after all the trips away that I have done that one of the best ways to ease the effects of jet lag is to hit the ground running on my return. In the days when I was teaching English here at the Centro Boliviano Americano, I would arrive back from a trip to Australia and be back in the classroom the next day. I seemed to shake off the effects of jet lag so easily that way. If I come home and am just faced with cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping and a pile of yarn, it’s way too easy to give into the temptation to lay everything down and go take a nap. That doesn’t help at all with getting back to normal sleep patterns.

So, where did I go?

Arriving in Sydney in the early morning, I had hours to kill before my afternoon train up north. I put my luggage into storage at Central Station and went down to the harbor on what was an absolutely glorious day.

My gosh it was crowded down there. Was this the mass tourism that I had been hearing about? Not quite. I eventually realized that people were coming to witness the 50th birthday celebration day for the Sydney Opera House. Crowds were gathering for the day’s events.

Flying into Sydney at day break reminded me of the colors I had chosen for my woven piece named Sunrise, Sunset.

Now I’m back in Bolivia and have hit the ground running as far as my fiber-y pursuits go….not so much as far as cleaning and laundry go, though. Has it helped with the jet lag…..hmmmm, maybe just a little bit.

I had taken some cotton fabric away with me so that I could keep busy during any down time stitching for a shibori project. If you’ve read my most recent posts, you’ll know that I have plans to create another expandable folder just like this one that I just finished…

My expandable folder project has a woven wool cover with three-color patterning. It holds my various styles of blank pattern charts.
I used some fabric that I happened to have to line the cover and make the expandable sides.

I’m planning to use my stitched shibori fabric to line the cover and make the sides on this second folder project. I chose a simple leaf pattern to suit my beginner skill level. I’ve only made a few small stitched shibori experiments so far which I’ve used to line some of my woven bags.

At this stage, all the leaf shapes have been stitched and I am pulling and tying off the threads to prepare the cloth for dyeing. The folds of cloth in the tightly gathered areas will mostly resist the dye. I completed this task and took the piece home ready to go into the dye pot.
Sleep was denied me the first couple of nights. That along with the fact that day time temperatures have been outrageously and unseasonably high (and I don’t have air conditioning), had me dyeing the cloth in the wee hours and attempting to remove the stitches. That was the only time that I could bear to use the stove. It was lovely sitting and working on it in the quiet and relative coolness of 3am.

I’d used stronger thread than in my previous projects and removing it was quite a challenge. I was amazed at how different the two faces of the cloth looked. The photo above shows a soft image while the other face, below, has much bolder lines and higher contrast.

I’ll probably use one face for the lining and the other for the sides because I simply can’t decide which face I prefer.

I’d created a new pattern for the three-color weave I was planning to use for the cover of the new folder. I was once again going to use the wool singles that I’d got from the farmer in California. I dyed two blues to use alongside the natural grey. I think the pattern I drew for the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave was born from having spent some time looking at textiles and basketry from Borneo and Sulawesi.

I made all the necessary calculations and wound the warp leaving it ready to be picked up when I returned from my trip.

This was what was waiting for my return so that I could hit the ground running. I’d separated the threads onto two sticks for the two sets of heddles and left the heddle making itself as the task that would get me straight back into the groove on my return.

Weaving with these wool singles is all about gently taming a hairy squiggly beast. I’d barely got into it when I broke a warp thread. This was a convenient reminder of just how careful I needed to be.

I got some smart and wonderfully thin black cable ties while in Australia for my unconventional way of lashing my warp to the beam.
Approaching halfway and rolling up the woven cloth around beams and paper.
Woo hoo!….past halfway and time to reverse the pattern. No more broken threads. I’m really pleased with the new pattern I created.

I’ll construct the folder in the same way I did the other. The cover will be three woven panels that I join with a decorative stitch. I had requests from a few people to explain how I put the folder together. Hopefully, I’ll remember to take pictures of the process this time so that I can write a blog post about it and show you.

Before I leave, I’d like to invite you to visit the PAZA Bolivia blog that my friend Dorinda Dutcher writes about the work of my weaving teacher Maxima and the other ladies in the co-op in the central Bolivian highlands. There are exciting plans to perhaps introduce the ladies to indigo-dyeing techniques and I can’t wait to see how the weavers combine it with their current gorgeous range of natural colors.

My favorite Bolivian weaving teacher, Maxima, stands here on the left with one of her daughters and a granddaughter…..three generations of weavers! Her granddaughter proudly shows her first ever weaving that has been accepted for sale by the co-op of weavers in her community. It was woven on the traditional leaning frame loom using handspun and naturally dyed wool. Dorinda, who works with these ladies to transport and help sell the products made from this beautiful cloth, has just written a blog post showing all that she has available to ship now from the USA (until Dec 6) if you are looking for Christmas gifts.

Another reason to direct you to the PAZA blog, is to make you aware of the woven products that the ladies offer via the co-op especially now that Christmas is approaching. I do hope that you will consider making a purchase to support them. Dorinda’s latest blog post shows what she has available in the US to ship until December 6 (after which she will be traveling and unable to process orders). Dorinda fills the blog with personal stories and photos of the weavers’ rural lives and is well worth a read even if you aren’t in the market for a beautiful piece of handweaving. Here’s the link again.

Until next time when I’ll hopefully have a finished folder to show you…..

Backstrap Weaving – Winter Colors

I wonder what colors spring to mind when you think of winter…blues, greys, winter white? As I sit here in shorts and a tank top, I have to remind myself that it’s actually winter here in the tropical lowland part of Bolivia in which I live. It’s the same in the fall when flowers are still blooming and the city is alive with the bright colors and fragrances that are usually associated with spring. It’s easy to forget that the leaves in the fall season in other places are turning all sorts of stunning colors.

I was lucky to have been visiting my friend Lausanne in Vermont one year around the Columbus Day weekend.
One sign for me that the seasons have changed is when the rays from the low winter sun find their way through my bedroom window to fall softly across my work at my backstrap loom. At other times of year, my windows ae blacked out to keep out the heat.

I guess all this has been on my mind lately because I am in the midst of a long move back to Australia to a place that has four very distinct seasons. It will be a little too cold in winter for my liking but hey, I lived at the southern-most tip of the South American mainland for five years and spent eleven seasons living in ski resorts. I’m no stranger to cold…just getting fussy in my old age! I do look forward to the more classic fall colors but I’ve heard that the winters can be grey and foggy. The locals like to call that mountain mist “the champagne air”.

So, what are winter colors here in Santa Cruz?…all the bright colors of tropical fruits and flowers.

I love going out for a late afternoon stroll and coming home with these little tastes of sunshine. Pineapple and papaya vendors selling slices are scattered about the street markets ready to skin, de-seed and chop just the right amount for you.

And in keeping with that, I’ve had some quite bright colors on my loom lately. As you know, I am only working with yarn that I have stashed away here…no new purchases. I decided to pull out the tub of Omega Sinfonia cotton thread that I often use to prepare workshop samples. It’s a riot of tiny balls left over from years of workshop prep. I almost took one look at the mess and turned around to put it straight back into the closet. The worst part was that what looked like the bigger balls of thread were actually made up of dozens of tiny quantities all rolled into one ball.

From the days when my living room would look like a yarn jungle with piles and piles of Omega Sinfonia workshop warps.

In my last post, I talked about weaving a grocery tote using the Mayan Hands naturally-dyed cotton but I just couldn’t get inspired. I turned to the Omega Sinfonia instead and decided for a start to scrape together enough to dye navy blue for outer pockets for the tote bag. If I wove the pockets in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave, I could show both faces of the cloth…one pocket on each side of the bag displaying each of the two faces.

As for the rest of the bag, well you know my style….I’ll figure that out later. I grabbed some other colors from the tub and set out to plan a pattern…something very colorful and jolly. I was going to say spring-like but it would actually be all-year-round-like here where I live. It would certainly be something lively to brighten the days of “champagne air” when I end up living in Katoomba.

Then it occurred to me that I had never actually woven anything substantial with this thread and that I would have to, therefore, sample….eye roll…..I wasn’t in the mood for sampling! But no, fortunately, I remembered that I had put together a warp for the cover of my video class, Operating a Backstrap Loom, in good ol’ Omega Sinfonia.

My video class that is available to stream on Taproot Video. There might even be some copies of the DVD left.

Having done its job as the DVD cover, the warp had sat unloved in a drawer for quite some time until I had the idea to unweave that small woven section and turn it into a backstrap with a bit of pick-up patterning. I took it traveling.

Weaving outdoors in beautiful Maine.
The finished backstrap which happens to be the one that I am currently using (almost all the others are now living in Australia)

Speaking of weaving one’s own backstrap, let me show the one that Natalie wove using the instructions in my free tutorial here on my blog that includes video clips. I love how the yarn she used has created its own pattern.

Backstrap woven on a backstrap loom by Natalie Marie Robinson.

So, I had all I needed to be able to make my width calculations, I dyed the scraps navy blue and drew up an idea.

Not my usual color palette and way out of my safe color comfort zone, to be honest, but it looked okay on paper, so why not?
Off paper and onto yarn, the warp kind of freaked me out…argh, I didn’t know if I could live with those colors.

I remembered a colorful warp that I had taken traveling with me years ago…hastily put together the night before I had left. I had hated it so much that it never left my bag. But I did eventually weave it when I got home and made it into a sewing kit pouch. It had grown on me, and I still like it.

Fortunately this latest warp also grew on me. I think the pockets will look very jolly against a dark solid-color bag.

I haven’t woven using thread this size in ages. It wove up so quickly!

All these patterns are in my Complementary-warp Pattern Book. If you have followed my instructions for either complementary-warp pick-up or Andean Pebble Weave, you’ll be able to weave these.

I wove 20″ on this 26″-warp, enough for the two pockets and some extra just in case. You’ll need to put on your sunglasses to look at the other face!

I love the fact that my backstrap loom allows me to create lovely neat third selvedges…

A third selvedge means one fewer hem to sew and saves a little warp waste at the start.

I have what you might call an unconventional way of setting up to create my third selvedge in that I don’t do it the way my teachers here in South America showed me. But then who is to say what is “conventional” when it comes to this kind of thing? You can see the way my indigenous teachers do it here. I talk about how I do it here. That link takes you one of my FAQ pages….a resource that is often overlooked by my readers or perhaps forgotten. In my latest project I used an umbrella rib as the header to create my third selvedge.

To create the neatest third selvedge, you do need to dedicate some time to making sure the warp threads are all well settled in their correct positions before you start weaving. Then you open a shed and beat really well against the beam. When doing the four-stake warping that I show in Method 2 in my free warping video, paying attention to how the doubled threads pass around the two end stakes will make all the difference to the amount of time you need to spend tidying up before you start weaving. Try to have them pass consistently with one of the two colors always sitting above the other on the stakes. Of course, if you plan to start with a fringe, none of this matters.

In the meantime, another pouch got lined with a stitched shibori learning piece. This time there was an attempt to create a bird. I will do better next time. You probably know where this is heading and perhaps hummingbirds will make their appearance soon.

You could turn the bird figure upside down and call it a stem and flower.

I scoured the fabric on which the shibori pieces sits in the hope that I can do some stitched resist on it. I am intrigued by the idea of using the technique on printed fabric. I know that I’ll have to place the figures carefully or the original dark blues of the cloth and the dark dye color will just merge. If that happens, the figures won’t have clearly defined outlines.

I threw a strip of this scoured fabric into the dye pot when I was dyeing the Sinfonia thread blue. The scouring did the trick and the fabric took up the dye nicely. You can only faintly make out the pattern and I think this will be a nice effect.

A much better dye result than my experiment with the fabric that had simply been washed with regular laundry detergent.

I’ll finish with a quick reminder of the pages on this blog that list and provide links to my free tutorials and video clips. These may not be immediately obvious to those viewing the blog on certain devices. Check them out 🙂 See you next time.

Backstrap Weaving – Taking Flight

The Jaunty Bag is finished and will be taking flight with me tomorrow night to Australia. It’s stuffed full of Upland white cotton sliver, my mortar spinning bowl, and takli spindle. I don’t plan to spin on the flight although I wish I could. I don’t think my fellow passengers would appreciate having my extended arm in their faces.

It’s one heck of a trip…60 hours from door to door. There’s a reason why some tickets are less expensive than others! At least I arrive at my brother’s place in the evening and can go straight to bed. A million thanks to my weaving friend Emerald who will help me out with my 150lbs of luggage (this is Phase 1 of my eventual move back to Australia) while waiting in Sydney for the train up north. The hardest thing about traveling alone with so much luggage is queuing to buy food and then somehow finding a hand free to carry it away, and going to the restroom.

As for the Jaunty Bag, here’s where I left it in my last post…

The bag had been constructed and I was weaving the strap. I used the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave in only one color rather than two for the warp-faced part of the strap. I turned Andean Pebble Weave sideways and wove it using weft for the little figured squares. I had planned to weave the strap with four selvedges but overestimated the amount of take-up. With four selvedges the strap would be too long. But I am crazy and created the four selvedges anyway because it’s good experience! As I mentioned in a previous post, I find it much easier to fill the gap between the two ends of weaving with weft-faced weaving rather than warp-faced.

I cut off the excess length of band and sewed it onto the bag. It doesn’t have its lining yet but I did buy a book on stitched shibori which is the technique I would like to use for the lining. When I looked online again for that thirty-five-dollar Stitched Shibori book, it had magically become twenty-six dollars. I’ll have plenty of flight time in which to read it. Even without its lining the Jaunty Bag will go traveling with me.

I haven’t been back to Australia in three and a half years and I haven’t been there in the summer months since 2014. I’m not teaching on this trip because I have no room for any workshop equipment but I will meet up with a weaving friend or two just to have some fun weaving together. I wonder if I’ll be able to attend the guild meeting in Sydney.

I’ll be back in March. There’ll be lots of thinking time on flights to plan my next project. I’m not going to bring back any yarn (Ha! Lets see if I stick to that plan). Working with dwindling yarn stash throughout the pandemic and these last years has been a really good experience and I’d like to keep that going. I will however, bring back some acid dyes.

I guess I’ll see you when I get back to Bolivia. I’ll be posting Aussie things that catch my eye on my personal Facebook account.