rolling stick – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving -Twisting, Coiling and Rolling

There is no single correct way to do things when it comes to backstrap weaving. I love seeing the similarities and differences in the ways weavers wind warps, set up their looms and operate them as well as the differences in the materials that they use…from pvc pipe to rebar to bone and worn wooden pieces that have been passed down from one generation to the next. Backstraps can be made from braided straw, plastic rice sacks, leather or woven wool and cotton. Warps can be angled upwards ever so slightly or steeply. Heddles can be applied during warping or after. I love the different shapes of tools and materials that I have in my collection. It is not really a ”collection” accumulated simply for the sake of collecting. I have used all these pieces at some time or other and continue to do so. You can see a leather backstrap from Guatemala, a bone sword and pick-up tool from Peru, loom beams from Burma, Guatemala and Peru and a sword from Ecuador…all sitting on a Bolivian weaving.

The thing I want to talk abut in this post is the corrugation or ridging that can occur when weaving a cotton piece in plain weave and the different ways I have found to deal with it. I have covered this in several posts as I struggled to figure out what was causing it and then found out how to prevent it from happening. I now use a coil rod if I am doing plain weave with a material that has little, if any, stretch or ”give”, like cotton or silk, for example. Probably the worst case of corrugation I have ever produced is out there for everyone to see in my tutorial on supplementary weft patterning…

You can see that the surface of the weaving is not flat and smooth . It looks a lot like corrugated cardboard…bump, flat, bump, flat, bump, flat. I finally figured out that when my warp passed around and was suspended by a large dowel at the far end, the entire warp was free to swivel back and forth around the dowel as I made the movements to operate the loom. This is what was causing that bump to form and it was just a matter of somehow stopping that swiveling from happening.

The corrugation only shows up when I do plain weave. Warp-float structures do not suffer from these annoying bumps.

You might be able to make out the difference in these two bands. The one on the left has a nice smooth surface while the one on the right is corrugated.

I had been given the know-how to combat the corrugation by my various indigenous weaving teachers without even being aware of it. One of the few places where I have studied plain weave in cotton with backstrap weavers was in Guatemala. There, my weaving teachers would weave an inch or so at one end of the loom and then turn the loom around and weave from the other end. The weaving at the far end of the loom locked the two layers of warp together so that the threads could not swivel back and forth as the weaver operated the loom…result: nice smooth cotton cloth..no corrugation.

The picture below of my teacher is too small to show detail but you will notice that the warp layers at the far end of the loom are squeezed together right at the loom bar rather than being open as they pass around the beam. That is because an inch or so has already been woven at that far end.

So, anything that locks the layers of warp threads together rather than allowing them to be open and swiveling freely around the loom bars will work as a way to prevent corrugation.

Lashing the warp to the near and far beams is another way to lock the layers together…

This weaver in Peru is lashing her alpaca warp to the square loom beam. A header weft was placed within the open shed and then lashed to the beam. The primary reason for doing this is to allow her woven piece to have four selvedges. But, this technique would also stop a cotton piece from developing corrugation. You can see a very nice video of the lashing process here.

Here, my weaving teacher in Potosi, Bolivia is lashing one end of the warp we just wound to the beam…

My cotton warp in the following picture is lashed to the beam at both ends by way of a metal rod rather than a header weft. This is the way I choose to do it and it gives me nice smooth plain-weave cloth without ridges…

The red cotton cloth beneath the white sample was also woven on my backstrap loom. It’s plain-weave cotton and is smooth because I used a coil rod.

Some weavers turn their warp ends around a header weft as they wind the warp rather than inserting it later when the warp is off the warping stakes. It is always exciting to see the different ways backstrap weavers do things…

Of the three methods for locking the warp layers together that I have learned so far…1. weaving at both ends of the warp 2. lashing both ends of the warp to the beams and 3. inserting a coil rod…..the coil rod is my favorite. I am not quite sure why I favor this one. I think it might be because I like to take my warp off the warping stakes and then sit, set up and weave. I can sit and make my heddles, insert the coil rod and weave. I don’t need to be turning the loom around to lash both ends or turning the loom around and rearranging the sheds so I can weave at both ends. I want to just sit and stay put! I feel that the less I handle the loom in terms of moving it around and about, the better.

But, as always, it is nice to have a set of options from which to choose.

There’s nothing I like better than being seated in front of my warp with heddles, shed rod and coil rod in place, ready to throw that first weft! This is a warp of fine Guatemalan cotton that I wove in plain weave with supplementary weft patterns.

A coil rod has kept all my silk plain-weave projects just as they should be…”smooth as silk”!

Even though this next project was in wool, I inserted a coil rod. Sometimes, I just like to use one as I like the way it maintains the width of the warp beyond the shed rod.

My Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) backstrap weaving teacher uses circular warps and inserts the coil rod as she winds her warp. This is the colorful fine cotton warp she created with coil rod in place when she was teaching me how to do this…

This next picture is probably one of my all-time favorite backstrap weaving images and I am showing it here courtesy of Jaina Mishra…

Weavers in Arunachal Pradesh use the traditional back strap loom to weave skirts, shawls and loin cloths.

A backstrap weaver is warping directly onto her loom with the help of a friend. It looks to me like a single-plane rather than circular warp and the fun part is that they are installing the coil rod as they go. This would be ultimate for me who likes to sit at the loom and do everything in one go! They are making heddles installing the shed rod and coil rod all at once! I love the backstrap she is using for those very long beams…see the pockets that slip over the ends of the beams? There is so much to love about this picture! The weaver can start weaving straight away without ever having to move.

What I have finally done, for those of you who think that you might like to try using a coil rod yourselves, is make a couple of videos showing you how I go about inserting one. I am afraid that we are back to the bedroom-floor amateur videos of my past with these ones! but I am sure that you will see all you need to know.

What I usually do is sit in my loom and make my string heddles. Then I decide if I am going to use a loop or shed rod/s for the other shed and get that set up. I leave the cross sticks in place and then insert the coil rod. It’s something I enjoy doing…just like I enjoy making string heddles. I am a little crazy that way! You can see Sara, above, inserting the coil rod in her beautiful silk plain-weave warp. She has made her heddles and is using a shed rod with a second cross stick….the so-called ”twisty sticks” that I talk about in my dvd.

So here are the two videos. I had to make two segments for ease of uploading.

Now you will know why the coil rod is often also referred to in publications as the ”rolling stick”. I like the way it can sort of iron out small tension differences as it is being rolled to the back of the warp. I use wood rather than metal as I like the grip of the wood as opposed to smooth metal.

And, if you really would like to set up the coil rod as you wind your warp rather than after, I am sure that you will be able to see how to do that now that you know exactly how the threads turn around the rod. In past posts about the coil rod, I have shown how to install one while winding a circular warp.

I am going to finish by showing you a few projects by online weaving friends….

My new Operating a Backstrap Loom dvd traveled over the ocean to Maja in Germany. She was curious about learning new ways to set up a wide warp and has chosen the ”twisty-stick” method from the options I give in the dvd. She has already put it to use on her latest warp and I am thrilled about that. Look at her beautiful project!….

Collyer had woven tubular bands and learned about sewn embellishments with me. We decorate a piece of woven cloth made by my weaving friends in Bolivia. Collyer has applied the coil stitches to the flap of the pouch she put together with the cloth and has added a flat strap which she turned into a tubular edging along the sides….

Julia in Australia designed and wove a bee in the Andean Pebble Weave structure as the logo for her local beekeepers association…so striking!

Carmen sent this picture of the piece she has been working on using motifs from my second book...

Also from my second book is this pattern that David in France used for his gorgeous Andean Pebble Weave band woven on an inkle loom…

For those of you who have my Andean Pebble Weave book and would like some suggestions for how to set it up on an inkle loom, I will be writing about this in a future post. Many weavers, Like David, have figured out a way to do it. I know of several ways it can be done so I can offer you some options.

I love Terri’s very relaxed and cozy backstrap set-up on her son’s bed…

Kathy showed me what she has been doing with the beautiful two-heddle intermesh technique I teach in my second book…

Lieve in Belgium has been weaving pictures and words in warp-faced double weave on her inkle loom. Charts for the figures and letters are in my free tutorial here…

Jennifer in the USA took a break from Andean Pebble Weave andhas now returned to wind a narrow warp so she can wisely start again at Lesson 1. She is showing the band that she wove with various figures before she took a break to pursue her other fiber activities…you should see her beautiful embroidery! She later said that she got back into pebble weave in no time.

Speaking of Andean Pebble Weave, I finally got the Spanish translation, Tejido Andino ”Pebble” laid out and up for sale on Patternfish.com. Many thanks to Isabelle Marmasse for the hard work she put into it.

As for my weaving, I guess I am about three-quarters of the way along my silk wrap piece. It is getting quite exciting. It really feels like a good length of cloth now and I can see it working as the shoulder wrap that I have planned. I really can’t wait to wash and iron it. However, the most intensive apart of the patterning is still to come…where I have to repeat the 3-color pebble pick-up that I wove at the start. So, while I might be three-quarters of the way in terms of length, that is probably not true in terms of time.

My dvd on Operating a Backstrap Loom continues to wing its way across the world!

Marilyn at Taproot Video has been keeping track and tells me that Norway and France have been added to the list of countries.

Many thanks to everyone for your support and I have been very happy to receive feedback from a lot of you about the wonderful ”aha” moments you have experienced.

I like to think that people are putting some of the techniques to immediate use just like Maja in Germany has done.

Here’s a sweet way to end this post…

I have another thank-you card that the young ladies in the highlands sent me after my visit. Maxima and I are winding a very colorful warp and there I am in the corner weaving at the leaning vertical loom…such a lovely souvenir of my visit.

Backstrap Weaving – The Curious Coil Rod

Are you ready for this week’s dose of red, black and white?

I have quite a good selection of colors with which to work here in Santa Cruz. None of the colors go by fancy names. They are pretty much the basic tones. Therefore, when someone asked me to pass them the “chartreuse” yarn for their weft in one of my workshops, I had no idea what they were talking about. Here, we get dark green and light green. But, I have to say that there are enough colors here to keep me happy.

Why then do I keep being drawn to black? I guess there is just something so clean and sharp about black and white.

Even the local Guaraní weavers can’t resist going back to this combination from time to time despite the fact that many of them use the same brand of colored cotton that I do…

The third piece in my wall hanging series with the Wayuu-inspired design is an inch or so away from being finished. Naturally, as I have sat there these last few days picking up threads and heaving open the sheds, my thoughts have been turning to my next project. It will probably be a purple scarf decorated with supplementary wefts using cotton yarn from Guatemala and mostly silk supplementary wefts.

I am still planning the motifs and, while digging around at the book shelf, I unearthed a packet of patterns that was given to me by Sharon, a Weavolution weaving buddy, a year ago.

The packet contains three enormous sheets of detailed Guatemalan motifs. The front of the envelope states that this is Series 1 from Nahualá Village. Nothing on the packet or within indicates when these patterns were charted, by whom or how many packets comprise the entire set. Imagine if this person or people graphed patterns from dozens of villages!

Happily I tracked down another packet, series 3, on Ebay and it seems that there is a weaving guild that may have some others in their library.

However, I probably won’t use any of these motifs for my scarf. I have something quite specific in mind that I learned when I was studying in Guatemala but which also has a slight Bhutanese influence.

I told you about circular and dovetail warps last week and I have decided that I will make a circular one for my scarf. That will keep me in good foot-bracing distance from my bed. Winding a circular warp is straightforward enough. I was easily able to make some changes to my standard warping board to make this work well.

The two off-set stakes to hold the cross were all I needed. However, that picture is cropped and the following shows the complete set up…

The extra unnecessary stake was incorporated so that I can try to learn more about the mysterious coil rod. So far, I have not seen a coil rod being used in Bolivia and Peru. The first place that I came across one being used was Ecuador. It was in the ikat- weaving town of Bulcay and I had no idea at the time what this piece of equipment was.

There is a black arrow pointing to the coil rod in the above picture…the thin stick just below the upper beam.

When I visited with this weaver, I was concentrating more on seeing how she prevented having the warps move out of alignment and excessively blur the ikat pattern. I suspected that the coil rod was her”secret weapon” but when I asked, she told me that it had nothing to do with it. Actually, I have to say that she was not very keen on answering my questions. Let’s face it…not everyone is fond of having strangers hang about pestering them with questions while they are trying to weave! She was nice enough to let me sit by and watch and take pictures.

Dennis Penley, author of Paños de Gualaceo, writes that the coil rod, (he calls it a “rolling stick”) in Gualaceo, one of Bulcay’s neighboring communities, is added once the warp has been placed on the loom. He says that the warp threads are wound around the stick in bunches of ten. The stick serves to stop the warp threads from slipping.

You can see how the warps have been grouped in the above photo and the way they are coiled about the stick at left.

Of course, as time went by, I discovered that coil rods are used by many backstrap weavers who work with circular warps and I have since seen many examples of weavers in Asia using them.

When I met and got to spend a little time with Burmese weaver Dar Ku in Massachusetts, I noticed the coil rod in her loom.

It is the rod furthest from the weaver in the picture. I didn’t think at the time to ask her if she added it after or during warping. I was concentrating more on her use of supplementary wefts to make her patterns and the fact that she was weaving her designs while looking at the wrong side of the cloth! Her heddle system was also very interesting. You see, there are just so many wonderful things to see and take in when you watch a backstrap weaver at work!…what is the shape of her sword, how does she open the heddles, how hard does she beat, what does she use to pick up her threads and much much more!

As she wasn’t weaving ikat and her warps could move without causing any harm, I assume that the function of the coil rod in this case is to help maintain width and keep the warps spread and in order in the potentially messy area beyond the heddles and shed rod.

The one time that I have seen a warp being made which incorporated a coil rod was when I studied with the Montagnard weavers in North Carolina. Again, there was so much to see especially since this was also the first time I had watched a weaver add heddles as she warped. Naturally, much of my attention was focused on that.This is what Ju Nie’s warping path looked like…

If you flip this upside down, you will see that my new warping set up was designed to resemble this. Stake C on Ju’s set-up separates the threads into two sheds. Stake D holds the heddles that Ju makes as she winds the warp. Stakes B and E will be replaced with the backstrap loom bars. Stake A will be replaced by the “curious” coil rod.

As I am not going to make heddles as I go, stakes C and D on my set-up will hold the cross.

Here is a diagram showing the two-revolution warping path to complete the cross in my set up…

From left to right…loom bar 1 will replace the first stake. The next two stakes will be replaced with cross sticks….I used pencils. Loom bar 2 will replace the next stake and the last stake on the right will be replaced with the coil rod. Below you can see how it looks when taken off the warping board. I have just wound a tiny warp and used some random sticks for the sake of this demonstration.

Below you can see the loom almost ready for use. What remains to be done is make the heddles and select a suitable shed rod.

The yellow and green pencils are holding the cross. Heddles will be made to raise the threads that pass over the yellow pencil and a shed rod will replace the green pencil to raise the other half of the threads.

The coil rod has been rolled from its original position, in the picture below left, over the loom bar into its new position as seen below right.

This is what it looks like on Ju Nie’s narrow warp.

So, I know how to wind a circular warp and put the coil rod into position now…yay. The question remains…what exactly is the purpose of this wee stick? I guess I will find out as I weave my purple scarf. I suppose I will have to weave with a coil rod for a while and then without one in order to note the differences.

In Weaving and Dyeing in Highland Ecuador, Anne Rowe notes that the coil rod, as used by the ikat weavers in Azuay Province, helps secure the slippery cotton warp and maintain an even width for the fabric. However, it is not used by cotton ikat shawl weavers in Rumipamba. I imagine that the resulting shawls in both areas are equally well made.

I have a book on backstrap weaving in Bangladesh, Strong Backs Magic Fingers, which describes the looms and textiles woven in twelve areas of that country. While the vast majority of the looms shown have coil rods, some of them don’t. Certainly those that have the finest and silkiest looking thread always do. Yet, some weavers manage happily without them. It appears to be more of an aid than a necessity. Perhaps it is simply tradition that has some weavers using one.

I am kind of excited about having this new piece of equipment to experiment with!… a mere stick.

In Spiritual Fabric, Sadae Torimaru calls the coil rod that is placed in a body-tensioned loom used to weave narrow bands in China a ”temple stick” and says that it is used to keep yarns and width constant.

Some of you may like to read Maria Christou’s thesis An Ethnographic Study of the Loom and Weaving of the Sa’dan Toraja of To’barana’. Her research took place on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia and on page 26 she ponders the coil rod and quotes the thoughts of other researchers on its purpose and use. It would seem that she found the answers to her questons in the course of her one year of study. I have to confess that I haven’t gotten that far in my reading of her paper to know for sure….printing out to read this weekend!

If you have made it this far in reading this post, thank you for bearing with me in my ramblings about a stick!

And so, let’s enjoy looking at some of the fruits of these looms we have been talking about.

You can see a length of black skirt fabric with warp-float patterns woven by Ju Nie with a weft-twined edge added by her sister. The back cover of the book on weaving in Bangladesh shows the supplementary-weft patterned work of Chakma weavers and Dar Ku shows the white cotton fabric she wove for a dress as well as a richly patterned traditional blouse.

For those who may be curious about how Ju Nie adds heddles as she winds her warp, here is a video I made explaining it. Ju Nie works way too fast in the video that I took of her doing it!

Wonderful, isn’t it? Maybe one day I will do this. For now, I find it very relaxing sitting at my loom and making my string heddles. There’s always something new to learn!

I will leave you with a video of Dar Ku weaving. She has such a beautiful peaceful way about her…