Santa Fe Folk Art Market – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Working the Weft

I keep picking up the white paper bag that is lying on the chair in the bedroom half buried under a pile of tubular bands and warps. I scratch my head and wonder “What on earth is this?” My idea was to stop putting weaving things away in the closet. I fear the old “out of sight, out of mind” thing. So, the bag remains on the chair. I open the bag…oh yes, the contents of the paper bag are too precious to be left just lying about. However, they are out of sight in the bag and, therefore, I keep forgetting what a gorgeous delicate object it is that lies within.

It is the wee Guatemalan backstrap loom that I bought at the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market in July. I gaped at the stunningly beautiful and delicate cotton gauze huipiles on the Guatemalan stand of weaver Amalia Gue with their white-on-white supplementary-weft patterns and was thrilled when I found that I could take home a relatively inexpensive example of these remarkable pieces.

This photo and description of Amalia Gue is from the website of the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market.

Amalia represents Ixbalamke, a cooperative of women dedicated to the production of traditional textiles and preservation of traditional weaving. They live in the community of Samac de Cobán in Alta Verpaz and are inspired by the landscape and beautiful views of the region. The members of the cooperative maintain the intricate technique of gauze weaving and the use of coyuche, or natural brown cotton – practices that are rapidly disappearing. They also have a project making little looms for younger generations to continue to learn the tradition of weaving.

The cotton warp and weft is very fine and rather soft and a bit fluffy. It had not been sized. A thicker very loosely spun cotton is used for the supplementary weft. I haven’t looked at it closely enough to see if it is one thick strand or several fine strands combined. I am afraid that I will have to pull out one of the motifs in orderto ascertain that.

There are no obvious start and finish weft tails for the figures. The little bird figures just mysteriously start and finish. By picking at the weft I can see that the cotton used to weave the figures is most likely just twisted to undo the spin a little so that it can be torn when the motif is finished rather than cut to give a blunt end. The torn end then just sits obediently within the shed. I think the fluffiness of the supplementary weft and the thread used for the ground weave causes all the fibers to interact and somehow mesh and this is what prevents the motifs from unravelling….just my guesses and ramblings.

So insanely delicate. Yet, this is the fabric of huipiles that I assume are frequently washed.

As it turns out, I have three large skeins of natural and bleached white Guatemalan cotton that is the same as the thread used in this piece. It has sat in the closet since 2008. It was an impulse buy and, when I got it home, I figured that it was way too soft for warp-faced backstrap weaving. I decided that one day I would size it and use it for something. For me, the biggest challenge will be achieving that even gauze-y ground weave. How in the world do the weavers manage that? The good thing is that I have a ton of the thread and can afford to experiment and fail and try again.

I haven’t done supplementary-weft patterning on an open weave like that before. There will be much to learn! He is one of the huipiles for sale on the Gautemalan stand. This one was easier to capture in a photograph than the white-on-white ones.

So, while on the subject of the workings of supplementary wefts to create patterns, let me show you a few more things that I saw while in Santa Fe.

This is the work of weavers in the Sna Jolobil cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico headed by Pedro Meza Meza…

And from Myanmar, Chin weaving…..

….brought to the Market by Khun Shwe and Pa Mang, experts in the textiles of the 40 subgroups within the Chin culture.

All the textiles I looked at on Khun Shwe’s stand were created with the single-faced weft inlay technique that I describe in my tutorial here. Below, you can see the “clean” back side of one of the pieces.

If you are in Santa Fe outside of the weekend of the International Folk Art Market there are still plenty of ethnic textiles to be seen at the Travelers’ Market not far from the downtown area. Many thanks to Marilyn who put me onto this place. It kept me happily occupied during one of the days leading up to the Folk Market.

There, I got to catch up with Pam Nadjowski whom I had met at Convergence 2010 in Albuquerque. Pam has a booth in the Travelers’ Market with textiles, jewellry and artefacts from Chinese minority groups that she has collected over the years. It was from Pam, in the booth she had at Convergence, that I bought the beautiful fine bamboo reeds that I use on my backstrap loom when I want to weave balanced cloth. These are treasures to me!

Pam allowed me to examine and photograph the beautiful silk brocade cloths, with pattern appearing on both sides, which come from the Quiandongnan area of China. They are used as baby carrying slings.

Sadae Torimaru in “Spiritual Fabric. 20 Years of Textile Research among the Liao People of Guizhou, China” briefly describes the patterning technique. She shows a weaver working at a floor loom and writes that each row of supplementary weft pattern takes 7-8 minutes to pick. The book includes 3 pages of images of individual symbols that are traditionally woven into the baby carrying slings and information about what they represent….such things as roosters’ feet, grass in paddy fields and a big tiger’s claw. It is interesting to go through the photos I took and identify the symbols in the book.

Here is just one of many pieces that I photographed. What an amazing piece of fabric in which to carry a baby.

I’ll show you just one more thing from Nagaland, a state in the far north-easten part of India. There happened to be an exhibit of Nagaland textiles while I was visiting the Travelers’ Market. Here is a very striking piece of fabric patterned with supplementary wefts. It is quite a contrast to the delicate Miao brocade. I like the way the supplementary weft extends from the sides of the cloth to form a fringe….an interesting solution to bulky weft turns on the edge of the fabric. I have more interesting pieces to show from Nagaland….another time.

As for my own weaving, it is a little “on hold” as I am counting down to my departure.

My living room floor has once again turned into a hop-scotch field of baskets of skeined yarn, all sizes of balls of yarn arranged in possible color combinations, sticks, elastic bands, tape, warping boards and STUFF. This is where I warp. I love the speed and efficiency that comes from winding many warps this way….choose the colors, wind the warp, put the warp on the sticks, make heddles. For the simplest warps I make the heddles after the warp is wound right there on the warping board….Done!…NEXT!

The bedroom remains the paradise where I do the actual weaving. It is simply a smaller version of the chaos of the living room but has many more sticks as well as scattered cushions on which to sit and weave.

Now that I don’t have my cat anymore, I don’t need to put everything away from kitty claws at night. This means that things can remain in sight and in mind at all times rather than being put away in the closet to be possibly forgotten. There is quite an array of bits and pieces scattered about to remind me that there is this certain thing that I wanted to investigate further, or that color combo that I wanted to try or that pattern that I wanted to chart. I see them during the day and step on them in the middle of the night if I need to visit the bathroom.

I now have several weaving anchor points in the bedroom so I don’t even need to roll up a project and put it aside when I feel like working on another for a change of pace.

Between spurts of warping which can be rather mind-numbing, I wove one more pattern on the four-color pebble weave band and rearranged the colors a little for the repeated motif. This is certainly something that can “un-numb” my mind!

And then, when my head is good and clear, I work on my supplementary-weft wall hanging. It’s not a sampler. I don’t want any mistakes in it and so, I leave that project for the times when I feel relaxed and want to reward myself after a good long bout of warping. I will give you a break from seeing that project this week.

Let’s look at what others have been up to….

I taught Janet the two-heddle intermesh technique that I teach in my second book, when I was visiting with her in northern California last spring. She wove this guitar strap using her own handspun wool and…. look at that, first prize at County Fair! The strap has bird, leaf and hummingbird patterns. I got to see it when I was at her place in July but wasn’t allowed to show it here at that time because of the rules of entry in the Fair. I have been waiting and waiting to show you how fabulous this is.

Figmentling, from Ravelry, told me that she learned how to twine from the basic tutorial here on my blog. This is another resource that she consulted as well as this discussion on Weavolution where my friend, Franco Rios, lists many more resources for instructions and information. Then, she took it so so much further and created the bag you see above! It has interesting finishing techniques and a braided strap that she learned to make from Ingrid Crickmore’s loop braiding blog. She drafted her own pattern which she says commemorates the new bak’tun in the Mayan calendar.

DigitalLeaf from Ravelry shared pictures of her backstrap project.

It looks wide and very comfortable, has nice edges and is beautifully finished. I hope that she will get a lot of use from it.

And finally, I would like to share a comment I got from a reader this week. As one of my goals in writing my second book was to have people feeling confident and inspired enough to design and weave their own pebble weave patterns, I can’t tell you how happy this comment made me:

Thank goodness! I have finally cracked it. Having worked my way through the first Andean pebble weave book I was looking forward to dipping into the second and then I noticed that you had changed the pattern format. My heart sank and I put that book away for a month. But I looked at it this weekend, tried one of the smaller bands without any notations (thought it best just to throw myself into it) and by the time I was halfway through the first repeat it all made perfect sense and I can now read them perfectly and am presently designing my first band from scratch

Thank you Laverne – you have opened a whole new range of patterns to me.I will post my first effort when it is completed (if it works, that is)!

See you next week!

Backstrap Weaving – Hooray Santa Fe!

The last part of my US summer trip was spent in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

It had been a dream of mine for some time to visit the city’s annual International Folk Art Market and this year everything just fell beautifully into place.

My friend Annie and I had talked about the vague possibility of this visit months and months ago. Neither of us knew back then whether it really would happen. I couldn’t think of a better person with whom to visit the market.

Even when weaver friend Wendy visited me in Bolivia back in May and I found out that, by coincidence, she was also planning on going, it was still pretty iffy.

And then, when Marilyn, whom I met at ANWG in June, said that she too was going, I knew that it just HAD to happen.

I had met textile artist DY Begay at the Tinkuy in Cusco in 2010 and again last year at the weaving Encuentro. She now lives in Santa Fe and extended an invitation to come visit. And that is how it all came to be.

I arrived a few days before the market and had a chance to stroll around the downtown area. When I arrived at Santa Fe airport I was surprised to see the adobe airport building…hmmm, a little over the top, I thought at the time.

However, after taking a look around and seeing the downtown area, where even the parking stations are adobe and getting a feel for the place, it all just felt so very right. I love the smooth curviness of the structures and how the colors change from pink to gold as the sun moves across the sky. And that sky! …the deep blue of dry desert air that would suddenly be covered by enormous black thunderheads that brought refreshing afternoon deluges.

And it was hot… but not Santa Cruz hot…the low humidity made the high temperatures quite tolerable. Yet, after a full day of strolling the market, it was a relief to sit down in a shady spot and wait for the rain to start. Below you can see Annie and Wendy at the end of day one.

There were thousands of people at the market yet I just knew that I would run into Wendy and Marilyn there. I had already bumped into Wendy by chance at the Travelers’ Market and Marilyn in the plaza downtown and at the pre market procession. It was like we were all magnets drawn to each other.

Another person I met by chance was double weave expert Jennifer Moore who was helping out Nilda Callañaupa at the CTTC booth. She and I then arranged to spend a day together while I showed her how to set up a backstrap loom for double weave pick-up. I got to see all her amazing double weave samples, the ingenious things she has made and the limits to which she has pushed this structure. It was impossible to pick favorites from the array of samples she showed me but here are just two of the many things that caught my eye…(these are Jennifer’s pictures).

I loved the completely seamless bag Jennifer created for the Checkers pieces.Even the bnarrw sleeve for the drawstring was created on the loom. The twill double weave pick-up is gorgeous. — I loved the completely seamless bag Jennifer created for the Checkers pieces. I believe that the checkerboard was woven as a double width piece….woven folded and then opened to its full width once off the loom. Even the narrow sleeve on the bag for the drawstring was created on the loom. The twill double weave pick-up is gorgeous.

Jennifer and I then went on to spend a magical final evening going to the opera, La Traviata, with DY and DY’s neighbor Alana, who had offered us the tickets.

I had no idea what to expect and it was amazing!

Santa Fe has an outdoor theater. It’s covered but has open sides. The sets are minimal and the backdrop is the beautiful Santa Fe sky which changes colors as evening fades into night. Desert nights get rather cold! The theater ushers certainly knew about that as they were all dressed in long handwoven ponchos.

And, speaking of cold, here I am back in Santa Cruz in the one cold wave that hits here per year. I just happened to arrive back the day before it hit…48 degrees…this is not normal. I managed to get in one day at the loom in shorts before the long pants and socks had to come out. Well, it IS winter after all.

This is where I was at with my weaving when I left Janet’s place in northern California. You can see that I had just started some warp wrapping having been inspired by the saddle bag, from Afghanistan, (we think) that Janet had bought. However, after going on with that for half the afternoon, (bags still unpacked in the living room!) I decided that I didn’t like it. I think that I need to practice the wrapping using wool, which fluffs out and fills space, before trying it with the unforgiving cotton.

So, the other half of the afternoon was spent unweaving and unwrapping (not so much fun) and then….unpacking (even less fun).

Then I got back on track. Janet’s saddle bag inspired the wrapped design above the main motif. Bhutanese motifs form the basis of the rest. This had me calling the project “Tales from the Sub-continent”.

However, now something from Central Asia is about to creep into the mix because of bands that I saw at the Folk Art Market. I am so happy to be able to add something from that event as that means that this project will comprise a few pieces of inspiration from my summer trip. That’s one of the best souvenirs I could have.

It’s off the loom and is going to be a bag. You can see how it will be folded on the right…that’s the back.

As for the Central Asian influence, you might remember that I went to the Central Asian ikat exhibit, Colors of the Oasis, at the Textile Museum in Washington DC in 2010. The ikat pieces were stunning. In fact, I had to go twice beacuse it was too much to take in.

I was interested at that time in the bands that edged some of the coats. As the exhibit was focused on the ikat patterning and process, no one at the museum could tell me anything about those bands. They looked like they had been card woven but someone also suggested that they had been braided using finger loops. You simply could not get close enough to see anything helpful.

However, at the Folk Art Market we got to touch all the gorgeous ikat patterned coats from Uzbekistan and look as closely as we pleased at the edging bands. Yes, there were wefts, they were woven, and one of the representatives did confirm that they were tablet woven.

So, here is where I am at….

I dug out my tablets. These are the ones that my dear friend Gladys Miller gave me way back in 1995.

They pre-date my Navajo-style weaving activity and my first backstrap learning trip to Peru.

Gladys sent me back to Chile with these tablets and Rachel Brown’s book. Later I got more books and made the piece at left. After that, I had my Navajo loom built and immersed myself in tapestry weaving.

Then came the first trip up north to Peru….and the rest is history!

So, I made a wee sample to see if I could remember the basics of threading. I want the strap of my bag to be the same design as the bands that edge the Central Asian ikat robes. Most of the bands are very similar in design and very simple.

It is interesting that on page 71 of the Snows’ Step by Step Tablet Weaving, there is a picture of a Russian apron band that looks almost exactly the same. I was lucky to be able to buy a wristlet at the market (you can see it sitting on my weaving above) as an inexpensive example of the weave.

I know that you will all be looking at the price tag on the above piece and sighing. Let’s all go to the market together next year! I only bought one other thing. It was another sample type thing to study…Guatemalan gauze, white on white on a miniature loom.

It was fun to see how the tablet woven bands are also being used as tubes for bag straps. I would say that they were sewn into tubes after being woven and stuffed with something. Mine, however, will be flat.

I did include a tubular band on my current bag project as an edging. I so enjoy weaving and sewing those tubular bands and they make such nice finishes. Using a tubular band to edge enabled me to cover and stabilize the cut raw edge that was created when I cut the flap into a rounded shape to make it more attractive.

Speaking of tubular bands, DY and I had some weaving time together at her place. DY had learned to make the ñawi awapa with me at the Tinkuy but had not put it into practice since then. Of course, all she needed was a little refresher and soon she was on her way. It would be great to see her incorporate something like this in one of her tapestries.

It was nice waking up in the morning hearing DY’s fork beating the wefts into place as she creates her latest tapestry using her own handspun and natural dyed wool. Her home has lovely solid wooden posts which are convenient for backstrap weaving.

Now I shall proceed to bombard you with images from the International Folk Art Market to give you a wee taste of all that Annie and I got to see over those two days of market…

It was great to see the Ayoreo people of the lowland region in which I live in Bolivia represented. This the fifth time that they have been invited to attend the Market and sell their looped bags.

The fiber that is used for the bags is extracted from a wild bromeliad which in the Ayoreo language is called dajudie (elsewhere known as garabatá). The thread spun from this fiber is called dajua.

One of the craftswomen was twisting three strands of thread into one on her thigh but, unfortunately, I was never present when they were making the actual bags.

I have quite often seen the women making these in the streets of Santa Cruz but they are very reserved and not comfortable with people examining what they are doing or asking questions.

I was, therefore, happy to be able to take the opportunity at the market to talk to the ladies (picture at left by Annie).

The traditional patterns belong to the seven clans of the Ayoreo society but some women have created their own new patterns inspired by their surroundings. Mostly natural dye substances are used but some artificial colors are being used in response to the demand for brighter colors by customers.

From Uzbekistan, which probably had more representatives than any other country…

Bright colors and simple black and white: pictures made from colored sequins from Haiti, beadwork from the Ukraine, paintings from Cuba and baskets from Panama.

Khun Shwe, a backstrap weaver from Myanmar, was happy to open up her rolled up backstrap loom and show me her work in progress. Her circular warp held a piece of equipment that I had not seen before. She told me that the notched stick was used to help spread the warps. Her work with supplementary wefts was fine and beautiful. She was so friendly and happy to meet someone so interested in her loom. I would love to study with her! I think she was doing well at the market. Quite a few people were trying on garments at her booth including Annie.

The variety…

...from Peru, Laos, India and Mongolia.

There was this on the Hungarian stand…

It was only $25 and no, I didn’t buy it. A lady was walking around with one and I decided to ask her about her band weaving interests. It turns out that she doesn’t weave and had no idea what the piece was. She simply found it interesting and bought it.

And the people came and came and looked and spent… When we were arriving at around 10am on Saturday, there were already early birds leaving with their purchases! I spent some time on Sunday afternoon with a very happy vendor from East Timor who had sold everything.

Nilda was opening out this very large piece for an admiring couple when I was walking by and yes, they bought it! She couldn’t hide her pleasure at the sale. Of course, the ladies from Chinchero were seated at their looms and Nilda had a corner booth so they would have room to sit away from the crowded aisles in the shade and weave. That attracted a lot of people to the booth I am sure.

An artisan from Pakistan creates a piece using applique and reverse applique techniques while another from Nepal works on a painting.

Everything about the Huichol artists from Mexico creating their yarn paintings was fascinatiing….all those woven bands and belts and straps to look at.

There is more….much more. Remember that there were over 150 artisans there! This is just a taste of the color, and excitement. I am saving the vast majority of pictures of textiles decorated with supplementary wefts for another post. When I have finished my bag project, I will start the next in the red, black and white wall hanging series and this piece will be all about supplementary weft patterning. I will show more market pieces as I progress on that as well as pieces from Nagaland that were on display at the Travelers’ Market in Santa Fe. They have all kinds of interesting ways to decorate using supplementary wefts.

Here are some finished projects from Ravelry group members and friends…

Julia and I got to weave together and she has been captivated by supplementary- weft techniques. She sewed a band onto fabric and made a bag and then cleverly made a square braid for a strap, fanned out the ends and wove a balanced weave shoulder pad and then finished the braid for the other half of the strap (much the same as one would do when making an Andean sling).

Cindy wove tubular band with me and is now making several slim bands to wear as a necklace, She is experimenting with making the bands in cotton. I find that it is harder to get an even finish with cotton than it is with wool. Her band looks great.

Gmp set me a picture of her latest band.. She simply added rings to the end so that it can be used as a belt. The pattern is charted in my second book.

I saw the handmade book made by Betty at ANWG. It was her contribution to the Portland Handweavers Guild study of Japanese textile techniques. The paper is handmade and from Nepal. Betty used a traditional binding for the book and wove the cover. She wove a warp-faced double-weave band on a backstrap loom with Japanese characters to decorate the cover.

That’s all for this week.

From hooray Santa Fe to hooray Santa Cruz….the weather is supposed to warm up any day now to a pleasant coolness…perfect weaving weather. I have come home with lots of ideas from this trip and am happy to be back at the loom for a few months.

My cat has gone to a new home. I spend too much time away and it is not good for her. It’s sad after ten years together but I know she is happy in her new place…she even caught her first mouse!

Here are DY and I and Drey, DY’s cat, one of my many kitty companions on this trip…