silk – Page 7 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Winter Moods

It has been a couple of weeks since the last post and I started off weaving something in a woolly wintry mood. I guess the colors make it feel wintry to me…the blue and black alongside a greyish snow-like white. This is the piece that I was planning as the ”conference pouch” that I told you about in my last blog post. A few things changed along the way. I decided to weave it with four selvedges. It is a small piece and a nice opportunity to get in some more practice with finishing a weaving with four selvedges. For that reason, I decided not to include the little pocket that I had planned. One challenge at a time is enough for me! I would have my hands full laying in the last few shots of weft on a needle and didn’t need the additional challenge of creating the pocket.

First, I wove a sample to see how the pattern I had chosen would look and to get an idea of how I should lay it out on the real project…

I wove the sample with four selvedges too. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use the sample to give me one of the essential pieces of information as I had neglected to note an important detail…warp length. Normally, warp length is not an important issue to me. I generally wind one of my standard-size warps to try out a new pattern or material and decide when I am finished with the experiment what I would like the piece to be. I weave as far as I feel comfortable and then simply cut the piece off the loom. However, this time I was planning a specific product and had a specific size in mind for it. As I was planning to weave a piece with four selvedges, I needed to know what the take-up would be with the kind of wool I was using. That would tell me how long my warp would need to be to produce the 12cm long pouch that I had in mind. I wanted a ch’uspa-style pouch…one with an open mouth into which I could easily place and remove things without any fiddling about…so, no flap or closure.

Now I know that the amount of take-up is extremely small. It was very surprising information but it came too late. I over compensated for take-up and wound a warp that was too long and so my pouch now has a flap…oh well. A warp of 30.5cm ended up as 29.5cm of woven cloth which reduced to 29cm after washing and pressing.

Here is the project underway. I have started the weaving at both ends so that my piece can have four selvedges.

I wanted the ”terminal area” (the area where I have to stop weaving the pick-up pattern because the space between the two woven ends becomes too small to manage for pick-up), to be where I folded the cloth to form the pouch. This meant I had to do a bit of back-and-forth-ing from one end to the other to make sure the terminal area would be positioned just where I wanted it. I should point out that there was no need for this piece to have four selvedges. I have made cloth for many little bags by simple cutting the fabric off the loom and hemming the raw edge. I simply wanted to make this piece with four selvedges as interesting challenge. I had never attempted it in wool this fine before.

Here you can see the gap between the two ends of weaving getting smaller. I have changed to finer cross sticks and finer swords. I use the cross sticks to help open the heddle shed. I form a separate cross on two swords to do the pick-up. I wanted to keep doing the pick-up pattern for as long as I could. That involved a bit of awkward wrenching around with fingers stuffed into spaces that were too small and, as a result, the weft shots on one side got compressed more than those on the other meaning that the fell dipped at one edge. That made it hard to close the gap at that edge neatly.

The final needle-woven rows are a bit on the wide side. I am, nevertheless, pleased with the result as a first attempt in this fine wool. I wanted a tiny terminal area and I wanted it to sit at the fold in the cloth…

Then came the construction of the pouch with all the fun embellishments…

I edged the bottom of the pouch with coil stitches and added a couple of cute coiled pom poms.

The sides and flap are edged with a patterned tubular band called ñawi awapa.

I wove an Andean Pebble Weave pattern strap choosing a pattern that resembled the ñawi awapa and wove it without having to do pick-up by using 4 sets of string heddles.

The pouch is ready for my next conference…

Next, the lovely pile of naturally-dyed silk samples that I told you about last week was calling to me….

While I thought long and hard about how I wanted to use these small samples, I spent some time sewing my two wool panels together…

Both this and the brown wool blanket stand by while I figure out how I would like to edge them.

As for the silk samples, I gathered up tiny skeins of similar sort of berry colors and wound them into balls. I wanted to create a warp with all the berry colors mixed. I decided not to go with any kind of stripe formula or planning and just wound a bit of this and a bit of that together. It is a random mish-mash of colors and I like it! Not all the silk is of the same weight and so there is yarn of varying girth all thrown in together here…But first…. a sample…of course!

This may not look very wintry to you but it represents a different kind of winter mood to me. I love the way it looked as I sat at the loom with the soft low rays of winter sun falling across it.

I needed to sample to see what kind of width I could expect as well as figure out how many strands of embroidery floss were suitable for the supplementary weft. The sample gave me the ability to know approximately what width I could expect from the main project. It couldn’t be 100% accurate because of the mix of different weights of silk in the large project.

Random colors, random weights of silk and random placement of leaves…this is so not like me! But, I am really happy with it. I have used variegated tencel as supplementary weft to weave motifs on a single-color background in other projects. This project turns that idea around with solid-color motifs on a multi-color background. I like how the leaves change shape when they are placed on the areas of warp that comprise the finer silk warp threads.

Here’s the late afternoon winter sun illuminating the larger project…

I got the initial idea for this project from a piece by Mollie Freeman in which she stamped solid leaf motifs on one of her hand painted warps. I haven’t seen her piece woven yet.

I don’t have a product in mind for this. No doubt the cloth will end up being folded into some kind of pouch. It is a really fun project and I have lots more of the naturally dyed silk samples in other tones to play with. I am wondering how this will wash and hope I don’t lose too much color.

I am getting pretty close to the end here. I hope I can squeeze in a couple more leaves while I think about what I want to do with all those other gorgeous silk natural dye sample skeins.

Backstrap Weaving – Length!

LENGTH!

Finally, I am doing something with the third of my three current weaving goals: 1. go wider, 2. use finer materials and 3. go longer. I have been working this week on the long warp… the yellow 60/2 silk scarf.

After finishing the bands of supplementary-weft patterns at the start which had me sitting in the same spot for days, I am now on to the faster mostly plain-weave part. I slow down every now and then to add a little flower motif with silk supplemental weft.

Sometimes, it is a solid flower, like the single flower you can see above, and sometimes an outlined one. This does not have me sitting still for long. There is a regular need to sometimes move forward as I roll up the woven cloth and then move back as I unroll the unwoven warp from the far end. The cushion on which I sit is glued to a polished piece of wood which allows me to dig my heels into the floor and slide myself forward and back as needed. It’s a lot easier than having to get up and push that cushion across the rug or wiggle it forward or back. It also allows me to make finer adjustments while seated.

I used sheets of paper to roll the unwoven warp to keep everything neat and even. It’s a lot of fun unrolling the warp from the far end and having one of the sheets of paper drop out…progress! I then use that same sheet of paper between the layers of rolled woven cloth. I don’t know if you ever played ”pass the parcel” as a kid at birthday parties. It reminds me of that. Each time I unroll, it’s like removing one layer of the wrapping on the parcel only to find that there are still more layers underneath.

If I had a nice grassy backyard in which a sturdy stake could be implanted, I would enjoy sitting outside in some shade and having my warp stretched out to its full length…

However, I do find there are certain advantages to having the unwoven warp rolled up. I think that it is easier for me to maintain a consistent tension on the warp if I am always seated at more or less the same distance from the end of the loom.

Backstrap weavers who use circular warps are able to do that. They weave around the circle of warp without having to change in any major way their seated position. My teacher, below, can always be seated the same distance from the wall and brace her feet against a wooden block. You can see how her finished woven piece is circular.

I can’t resist unrolling my work all the way every now and then to see how it is going and to make sure that the scattered effect of the flower motifs is working.

There will be a small celebration when the final piece of paper drops off the end beam and I can see the end of the warp. But, I know that event will mean that soon I will be slowing down to a crawl to duplicate the bands of patterning that I wove at the beginning of the piece. I have managed to be disciplined, not measure, and keep the motifs truly scattered.

The cloth is a little on the stiff side now but I know, having worked with this 60/2 silk before in the teal bandana at left, that it will soften beautifully after wet-finishing and pressing. The sheen of the silk will be more obvious then too.

The patterns I chose for the bands are loosely based on those I saw on a Mexican rebozo, or shawl. I made quite a few changes to the original to include my own flower motif. My weaving friend, Franco, shared a lovely video of a parade of Mexican rebozos…the variety is astounding and I love the ways the models wear them. There is a white one and a black one there that I am totally in love with!

My erratic internet can handle this video and so I am sure that you will all be able to enjoy it….Thanks, Franco!

One day I will have a warp for a rebozo on my backstrap loom.

While on the topic of length, I guess the longest pieces of warp-faced weaving I have seen are the Central Asian yurt bands. My friend Lisa owns one and hers is 48 feet long….makes my scarf length seem ridiculous!

Here it is wrapped around her yurt…how gorgeous!

They are not woven on backstrap looms. This is the loom set-up in Kyrgyzstan posted on the site of Little Foot Yurts…

The heddle stick is attached to the tripod which keeps it permanently raised. We saw a similar system being used by a Turkish weaver in a video I shared here recently. The shed rod is a flat piece of wood which is most likely turned on its side when needed. At the weaving line you can also see a small stick holding the warp threads that will float to make the pattern.

Here’s another beauty that my friend Yonat and I found in a store in California when we were out and about. We can only imagine how long it is.

I got pretty excited the first time I encountered these pieces via my friend Lisa online. I thought…Wow, the Andean Pebble Weave structure in Central Asia! But, on closer inspection, I could see that it wasn’t the same structure. It is not a complementary-warp structure at all. Complementary-warp weaves have two structurally identical faces. The colors are reversed on the two sides of the cloth as you can see in my piece below.

I call the structure that is used to create the yurt bands, Simple Warp Floats…this my dull structural name for it. ”Simple” because the floats appear on only one face. In Kyrgyzstan it is known as terme.

You can see how different the two faces look in this picture of a piece I wove replicating some yurt band motifs. The face on the left is the ‘good” face. The face on the right has spaces where the black weft is exposed. You can also see this difference in the first picture of Lisa’s rolled up band above.The same motifs can be easily woven as double-faced ones but they are not woven that way traditionally.

I made this piece into a case for my small laptop…

This became a favorite structure of mine for a while. Yurt band motifs adorn my favorite belt…

I went a bit wider too and made a zippered pouch…

…but I’ll never go as long as those yurt bands!

It was even more exciting to find that the structure is used here in South America, in the tropical lowlands of Peru, for example. I have seen it on pieces from Iran and Mexico as well. These were inspiration for a set of place mats I wove using this Simple Warp Float structure.It’s all based on a basic warp of two colors. One shed holds all the light threads and one shed all the dark. If woven as plain weave, you would produce a band of dark and light horizontal bars. You could then choose to create three-span floats with certain light threads in order to make a pattern. Or, you could do the same with just the dark threads. Or, you can alternate as seen at right….one motif with dark floats followed by another with light floats The horizontal bars act as a sort of background.

Below, you can see a variety of patterns on a belt from Aguacatan, Guatemala. This is a very long piece for a belt…ten feet. The dark and light floats are sometimes used together within one motif. The horizontal bars, again, act as a sort of background to the motifs. The bars really dominate in this belt.
In this next band that I wove a long time ago, dark and light warp-floats working together form the motif on a base of horizontal bars…

You can also choose to float threads in a way that has the horizontal bars appearing to be part of the design itself rather than just being a ”background”. This is a piece I wove after returning from Ecuador where I had stayed with cotton weavers who use this structure in their work. Only the dark threads are forming floats in this piece and, to me, it feels like the horizontal bars are forming their own pattern of large ‘X’s.

And then, you can go all the way and create so many floats with both colors that you completely cover the horizontal bars as in my next example….

This is the terme structure that is used to create the yurt bands I showed. I used it to weave this place mat with a motif from the Peruvian tropical lowlands.

You can see a picture of a weaver in Kyrgyzstan (from the Little Foot Yurts site) saving the dark warp threads on a small sword. These are the threads that will float to form the pattern.

More information on these structures can be found in my tutorials here, here and here. I will be transferring this information to my Structures and Terminology page soon.

I think I was wise to choose a project that included lots of plain weave for my first venture into this kind of length in backstrap weaving. There are times when I am happily zooming along….opening a shed, beating, passing the weft and so on….and only slowing down to weave a little flower, the pattern for which I have by now memorized. I can imagine the time and concentration required to weave those 48-foot long yurt bands with all that pick-up every single step of the way! I wonder how many such bands a weaver in Kyrgyzstan makes in lifetime.

Here are some projects from weaving friends…

Two Andean Pebble Weave projects from two very talented Julias…

Julia T wove the wall hanging at left. It has a mixture of motifs from my books and those of her own. The maze pattern is her own and she has cleverly combined a traditional Andean pattern with her own ideas. The piece recalls time she spent with a team of friends creating a labyrinth in a park surrounded by beautiful bird-laden Australian bush. Julia W’s piece is her adaptation of a Japanese sashiko embroidery sayagata motif to the Andean Pebble Weave structure. The gold twining, hanger and stripes are such lovely touches. She has done several beautiful pieces inspired by Japanese embroidery patterns which she cleverly adapts to Andean Pebble Weave.

Both Julias came up with clever ways to hang their pieces.

Julia W’s wrapped ring and bamboo stick are beautiful in their simplicity. She has created two very different faces by having not only the pebble weave but also the intermesh borders in reversed colors. This way, the piece can be hung on either a dark or light-colored wall. Julia T wove a stick into the last few inches of her weaving so that she can change the face that is being displayed simply by flipping the end and fringe. That’s the thing with these double-faced structures. You want to be able to enjoy both beautiful faces.

And then, there are some bands. Marieke has been working with the double weave technique from this tutorial. I learned it as a two-shed technique which means that it can be easily adapted to the inkle loom on which Marieke prefers to work. Kathy and I got to weave together a couple of years ago and she continues to enjoy Andean Pebble Weave on a backstrap loom using patterns from my books. I love her jolly ”saver cord” but mostly, I love the fact that she is using one. Not everyone falls in love with it as I have.

I could see from my stats that there were an enormous amount of hits on my link to the site with the triangle purse tutorial last week. I hope that many of you go ahead and make one and show me the results. The link to the tutorial along with other goodies can be found on my RESOURCES page.

So, it’s back to my long project. I think there are only two more pieces of paper left on my rolled-up warp. I can’t wait to wash and press the piece and feel its liquid slinkiness slide through my hands.

Backstrap Weaving – Two out of Three Ain’t Bad

Here’s enough inspiration for this year. In fact, it might be enough for the rest of my life! I fell in love with this picture that recently showed up on Facebook…

From Afrostyle magazine and designer Tarun Tahilian — From AfroStyle Magazine and designer Tarun Tahilian.

This was shared from the page of AfroStyle Magazine.

Just when I am into weaving and wearing wrist cuffs, along comes this image of forearms covered with them. And, I have always thought that a turban would be the perfect solution to that awkward transition period from dark brown to grey hair. Not just your conventional turban, but multiple layered silks!

And imagine multiple silk ribbon necklaces around the model’s neck. Gorgeous!

Do a Google Image search for designer Tarun Tahilian and be prepared to melt. I can’t believe my clothes-challenged self is so taken with this.

I chose just one of this designer’s pieces to show as I have been working on a 60/2 silk piece that is in a similar teal-y tone.

Here it is on the loom and in a place in my bedroom that doesn’t really favor photography. It looks away too blue.I simply could not get the camera to capture the green tones of the thread…

Once the weaving had advanced so far that it was uncomfortable to reach forward and operate the sheds, I needed to roll up the fabric around the front beam. That was when I really had to do something about the lack of long enough sticks for this project. I was already lacking a suitable back beam and now, a roll-up stick. I looked up on the terrace where people who move out of their apartments frequently dump unwanted brooms and mops. I have cut down many of them for loom pieces. The search didn’t turn up anything and so I headed to the market. It’s all of a block and a half from my place to one of the biggest and most chaotic street markets in this city with its interesting sights, sounds and aromas.

I am showing this picture of the broom stall that I visited on New Year’s Eve with a table of underwear in the background so I can tell you about a New Year tradition.

It is traditional to sell red and yellow underwear at this time of year as wearing red underwear to bring in the new year will attract love to your life. Wearing yellow will bring you money. The markets are full of this in the days leading up to January 1st.

There’s wood under the spotted plastic coating on the broom stick. Unfortunately, the melted plastic seam was very rough and would have shredded my silk and so I had to spend quite a lot of time picking it off and then sanding the gnarly wood underneath. Of course, a couple of days later when I was out and about, I ran into a stall selling bare wooden broom sticks that were wonderfully smooth. I bought two of these perfect ones…two out of three ain’t bad. They cost 80 cents each!

Someone on Ravelry posed a question to the weaving group about changes in our loom inventories at the end of 2015. With my new extra long sticks, I guess you could say that I added a new loom to mine. A front beam, back beam and roll-up stick for under $4.

My collection of sticks and swords and shuttles has out-grown my bedroom and now lives in the living room. It may not be obvious, but there is some kind of order there.

And so, I was able to spread out the threads at the far end along the nice new long beam and roll up the cloth as I progressed. Once off the loom, I was able to pose the fabric in places with better lighting and I think this picture shows more accurately the true colors…

I am really pleased with it!

I am pleased and relieved that my small sample of 200 ends gave me reliable information for the 2000 ends that I eventually used. I was able to set the width and maintain it rather effortlessly for the entire project. I spent an entire morning trying to ensure that the threads were all evenly spaced before throwing the first shot of weft.

It is supposed to be a bandanna/neckerchief sort of thing but you may see me wrapping it about my head turban-style one of these days, if it is big enough.

You can see the cloth being worn and looking very blue again. The larger picture, above, shows it fresh off the loom before wet finishing.

I don’t think any picture will show you the exciting change after washing and pressing. You would have to feel it, but here’s a picture of it after washing anyway…

Now I need to hem it.

One of my weaving goals for perhaps the last couple of years has been to go longer, wider and finer. I achieved two out of three with this project and it has been a great way to start the new year.

Maybe I will get a three out of three with the next project. Length has never been an issue. I have woven long warps stretched all the way across my room. I have rolled up unwoven warp onto the back beam when there hasn’t been room to stretch out the warp and I have also wound circular warps that have allowed me to halve the amount of space required in which to work.

I hope to go a bit longer than my standard lengths in the next project but the biggest challenge will be the sticky fine wool. I want to weave two panels that I will later join into one. I have no product in mind for this piece. The project will be about learning how this wool handles in warp-faced weaving on a backstrap loom. If it works well, I will have something nice to put on a table and perhaps all the information I need to go on and make a poncho.

I spent some time watching dvds and listening to music while I rolled the yarn into balls. I had bought lots of it! Then I was ready to wind a sample warp. Hopefully this will give me an idea of the width I will achieve with a certain number of ends in both plain weave and Andean Pebble Weave.

I chose a pattern with which I am very familiar as I really wanted to focus my efforts on handling the wool and not on the pick-up. I do have concerns about this yarn breaking over the course of a long piece. It wasn’t taking too well to being constantly rubbed against itself. But, what the heck…I think I will just dive in and try the larger project that I have in mind. You might have to remind me of this ”what the heck” attitude in the next few weeks when I start whining about all the broken warp threads that I have had to fix!

Below, you can see the two faces of the band. The width wandered about a bit before settling. Now to figure out colors.

Let me now show you what some online friends have been weaving and sewing…

Marieke Kranenburg set herself a sewing goal for the holidays and put together various inkle bands and fabric to create this fabulous pillow.

Julia T made a backstrap using the intermesh structure and her own pattern. She is pretty pleased to have this lovely cushy s trap now and to be able to leave aside the improvised pillow case backstrap she has been using. I teach the intermesh structure in my second book.

Lori has started making her own backstrap too using the Andean Pebble Weave structure. I wonder if Lily has been weaving at her side.

Annamieke's inkle loom with Andean Pebble Weave. — Annamieke’s inkle loom with an Andean Pebble Weave in progress.

And, Annamieke Ruijper has been using her inkle loom as a frame for tensioning her Andean Pebble Weave warp. She has woven a series of four-revolution patterns from my book and also included a couple of her own designs. I love that she already has the confidence to do that.

I do not give specific instructions in my book for setting up Andean Pebble Weave on an inkle loom using the loom’s own heddle system. My book shows how to wind a warp and dress it and then you are free to tension it any way you wish…using the frames of inkle, rigid heddle or tapestry looms, for example, or your own body at one end – backstrap-style.

There are many possible ways to set this up on an inkle loom and this is just one suggestion. I have done it at least three ways, sometimes using the inkle loom’s heddle system, and sometimes not.

Sophie Regny wove this Andean Pebble Weave piece using a pattern in my second book. When I was putting that book together, I started seeing potential Andean pebble Weave patterns everywhere. I created this design from the pattern on the inside cover of a journal that I had been given. It’s lovely to see someone using the pattern and Sophie’s work is crisp and neat.

Marianne Planting tensions her Andean Pebble Weave bands using a backstrap set-up and a band locking device. Below, you can see her work in progress where she is using one of the patterns I adapted from the tablet weaving of Louise Ström in my second book.

Here’s a gorgeous colorful band with a classic pattern of Chichero also made by Marianne…

Facebook reminded me today that five years ago I was working on the strap for my backstrap loom bag. I had decided to create the word ”weave” in various languages and fonts. I used a weft twining technique to do so. The strap didn’t need to be that long and so I only managed to fit five or six words on it of the many that Facebook and blog friends had given me. Today, when I shared the Facebook Memory, I received some more. I think I need to come up with another project in which I can use all the words I have been given from weaving friends around the world.

Here are the ones I was given five years ago. Maybe you have a word to add for me. And, with that, I will leave you until next week…

Backstrap Weaving – Silk, Stitches, Samples and Shed Rods.

I thought I would write a post between Christmas and New Year this week so that while everyone is relaxing between all the festivities, they might have time to go online and read.

Here are some sweet handcrafted fiber decorations and ornaments that I have been seeing online…

These were made by Arlene Davis from a pattern by Heidi Bears. You can see more about this project on Arlene’s page Woollen Wonders. I was about to launch into a project using teal and was happy to have this confirmation that I was heading in the right direction by planning on combining purple with it. This really makes me want to pick up a crochet hook.

Jennifer Williams, aka Inkled Pink, came up with a way to fashion inkle bands into gorgeous Christmas decorations…

And, she shared it by writing a tutorial for these on her blog.

As a testament to how well the tutorial has been written, Annamieke Ruijper, in the Netherlands, quickly followed the directions and made her own. What a great way to use those pretty patterned bands that we tend to accumulate.

I don’t do Christmas. I was here at home on the 24th and 25th happily winding a new silk warp, stitching panels together and sampling for a new project. The weather has been kind these last days with lower temperatures than normal. It is awful working with silk when you have sweaty hands and fingers. Mango season is in full swing and the large rosy ones from the Yungas have arrived costing all of 12 cents a piece. Meanwhile the local smaller yellow ones are raked together in their hundreds to rot in huge, smelly, fly-infested heaps on the street. While people enjoy the shade that the mango trees provide, most people consider the abundance of fruit a curse.

I got out the tubes of 60/2 silk that Deanna had given me when I recently visited her. Beautiful tubes of teal and yellow…loads of it!..reminding me of the colors of mangoes and refreshing tropical seas.

You can see them there in the photo at left among other goodies I brought home. My pictures can’t quite capture the amount of green that is in that teal.

I was pretty excited about the silk. Although I have lots of colors in 60/2 silk that I had bought in the UK several years ago as well as some from Redfish Dyeworks, they were very small skeins and tubes…enough for use as supplementary-weft or for my small wrist cuff projects. I didn’t have enough to take on any kind of large project.

Speaking of silk wrist cuffs, I spent some time sewing plastic snaps to the ribbon necklace and cuff that I made to match the yurt pouch I showed last week. They are made from 60/2 silk in both warp and weft and these are the largest things I have made with this silk so far…

I was really keen to make something much larger with all the new silk I had to play with. But first….some sampling.

I had learned from past experience that not all my 60/2 silk was the same. The purple that I bought in the UK is finer than the turquoise, for example, which meant that letters that I had sampled in turquoise a long time ago had their proportions altered when I tried to weave them in purple. I gave up and just wove the ”real” piece in turquoise. I was not in the mood to re-chart my letters for the purple silk.

This is the silk bookmark I wove with the letters for my nephew, Ryan, the triathlete. The inspirational quote was his favorite at that time.

In another project, I found that the Redfish Dyeworks 60/2 silk did not behave the same way as the UK stuff when washed. I had used some of each as supplementary weft in a project and they shrank differently when wet. That was disappointing! As a result, I ended up with scalloped edges on the brown project below.

So, I wasn’t taking any chances with these tubes of yellow and teal 60/2 silk. I wanted to know exactly what I was getting…no surprises, thank you very much.

I sampled with the yellow for width and a bit of weft inlay. And, it’s a good thing I did as I had very much underestimated the width I would get from 200 ends.

And then I decided that I couldn’t even trust the information for the yellow to be the same for the teal and I sampled again in teal. Fortunately, samples for backstrap weaving do not need to consume huge amounts of yarn. The samples are a bit lumpy and bumpy because I didn’t use a coil rod.

I messed about with some supplementary-weft motifs to see how many warps the wefts could span before becoming awkwardly long and impractical. I tried silk and embroidery floss as the supplementary weft and decided I liked the silk better.

You probably know by now that I am not product-driven. Its all about the process for me and so the very last thing I decided was exactly what I wanted to make. I really just wanted to weave something large with the fine silk in plain weave and see if I could manage it on my backstrap loom. I decided on a sort of bandanna, or neckerchief. I remember some time ago planning one of those in the Guatemalan cotton that I had. It had never materialized.

I planned for about 18 inches of width based on a cotton bandanna that I have, wound the 2000 ends that were required, and then realized that none of my loom bars were long enough to comfortably hold this width.

Fortunately, I have an old Guatemalan loom that Lorraine in California gave me years ago. It had been given to her by her weaving teachers in Guatemala in the 1970s and she passed it on to me.

That loom is old and well used and full of character. The loom bars were just long enough but I still felt uncomfortable with the warp ends sitting so very near the end of the rods. The wonderful shed rod that came with the loom was longer and did the trick for the near beam. The shed rod is a thick piece of wood that is amazingly light for its size…just what you want in a shed rod. I wonder what kind of wood it is.

You can see above, the shed rod that I am using as the front beam and one of the other beams that I will use as the roll-up stick. And there’s my favorite Guatemalan pick-up stick. Below you can see the complete set of sticks and a spindle that Lorraine gave me. Those swords get a lot of use. This is the first time I will be using the shed rod.

I so wish my camera would capture the green in the teal silk…Anyway, here is the warp stretched ready for heddles. I haven’t found a long stick for the back beam yet and have the threads crammed onto one of my regular loom bars for now.

Now to make 1000 string heddles. I love making heddles and used some size 60 tatting thread for them (thank you, Sharon).

Taking a break to go look for more tatting thread….

And here it is underway…

Before I could start weaving, there was the coil rod to install and the cross to flip. As usual, I spent an entire morning sliding threads around trying to get them evenly spaced before I could throw the first shot of silk weft.

I LOVE wide warps! I am having so much fun with this…using the big swords, strumming the silk threads with the blunt end of my pick-up stick, snapping the back shed through the heddles, having my legs completely disappear beneath the width…so much fun!

I am using a discontinuous supplementary-weft technique which has the weft-turns shadowing the outline of the pattern. You can barely see the turns because of the fineness of the silk. I did not want to carry the gold supplementary weft from one edge of the fabric to the other or even as far as the gold stripe as I didn’t want the fabric to be ”thickened” by the extra weft sandwiched between the layers of threads.

You can see that I chose, as I generally do, to use a fairly slim shed rod and that I have it secured to a second stick. There are so many different ways that I have seen to set up and operate what I will call the ”back shed”. This happens to be my current preferred way. Anyone who has spent some time backstrap weaving will soon realize that it is the back shed that is the trickiest to operate. Clearing the threads through the heddles and to the front of the loom can be difficult if the yarn you are using is sticky. Forget the common description ”smooth as silk”…this spun silk is surprisingly sticky. There is a lot of strumming involved while sitting back and and applying as much tension to the warp as I can. I insert my sword next to the shed rod and then tip it on its side next to the heddles while strumming in front of the heddles with my pointed stick. My llama bone tool would be a little too rough on the silk.

Many weavers prefer to use a shed rod with a very large girth. This can add a lot of weight to the warp and I have seen weavers here in Bolivia and Peru use pvc pipe to give them the girth without excessive weight…

They simply draw the shed rod down to the heddles and strum in front of the heddles to clear the shed while applying tension to the warp. If the yarn is not sticky, those threads will snap right through the heddles effortlessly. The drawback for me is that a very thick shed rod requires the weaver to use more effort to raise the heddles. There are many different ways to operate these simple looms!

Weavers in Ecuador with a load of heavy-ish sticky hand spun wool on their looms use two shed rods, as you can see above. The number of warp ends are halved and distributed over the two rods and the rods are rolled so that one set of threads is first raised and then the other.

What I will need to eventually find is another long rod for my back beam. Right now, the coil rod is keeping everything nicely spread at the far end. I can usually count on going up onto the terrace of my building and finding an abandoned broom or mop to cut down. The place at which I used to buy my dowel rods stopped carrying them over a year ago. Well, I can always just buy a broom, right?

As I started a brand new project, I decided that it was also time to finish off an old one. You may remember that just before I left on my last trip, I had woven two brown panels which I had been hoping to join using one of the kinds of decorative stitches that weavers here in Bolivia use. I had been disappointed to find that the nice straight edges that I had been hoping to butt together and connect had come out scalloped after the wet-finishing process.

You can see the two panels, at left, before they got washed.

Well, I just went ahead and tried to connect them anyway…and, it worked!…far better than I ever could have hoped. I had anticipated everything that could possibly go wrong and none of those things eventuated.

I was inspired, as I have been so many times before, by my teacher, Maxima. You can see her below joining the two panels of one of her new carrying cloths with a different stitch to the one I used. Hers look like staggered triangles.

Picture courtesy of Dorinda Dutcher and PAZA Bolivia.

And speaking of Maxima and the weavers and spinners of Cochabamba, a new product has been developed by the co-operative. Maxima has been teaching the teenagers to weave and put together yoga mat straps. Aren’t they great?

Here are some projects from my weaving friends…

Moniek Deroo has been using my Andean Pebble Weave books and weaves her bands on an inkle loom. She is even designing her own original motifs.

Julia has added another wall hanging to a beautiful series that she has been creating. This one has a pattern from my second book. It is a motif that I translated to the Andean Pebble Weave structure from a tablet woven design by Louise Ström. In the chart in the book, I left a large blank space between the repeats and challenged readers to design their own ”filler”. Julia did just that and created something that so perfectly matches the rest of the pattern. She is using Knit Picks Curio cotton which has beautiful sheen. It is a 2-ply cotton and I imagine it to be similar to the Circulo Clea that I use. I do prefer 2-ply to the more ”round” 3-ply crochet cotton thread.

Bethan sent me a picture of the first of two panels that she will sew into a poncho. She is using her own hand spun wool. She mentioned some struggles with the back shed and that is to be expected, especially when using wool. I have seen Bolivian and Peruvian weavers strum away patiently for quite some time trying to coax those sticky wool threads to break their grip on each other and behave.

Finally, I will show you one of Lily’s Christmas presents from her mom, Lori. You may remember Lily weaving pick-up patterns in my ”Wee Fingers” post not so long ago. Lori wove a small backstrap for her. It’s adorable!

Back to my silk bandanna project and the hunt for a long back beam for my loom….

Backstrap Weaving – The Yurt and other Tales

It is strange as I go back and edit the pictures from my recent trip to look at crackling fire places, fall colors and warm and cozy living spaces while I sit here sweating in the ever green tropics. It is hard to imagine that I was going around in a down vest just over a week ago and that Melinda had given me one of her own handknit hats to keep me warm while visiting friends in the east for Thanksgiving. And, a yurt in California, with sheep skins, plush pillows, a down comforter, soft lighting and heating was my exotic bedroom for two nights.

My first time in a yurt was back in 2010. I went to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and the temperature was unexpectedly high….well into the 90s. After a hectic morning visiting the vendors and waiting in line for cold drinks, I wilted and took refuge in a yurt that had been erected.

In more ways than one, it really was the coolest place to be. I attached my backstrap loom to the wooden lattice walls and sat on top of the sheep skins to weave. A refreshing stream of air was drawn within from the opening in the roof. I wished I could have stretched out and napped but people kept entering thinking that I was the ”keeper of the yurt” and asking me questions about it. I imagined spending a night under that roof opening and gazing at the stars above the plains of Mongolia..

I visited a weaving friend, Sara Lamb, on one of my trips and marveled at her exotic yurt fiber studio nestled in the woods….

And this was my yurt bedroom at Susie and Rex’s place for a couple of nights on my latest trip. What fun!

In his living room, Rex had erected a pole for his backstrap weaving so he could sit among the collection of exotic rugs and textiles and create some of his own. The pole is seated in a plank which is weighed down by piles of books and furniture and allows him to experiment with having his warp extended at different angles.

Perhaps one day he will create a band to encircle the mini yurt he built in the backyard in which I got to spend those luxurious nights.

Yurt band woven structures became a part of my weaving experiments back in 2009 when my friend Lisa showed me a band that she had purchased.

Even earlier than that, in 2007, I had made my first visit to the Textile Museum in D.C where I was inspired by its exhibit of tent bands of Central Asia.

Using ideas drawn from that exhibit and Lisa’s 48-foot band, I went on to weave quite a few small pieces using the terme structure starting with this one, below, that I gave to Lisa for her cell phone…

I spent some time weaving with both Susie and Rex. Rex showed me a small experimental bench he had built to make sitting at a backstrap loom more comfortable. I tried it out and I have to say that it was quite amazing.

Here’s Gwen showing us how it works….

It was really comfortable sitting in this position…a position which I simply would not be able to tolerate for long without the support of this little bench. This position, sitting on the back of the calves, is how my Guatemalan weaving teachers sit with their backstrap warps angled rather steeply upward. Put a little cushioning on the seat of the bench and it would be perfect! What a clever simple device. Rex wanted to give it to me to take back to Bolivia. If only I had had room!

All this yurt talk takes me now to what I have been weaving this week.

In the last blog post, I showed you the silk warp that Sara had given me. There it is above…the gorgeous reds, orange, fuchsia, copper and purple. It is reeled silk that she dyed and warped and passed on to me to enjoy. I am hoping that along the way, some of Sara’s color sense rubs off on me.

Here it is on the loom with a pattern in the Andean Pebble Weave structure that I chose… a serious of ‘S-hook’ shapes woven this way and that…

And now, off the loom and washed and pressed undergoing that wonderful transformation that I have told you about before. It’s quite likely that you won’t be able to see the difference but, believe me, you can feel it….

Now….what to make with this lovely piece of cloth? I really didn’t feel like folding it over to make a square pouch with a flap…been there, done that. Even though I love cutting and shaping bag flaps and edging them with tubular bands, I wanted to do something different this time. So, I came up with this, a tribute to my recent yurt encounters…

I made a little yurt-ish shaped pouch. We can even imagine, if we like, that the strip of pebble weave is the band encircling the yurt. I had enough fabric to be able to cut a circle which forms the base of the bag and then sew the remaining cloth to it…a rather big challenge to my hand-sewing skills. It isn’t finished. I hope to add some exotic tassels somehow with the copper-color silk that Sara gave me and possibly edge the seam where the body connects to the base with a tubular band. And, of course, a strap is needed too.

Here’s another view… taken without flash so the colors are little duller…

So, now I have plans….I have my 60/2 silk and I want to weave a ribbon to edge the neckline of a black tunic top that I recently bought. I have all the colors of the warp that Sara gave me, except the fuchsia. I want to edge the neckline of the tunic with a band of those colors and use the little yurty pouch when I wear it. Urgh…I can hardly believe what I am saying…fashion plans! There will be much sampling and I just hope that I don’t destroy the tunic top in the process. My main concern is whether I have the ability to neatly sew on the ribbon.

So, there are the tubes of 60/2 silk that I plan to use with a line-up of possible replacements for the fuchsia that I am lacking.

And, that’s the backstrap I wove with the Good Earth cotton/linen yarn. It is not as plush as the Plymouth cotton backstraps that I have made before but I really like the way this yarn feels. It is certainly a good sturdy backstrap.

The fuchsia yarn labeled Luxor that you can see was a gift from my friend Wendy in Australia. You may remember Wendy Garrity from previous blog posts about the time we spent together here in Santa Cruz and later in Santa Fe and the weaving she learned to do in Bhutan. She sent me a care package that showed up two days ago with all sorts of Aussie biscuits and sweets as well as this yarn. I wasn’t expecting it at all! She had been using the yarn in the Key Fob Weave-along that we ran earlier this year and I was interested in trying it and writing about it for backstrap weavers in Australia. The Luxor 100% cotton, is made by Fibra Natura, the same brand as the blue cotton/linen.

So, there’s plenty to keep me busy and I have the linen warp that I wound from Lori’s stash to try as well. Speaking of Lori and the weaving friends with whom I spent time while away, let me show you some of the textiles that I encountered on this trip…

Two bags that form part of Lori's collection of Huichol textiles. They have been woven using a balanced double weave structure and have interesting edgings. I took lots of pictures of those edgings to study. — These are two bags that form part of Lori’s collection of Huichol textiles. They have been woven using a balanced double-weave structure and have interesting edgings. I took lots of pictures of those edgings to study more closely now that I am at home. It is so exciting to discover decorative edgings on these pieces from Mexico.

If anyone knows the origin of this scarf, Christine and I would love to know. Christine found this in a Goodwill store and I love it. I was trying to figure out how the patterns at the ends of the scarf were created. The little figures are identical on both faces. It seems that some of the warp ends themselves were used to wrap others and create the patterns. — If anyone knows the origin of this scarf, Christine and I would love to know. Christine found this in a Goodwill store and I love it. The main pattern is beautifully fine and simple and the whole thing is set-off by the fascinating more complex patterns at the ends. The little figures at the ends are identical on both faces. It seems that some of the warp ends themselves were used to wrap others and create the motifs. I would like to figure out the technique and this is something else that will have me peering at my photos.

Nicole made me so happy when she showed me the tapestry puece she had woven as a cover for her ipad. Dhe edged it with aplain weave tubular band that she had learned using the tutorial on my blog. It is funny thath other weaving friends, Sara and Diane, had just been suggesting the possibility of using use the tubular bands as not only edging s for warp-faced weaves, but also for weft-faced pieces and even knotted pile. — Nicole made me so happy when she showed me the tapestry piece she had woven as a cover for her iPad. She edged it with a plain-weave tubular band that she had learned using **the tutorial** on my blog. It is funny that other weaving friends, Sara and Diane, had just been suggesting the possibility of using the tubular bands as edgings for not only warp-faced weaves, but also for weft-faced pieces and even knotted pile. And then, along comes Nicole to show how well it works.

Here’s Leslie’s backstrap showing us how nice the variegated Plymouth yarn can look. She had just started braiding the ends. The pale solid stripe that she added in the center really sets off the variegated stripes.

I got to see pieces, now off the loom, that Jean and Jane had been working on last time I met up with them. Jean’s black piece with its pattern in supplementary weft is her new backstrap. She adapted a warp pattern from my second book to the supplementary-weft structure…so clever. I am pretty sure that Jane intends sewing her fabulous complementary-warp pick-up piece into a bag which she will edge and decorate.

Liz and Caroline showed me what they have been working on since we last met and wove together. Caroline made her own backstrap and is currently weaving the band with the bird figures. I love Liz’s band in the middle with the variegated thread. I keep saying I want to try out some of those variegated yarns and have not managed to do so yet.

Here’s a nice selection of Andean Pebble Weave bands from the weavers in Arizona…

And, Deanna made me smile a lot when she went on to design her own Andean Pebble Weave figure after my stay with her. These are experiments for a hatband for her Mustang-driving husband. She was inspired by some tablet-woven horses that she had seen. As she discovered, designing for Andean Pebble Weave is just like a connect-the-dots exercise.

And here is what Julia wove, after we parted, using Andean pebble Weave patterns from my second book….we all love that red and black! Julia’s work is gorgeous and always so beautifully finished. She is great inspiration for everyone in the Ravelry group. I was tickled to see a pattern I had charted for the second book but never woven myself…the one on the right.

I just read on Facebook that Unicorn Books closed last week. Sad. In 1995, my new weaving friend in Colorado, Gladys, gave me their catalog to take back to Chile with me. The catalog was like a newspaper and oh, how I would love looking over the pages and pages of fiber arts books. I ordered Double Woven Treasures of old Peru from that catalog and waited impatiently for it to be shipped to the southernmost tip of Chile where I was living. It was that book that had me throwing on the backpack and heading to Peru to learn to weave in 1996.
And, just to show that my recent trip wasn’t all about crackling fires and chilly nights…southern California put on some spectacular weather and Deanna, Gay and I spent a gorgeous afternoon having lunch at the ocean.

You can see the exotic woven band…a balanced double weave pick-up… on the Panama hat that Gay lent me for the strong sun.

It is one of many textiles that Gay and her husband collected in their travels. You may remember when last I visited her I was so excited to buy a Huichol belt from her that had designs I had once chosen to weave in a piece of my own, also in balanced double-weave pick-up.

I took lots of pictures of it and then gave it a nice home in my friend Janet’s place.

I will leave you for now with the setting sun on that perfect day down by the sea and get back to decorating my little yurt bag….