supplementary weft – Page 10 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Books and Bands

Last week I had my hands on the gorgeous handspun wool bands from the weavers of Cochabamba. I was enjoying all the beautiful warm tones the weavers had obtained from dyeing with leaves, flowers and cochineal. I admired the different textures in the cloth that the tight twist in the yarn had created.

This week, I moved to the fresh, cool, blue of indigo-dyed fine cotton from Guatemala….

The variation in tone in the thread gives my woven fabric a lovely ‘rustic’ streaked look, almost like faded blue jeans. This is to be the cover for a journal that I bought to give as a gift for a friend. Her initials will sit on the spine of the book. I enjoy doing the pick-up for supplementary-weft inlay especially when using fine thread and I love weaving the warp-faced plain- weave base for the patterning. The back cover will not have patterns and will be very fast to weave. Doing plain weave with such lovely thread and in such a gorgeous color is a joy. I am using a coil rod as part of my set-up to prevent corrugation. You can see the thin coil rod in the picture beyond the cross sticks.

Getting the width exactly right was the challenge and I was happy to have used the Guatemalan cotton in the Key Fob Weave-Along that we ran in the Backstrap Weaving Group on Ravelry recently. The blue and wheat-colored fobs gave me samples from which to make my width calculations. I normally wouldn’t completely trust information from such tiny samples but I was lucky this time and the book covers turned out to be the perfect width.

I may even turn the key fob samples into matching book marks for these small journals. The covers are simply sitting on the books for the time being. The ends of the cloth have been turned to the inside and I will glue them there and then cover the inside with some pretty paper or card. I may have to also apply a line of glue next to the spine where the book cover bends to open. Tomorrow I shall go shopping for paper and more books because I am having a lot of fun making these.

The center red motif below the flower head is an adaptation of a pattern that an online friend in Greece wove and showed me. It is fun charting the tiny initials to fit on the small space on the spine.

Here is a third one on the loom….

Apart from that, I got caught up a little in the recent interest in woven cuffs that emerged from the Key Fob WAL. It seems like a good natural progression…projects of similar length and just a little wider an lots of room for creativity with different kinds of finishes and closures.

I made the silk Andean Pebble Weave band that I wove recently into a cuff. Some people like to make the closure of the cuff a prominent feature using a pretty button or other kind of clasp. I didn’t as my cuff is heavily patterned. I just overlapped the ends and secured them with press studs. The press studs, which are kind of ugly, get hidden under the overlapped ends. I used 60/2 silk which made a very fine band. This meant that turning and hemming the end did not create much bulk. One end has a selvedge and didn’t need hemming.

Then I wove a cuff experiment in wool. I wanted to make a piece with four selvedges and see how much length would be lost to take up.

I would like to make a fairly plain wool cuff with four selvedges so that I won’t have a raw edge with unwoven warp-ends to have to deal with….just a fairly plain band with a large button and maybe a tubular edging for decoration. I warped a band of 7 1/2 inches and only lost 1/2 inch in take up. I couldn’t resist throwing in a little motif along the way just for fun. So, this finished band gives me the information about take-up that I will need for planning the next one.

I will most likely make the celtic knot band, on the left, which has just been sitting around here for ages, into a wristlet too.

Now we are into March and the Key Fob Weave-Along is coming to its end. People are moving on to other projects and other looms or picking up backstrap things that they had put aside when the WAL began.

Gwen learned a lot about using stripes, spots and bars in her patterns in the Key Fob WAL and used that knowledge to go on to weave a striking guitar strap on her backstrap loom…

If you are wondering about the leather ends and buckles that she used, check out the ad for ASpinnerWeaver on the side bar of my blog or on the RESOURCES page. My friend Annie’s husband makes them in black and brown.

Half-basket weave ground weave with patterns created with black supplemental warp threads...by Julia — Half basket-weave ground weave with patterns created with black supplemental- warp threads…by Julia

Another exciting thing that came out of the WAL is fresh interest in the supplemental-warp structure which has had us looking, thanks to Catharina, at patterns of Estonia and northern Europe.

We have also been comparing the techniques of the supplemental-warp patterning that I was taught in Peru and Bolivia with those that I learned in highland Ecuador.

The timing couldn’t be more perfect as I have just begun corresponding with a lady in Canada who contacted me via Facebook. She went to Colombia a year ago and has been sharing information about the suppementary-warp structure and how it is used there.

I will try to gather everything and write about all that next week.

Backstrap Weaving – Plain Tales

There are many things to remind me that I am no longer in the US and am back in the tropics…that we are heading into summer while the northern hemisphere rolls into winter. There’s this picture that was taken by an online weaving friend in Vermont today….

I keep scrolling back to gaze at it as I write my post in the heat. I lived 6 years in ski resorts and can sense the strange way that sound gets muffled when snow has fallen as I look at this picture. I love its cool blueness.

I have been pulling my hair out all day because my internet connection has been particularly horrible…on and off every 30 seconds….while poor Susan in Vermont is without power in a snowstorm. I wonder how my Californian friends are doing with the massive rain storm that was predicted.

It’s been one of those weeks where I spent far more time online than at the loom. That is not such a bad thing. I got a lot done even if it was at a very slow speed. And, while emailing away and doing research, I ran across a very cool video.

Last year, while visiting with my weaving friend, Dorothy, (the one who recently studied with Peruvian tapestry artist, Maximo Laura) I saw some of the textiles that she had collected on a previous visit to Peru.

One such piece was a pillow cover with some beautiful embroidery. Both Dorothy and I were curious about the embroidery stitch that was used to create the stems and filled-in areas. I posted pictures in a post following the visit and readers wrote to tell me of the origin of the piece…the province of Ayacucho.

I had been to the city of Ayacucho in 1996. That was shortly after the capture and imprisonment of the leader of the Shining Path movement which had used Ayacucho as the base for its terror activities. The city was a sad, depressed and desolate place at that time with few signs of activity and a mere handful of weavers still at their floor looms in the Santa Ana area. I hear that the city’s artisans have long been back at work producing all kinds of both traditional and contemporary handcrafts.

Mariana Venegas wrote to me immediately after I posted these pictures last year and sent me diagrams of what she believed the stitch to be. She was right. But it was one of those things that I did not examine very closely, filed away and forgot about. Thank you so much, Mariana! Coming across the aformentioned video reminded me that I had wanted to learn how to do the stitch. In the video it has been named punto crespo. In Bolivia, hair that is curly or frizzy is described as being crespo so, I guess I could safely say that it is the “curly stitch”.

Anyway, here is the video for anyone who is also curious. I would like to use this stitch in some way in my work.

Ayacucho is one of the places I would very much like to revisit as I see so much beautiful handwork coming from that area online. …not that I want to buy anything, photos will do…I am busy trying to find new homes for some of my things these days!

Here is a picture of some paintings done in Ayacucho from the Facebook page of Folt Bolt. I recommend going to Facebook and “liking” that page. The things that are posted there are a constant source of inspiration.

Here is Folt Bolt’s description that accompanies the picture…

Sarhua is a village in Ayacucho, Peru. Tablas (boards made from the stock of the century plant) are painted using natural pigments extracted from the earth around the village and also from the leaves/flowers and roots of plants. Each member of the family must be reflected in the tablas, performing their every day work or enjoying a special day or festival. A tradition is gift-giving of a tabla to a friend or family member building a new home. These are usually 6 – 8 inches wide and up to 10 feet long and are attached along a ceiling beam on the second floor for good luck and protection.

I do remember these marvelous ceramic churches in Ayacucho. Not only were miniature versions offered for sale in some of the stores in the city, but large ones sat on the rooftops of many of the houses in the surrounding suburbs. The examples, above, are part of Gay’s collection of textiles and folk art that I saw in her home in San Diego on my recent fall trip. Gay, by the way, is very keen to sell most of the items in the collection and would welcome any enquiries. Just leave me a message here on my blog.

As for the title of this post, Plain Tales,…that is what I have decided to call my second series of three red-black-and-white wall hangings. Why “plain”? Because they are all based on warp-faced plain weave….. a black warp-faced plain-weave panel patterned with white supplemental weft, two bonded layers of warp-faced plain weave, or double weave, and warp ikat, a tie-dyed warp woven in plain weave.

Each has a tale to tell but not only about what was involved in creating it.

Each has a story of the encounters and experiences I have had here in South America, and beyond, learning to weave on simple looms.

From the time spent at a raucous highland festival in the town of Calcha where I first spotted the women’s tiny floral hat bands amongst the dancing and celebration, to my first encounter with ikat in the form of my weaving teacher’s martital bedspread. The tied pattern included her name and her husband’s.

The Shipibo-inspired piece reminds me of the three weeks I spent on my knees doubled over at the horizontal ground loom learning double weave with my teacher laughingly telling me q’ella! (lazy!) and jokingly threatening to slap me when I didn’t beat hard enough!

As I sit twining, I am taken back to afternoons spent with my Montagnard teacher, listening to her stories about her overpowering desire as a child to learn to twine, abandoning her chores and risking her mother’s anger to run off secretly to another village to sit and study with her sister-in-law.

All three Plain Tales are off the loom now but not finished. There will be a great deal of tv time spent braiding and twisting fringe.

I re-did the red panels on the first of the three pieces to be completed and had, therefore, to re-do the weft twining that connects the them to the central black-and-white one. Each row of weft twining took 40 minutes! Now all the red panels match in structure and color.

It has been so exciting to see this blank slate….

…turn into this…

And to see these experiments….

become this….

I keep the woven samples, tests and trials and notes. Some of the samples can be fashioned into something useful, others not…

After completing the relatively chaotic black-and-white center panels for each hanging it was always been soothing to then be able to sit at the loom and turn out plain red cloth with simple warp-float motifs. These quiet red panels flank the black-and white ones.

What’s next?…more ikat! I am in the process of figuring out a new frame so that I can sit in a more comfortable positon while doing all the tying. I have a new idea for the ikat which will need sampling and I am pretty excited about it as I really don’t know what to expect. I brought back LOTS of black dye from the US this time so there will be lots of room for error and adjustment in the sampling.

I will leave you with a fun original design by David. He wove some star patterns using the Andean Pebble Weave structure based on Guaraní designs that I charted in my second book. Then he went on to use the tutorials on designing to create his own cat motifs. They are adorable!

Backstrap Weaving – Blur

It’s amazing how quickly it can all become a blur. Here I am back in the tropics…bananas, palm trees and clinging humidity. It is hard to imagine how it had felt being amongst the redwoods experiencing autumnal coolness and colors just a few days ago, snuggling under the covers at night and listening to the chirping crickets.

Scene of one of the backstrap weaving gatherings at Ace and Pam's place in Humboldt County — View from the weaving room at one of the backstrap weaving gatherings at Ace and Pam’s place in Humboldt County a couple of weeks ago.

Not too cold yet to be warping outdoors under the big ol' oak tree at Janet's place. — Not too cold yet to be warping outdoors under the big ol’ oak tree at Janet’s place.

The view from my bedroom! at Cheryl's place on a break between Humboldt County and Sacramento. — The view from my bedroom! at Cheryl’s place.

Although I haven’t settled back into my full Bolivian home routine, some parts were easier than others to pick up again….weaving and writing a blog post, for example.

I have managed to get back to the loom since I got home last Thursday and here I am back at the blog. I wove off the plain fabric on the ikat warp that I had taken as a display loom on my US trip.

I decided that this fabric could be sewn into a nice bag for the wee Kindle that I recently bought.

I thought that the top of the bag looked a bit plain and so I wove a teeny pick-up band and attached that to the rim. It was fun weaving that band in fine cotton. I have always liked all things miniature. The finished fabric was just long enough to make a pouch with a drawstring top.

Now it’s time to survey the three wall hangings on which I had been working before the Fall trip and finish them off.

There are twined ends to be tidied, fringes to be cut, and a new set of red panels to be woven for the first flower panel. Yes, I will be undoing all that weft twining on that piece, removing the current red panels, which are darker and finer than the others, and replacing them with new ones. In that way, all three hangings will have identical red panels each with its own red-on-red pick-up pattern. It wasn’t something that I had had the courage to face before I traveled, but I have been away from my loom for so long and have been missing it so much that I feel I can attack this now with gusto!

And what about the blur and whir of activity in those last weeks of my trip?…

I stayed with Kathleen in California where she gathered a small group to weave supplementary-weft techniques using fine thread. We played with Guatemalan techniques with traditional patterns which some people used for creating patterns outside the box such as autumn leaves and pre-columbian motifs of South America.

I have woven with all these ladies on several occasions on past trips and it was great to see them all again.

Dorothy had spent many weeks over the summer in Peru studying tapestry techniques with the internationally recognized Peruvian tapestry weaver, Maximo Laura. She brought the piece on which she had been working to show us at my insistence.

I imagine that the teacher must be very proud of this student! We all urged Dorothy to have this piece prepared for hanging and professionally photographed.

The design is Dorothy’s own composition. You really have to see it in person to appreciate how much of it is also about texture. Various sections showcase different techniques of color blending and texture.

Dorothy’s stories of her hours spent at the loom in the loud busy-ness of Maximo Laura’s workshop are priceless…the sounds, the colors, the characters, the excitement of it all…as well as the feelings of isolation and occasional loneliness associated with being far from home for such a long time and unable to communicate fluently. I hope that she is able to present her work and tell her stories at her guild.

Kathy and Dorothy also brought along large backstrap pieces which we had started in other gatherings in which we challenged ourselves to go wider. Sometimes, when weavers leave their work untouched for some time, they need a little kick start to get back under way. We can see the value of going away to some foreign land for a six-week intensive weaving retreat where life does not get in the way of our weaving! Kathy tells me that her red and black backstrap in Plymouth Fantasy Naturale, pictured above, is now fnished.

I helped get Dorothy back on track with her piece. She is using Tahki Cotton Classic with three columns of bird motifs which are charted in my first book.

From there I headed up to Humboldt County to my friend Janet. Again, there were lots of familiar faces to greet me…people I had met on previous visits as well as those with whom I had spent time at CNCH.

There was a weaving gathering at the mill followed by another session at Ace’s and lots of time in between to hang out weave alone. Above, you can see Amber practicing the supplementary-weft technique we wove together. She chose a pattern that I based on a traditional Bedouin motif to decorate her black bookmark. Janet can be seen refreshing her ñawi awapa skills using her own beautiful handspun wool.

During the weaving get together, Janet wove a piece with her handspun (of course) and indigo-dyed yarn using the intermesh technique. She chose a Mexican motif that is charted in my second book.

Once done with that, she was ready to warp another wider intermesh project. You see, she now has quite a stash of yarn that she has spun specially for warp-faced weaving and dyed with natural substances. In the past she has used both synthetic and natural dyes but has now decided to stick with natural. Lucky me, I was given some of her gorgeous yarn to take home.

I got into the dyepot with some synthetic dye and dyed some wool that Virginia in Arizona had given me…red and black…no surprises there. This is ready for another series of wall hangings using the ticlla, or discontinuous-warp technique. It is funny that this was what I had chosen to study last summer too. Wait until the weather gets hot and sticky and then let’s bring out the wool! Janet has a nice dye kitchen set-up on the porch outside her mill. These wool projects will be competing with more ikat studies that I have in mind.

One of my discontinuous-warp studies from last summer.

Another 'ticlla' study with some pick-up patterning included. — Another ‘ticlla’ study with some pick-up patterning included.

On the second weekend, we went out to Ace and Pam’s place (the place that has that gorgeous view in the first picture in this post). It was nice attaching our warps to the wooden posts in Ace’s living room and extending them from there in a spoke-like fashion.

We used lots of Janet’s wool bands around the posts for attaching our warps. There was time spent weaving but also time spent looking st woven motifs and figuring out how to chart them.

Tracy was using a backstrap brought for her from Guatemala patterned with a beautiful double-faced supplementary-weft technique…

The guild meeting was wonderfully busy and entertaining. There had been two workshops the previous weekend on mushroom dyeing and eco-printing which resulted in lots of Show-and-Tell.

Onward to Diane’s place with a fun day of weaving with folks who had woven with me on previous occasions. Even Jen, who had woven with me over in Truckee and South Tahoe, was able to make it. It was wonderful to be able to see what everyone was working on. Some people were finishing off the samples that we had started in our last get together while others were well into new projects.

In previous sessions, Cheryl had warped, with Jane’s help, for a backstrap decorated with a pattern in the Andean Pebble Weave structure. She was able to almost finish weaving it in this time. Calculating to get the motif centered was tricky considering that Cheryl had not woven a sample with this yarn which we could use as a guide of her beat and take-up. We got close. The motif is charted in my second book. Cheryl uses the “thick border” structure that I describe in my first book and has created a thick and cushy backstrap. I call the backstrap that I made for myself with this structure my ”Rolls Royce”.

From top left to bottom right, you can see Jane, Shan, Wendy and Jen weaving. Diane showed me the finished band that we had warped at the end of our last time together…the red, black and white one, below, (motif from the second book)…

With Cheryl and Ken's 'wee' pup, Trace. — With Cheryl and Ken’s ‘wee’ pup, Trace.

…and I loved Jen’s idea of combining solid color yarn with variegated for the plain Andean Pebble Weave section of her backstrap. She has a solid green “background” through which multi-colored pebble spots appear in the variegated yarn.

This is a solid group that gets together frequently to weave at Diane’s place. I am so happy that I was able to be part of one gathering and offer help and advice.I often long to be able to jump through my computer here in Bolivia to be able to help people who write with questions about their projects.

While revisiting this group of friends and staying with Cheryl at her gorgeous lake house, Diane, Cheryl and I were invited by renowned fiber artist, Sara Lamb, to visit her home and yurt studio.

This had long been a wish of mine!

Being familiar with some of Sara’s work from her online presence, her magazine articles, and from having seen her in her own woven garments made from her own exquisite handspun and painted yarns, I had an inkling of what I might expect to see within that enticing yurt. Of course, what lay within was beyond my expectations and I am not even sure that I can begin to describe that space filled with the richness of colorful yarn and tools, and crammed with the signs and sources of creativity, production and inspiration. Where to focus, where to start…so much to see and touch and so many stories to hear. It was an impossible space to photograph…at least for me. I would never have been able to contain all that magic in one frame.

Then, we moved into the house where a simple glass-fronted cabinet, with just the right kind of magical muted lighting, revealed an Aladdin’s cave of woven treasures (of course, Woven Treasures, the name of one of Sara’s books…there could be no other name for her work as that is the phrase and vision that immediately springs to mind when you are approaching the display).

Flash photography of course spoils the mood of that muted lighting. Cheryl’s picture is closer to reality than mine.

It was fun to be able to spot a backstrap-woven band used as trim amongst the treasures which resulted from a class Sara had taken with Ed Franquemont.

Each piece had its story. It is an astounding body of work and we didn’t even scrape the surface. We are so grateful to Sara for having invited us over.

The beautiful mansion that houses the Sacramento Youth Hostel

Last stop was Sacramento and a chance to stay with Vonnie and her family again and see long-time online weaving buddy, Franco.

There was a nice combination of known, familiar and new faces in the group…people who had woven with me before, people I had met at CNCH and new people with whom I hope to be able to weave again.

I enjoyed the guild meeting and having people thank me for bringing back memories of their trips to Peru from years gone by. I hope that my pictures might inspire in people another visit to South America…maybe Bolivia next time…to see the weavers and the textiles with new eyes. And the guild meeting was a chance to see weaving friends again…not only from Sacramento but from other places in the area.

Vonnie took me to a great local yarn store called Babetta’sYarn. We shopped for Plymouth Fantasy Naurale so that Vonnie could make her backstrap.

Vonnie started her backstrap the next night, I set my alarm for 2am for the pick-up by Super Shuttle, and my trip was done!

So, there you have the blur of those last weeks. While all that was going on, backstrap weavers from various countries were posting their projects online and sending me pictures by email…evoking lots of smiles!

Cheryl wove with me on this trip and has already finished making her backstrap. It’s one of the things that I like to emphasise…warping and setting up to create good plain weave.

Ruth, in Chile, used the Backstrap Basics article, which I have online in Spanish as well as in English, to weave her own backstrap. She has done a beautiful job!

Ximena, also from Chile, often sends me updates on her Andean Pebble Weave work. Here is a set of bookmarks that she made…

Father Kyriakos, in Australia, wove a wool piece of fabric decorated with Andean Pebble Weave patterns using a four-shaft table loom (instructions are in my first book). He included some soumak and weft twining and used a band woven on an inkle loom for a strap for his finished product….a gorgeous satchel.

And, speaking of gorgeous bags and straps, Julia is constructing one using several bands and wide pieces. She has two other bands off the loom as well and I can’t wait to see how she uses them. All these motifs are charted in my second book.

Father Kyriakos also sent me an update on his bookmark project. These he made using a backstrap loom…

Gwendolyn shows how she can comfortably set up to weave both indoors and out. She is weaving a plain weave band and decorating it with a pattern using a supplementary weft. The pattern is one that I have adapted from textiles of Central Asia that were woven using completely different structures. You can find that pattern charted here.

That piece is now off the loom with lining attached and ready to be made into a bag…

Camilla, in Sweden, is using both string heddles and a rigid heddle to operate her looms for Andean Pebble Weave, with its two sets of string heddles, and basic complementary-warp pick-up which is based on two sheds.

Amanda wanted to weave a banner band for her mother’s craft business, Crafted by Rozella, and used the lettering technique that I learned from the Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) backstrap weavers in North Carolina. It always makes me happy to see those tutorials being used.

The critters on the table are wine bottle toppers.

Finally, Valtricot showed us a way to wind a warp if you don’t have pegs or clamps…

If you have managed to get all the way to the end of this long post, I imagine that you might also be feeling like everything is blur. That is what happens when I leave off posting for a while. I just couldn’t manage to squeeze in a space for it while on the road for the last part of my trip.

And speaking of blurs…as in objects moving at great speed…my nephew, Ryan, recently took third place in his first ever professional appearance in long-distance triathlon.

You may remember that he brought home the gold in the World Amateur Champonships in China in September. Once again he thanks all the supporters from the weaving world who visited and liked his Facebook page.

Backstrap Weaving – Bookmarked

I am in that odd sort of limbo time just before I leave on my trip to the US. There’s not enough time to really get my teeth into a new project, yet too much time to sit about idle. I finished the two red panels that will accompany my black and white ikat piece and couldn’t resist mounting all three panels on beams to see how they look together.

You should just be able to make out the red-on-red warp floats in the panel on the right. The pattern resembles the stepped pyramids and stepped diamond in the center of the ikat motif.

So, between packing, cleaning and tidying up, I roam the internet taking advantage of the fact that I paid for a whole month of internet and can use my entire monthly allotment of megabytes in half the amount of time that I would normally have. I look at sites and videos and bookmark the pages which give me inspiration and ideas for future projects.

And, because I really cannot stay away from the loom, I have been weaving some small gift projects. You will guess what from the title of this post…bookmarks.

Bookmarks are fun fast projects. If you have a way of creating really short warps, they provide a nice way to use up small odds and ends of yarn. I had some DMC thread left over from my Shipibo-inspired wall hanging and so, I wound a short warp and decorated the bands with silk supplementary weft.

Warping for short bands with a board and nails in Huancayo. — Warping for short bands with a board and nails in Huancayo, Peru.

I had some clear plastic sleeves that had been included in a weaving conference goody bag and slipped my woven bookmarks inside. White bookmarks, afterall, wouldn’t stay clean and white for long and could use some protection…

At first I thought that the plastic might look tacky but I am actually quite happy with the finished result. The plastic sleeves have a hole punched in the top through which I could thread a pretty blue braid. Now I want to get more of those sleeves into which I can place the Guatemalan pattern bands that I made ages ago. You can also see in the above picture the silk bookmark in double weave that I made for my nephew. This has become a sample as I want to redo it with the phrase all in one line rather than split into three.

In years past, when I made long trips through Bolivia and Peru, I would take along bookmarks that I had woven to give to fellow travelers and to people who had been kind and helpful. They were a big hit and people wanted them even if they didn’t intend to use them to mark the pages in a book.

These ladies and the little fellow are members of the family of my sling braiding teacher in Peru. That little guy holding his bookmark must be a young man in his late teens by now I would imagine. I wonder what became of his little woven bookmark.

I would like to get back into the habit of having a collection of bookmarks on hand when I travel to give away. I think I should set myself the goal of weaving two a week . These will make nice on-the-road weaving projects.

I have all kinds of sample bands lying about here at home that would make decent bookmarks…ikat experiements, supplementary-warp bands, double-weave pieces as well as complementary-warp samples made with sewing thread. I still have the good ol’ llama band. That little llama motif appears on some double-weave belts that are sold in the central highlamds here in Bolivia. I adapted and embellished it for my bookmark.

Wider experiemental bands or those that are too thick to make practical bookmarks can be folded and made into coin purses…

One of the many reasons I like using double weave is because it allows me to easily weave letters, words and phrases. One of Weavolution’s founders asked me to weave the following bookmarks as gifts to celebrate the site’s first year online…

Andean Pebble Weave can be cleverly used to create letters as well although not with as much flexibility as double weave. Father Kyriakos just sent me a picture of his latest rendition of what I have named the Kyriakos Kangaroo. He has modified the motif and woven it into a bookmark along with the name of its new owner…Ilya.

He’s also using a pebble weave backstrap, the design for which was created by Julia.

Father Kyriakos has chosen to have fringe at both ends of his bookmark.

My latest bookmarks in their plastic sleeves also had fringed ends but I didn’t like the way the fringes lookedwithin the plastic sleeves.

I cut the fringes right off and painted the edges of the fabric with diluted white glue. I was then able to turn the edges over. The glue-soaked cloth was stiff and it was like folding paper. It gave a nice crisp, neat crease.

Other times, I have chosen to start the bookmark with a selvedge.

I place a fine metal rod…as fine as a “0000” size knitting needle for fine thread…within the warp and lash that to my loom bar. This enables me to start weaving right at the very start of the warp.

Later when I remove the needle, I can fill the gap that it leaves by threading the tail of the first weft shot onto a needle and feeding it into the gap. Weavers in South America, of course, do not use any kind of metal rod…that is just one of my own quirky things.

Using a fine knitting needle at the start of the band and finishing by passing the weft tail on a tapestry needle to fill the gap.

As for finishing the other end of the bands, I usually choose to braid the ends. A four-strand round braid is my favorite. This secures the last weft shot. If I want fringe, I hand sew across the woven end making sure that I catch the last weft. Hand stitches can be pulled and embedded so that they are virtually invisible.

Another way to finish with fringe and secure the woven edge is best shown in pictures…

I have just passed the weft for the second last time. It has been passed through the shed from left to right. I have placed a tapestry needle within the shed.

I have opened the next shed, beaten, and passed the weft from right to left. This is the final weft shot.

Now I need to secure the weft. I have threaded the needle with the weft and will pull it through the shed. I take it about three-quarters of the way across and then pull it out of the back of the band. The tail can then be cut.

I have beaten well again in the last open shed so that you can’t tell that there are two shots of weft together in the second last shed. You will see the odd weft turn on the left hand side where the weft has traveled “backwards” into the shed on the tapestry needle. If my weft color matched the border, as it normally does, you would not notice this at all. For this demo, I have chosen a contrast color for the weft. To finish, I like to open one more shed and beat just to enclose that final weft shot within its shed.

I’ll copy this little tutorial to a new FAQ page.

So, I have just under a week to weave some more bookmarks. I have lots of fine thread and will weave them with all kinds of structures. Having them in the plastic sleeves will be a nice way to showcase the different structures I have studied in South America and Guatemala. I am looking forward to trying some of the fine Guatemalan naturally -dyed cotton that I got at ANWG last year.
This will most likely be the last post before I hit the road. I will try to write short postcard-y posts as I go and not let things accumulate too much.

See you again soon…

Backstrap Weaving – Fancy Footwork

I got distracted again this week. I love getting distracted. It’s always good and it’s almost always related to weaving. Between the delightful distraction and a lot of warping, I did manage to find some time to spend at my loom…

I ended the brocaded part with seven little stepped peaks and will now weave the rest as seven separate brocaded tabs. I am doing this because I want this panel to match the central panel of my Shipibo-inspired piece which also ends with seven woven strips. The other end will have a weft-twined pattern, probably something that is based on those stepped peaks.

Now, about that distraction…

All of you who have Facebook accounts will know the feeling when you receive a friend request from someone whose name you do not recognize….do I actually know this person, are they a friend of friend, what is the possible connection, is this just someone who likes to collect friends? I take a look at their page to see if there’s any weaving or fibery content and look for mutual contacts. Very rarely, the person who sent the request will also send a message. In case you didn’t know, there is a message inbox entitled “other” in the message section of your account to which people who are not your Facebook friends can send messages. Facebook does not send notifications for these and you have to go and look for them yourself. When I was first told about this inbox, I found a pile-up of messages dating back to 2010!…ex-boyfriend, old neighbors, requests to meet and weave with me!

Anyway…Yen-Chi Sun sent me a message. Yen-Chi Sun tells me that he is Taiwanese and that he is working with others to revive, document, and re-learn traditional backstrap weaving techniques. He had found my blog and thought that I might be interested in what he is doing :-). He shared pictures which he has allowed me to show here.

The language barrier makes our communication brief and a little disjointed but, from what I gather, Yen-Chi Sun’s group has been studying textiles in museum collections as well as discussing and observing techiques with elderly people who are still weaving in the places where these practices originated.

What a fabulous sight to see in the picture above…all those young people learning to use the newly-built versions of the traditional loom with its unusual tipping footbrace box (what else am I to call that thing!) You can see how the man in the picture is relaxing tension on the warp so that he can open the heddle shed. He does so by moving his feet and allowing the box to tip forward.

This next picture shows warping in progress in what Yen-Chi Sun calls the “five columns warping method”. Heddles are applied, as they are in many places in Asia and Southeast Asia, while the warp is being wound.

I love those sturdy forked sticks used as the cross posts and end stake. I am not sure why the end stake is also forked but I think it might have something to do with the placement of threads for the coil rod…just my guess. My Montagnard weaving teachers have a stake in their warping set-up that creates the space for the coil rod. You can see the coil rod as it sits in the warp behind the box on the red warp in the above picture.

I have created a few circular warps myself, like the one at left, and was surprised while weaving on them to find that I had a definite urge to have my feet braced against something, much more so than when I weave a piece that has been warped in a single plane. I love how the foot brace in the traditional Atayal loom of Taiwan can be used not only to help the weaver apply tension the warp but also to allow the weaver to relax tension.

Yen-Chi Sun also sent me the following picture from a demonstration in which the parts of the loom have been labeled (unfortunately for us, in Chinese) and so I will have to keep using silly names of my own invention like “tipping footbrace box”.

The following video is wonderful. All the speaking is in Chinese but. honestly, it doesn’t matter. The observers are asking questions about all the things that I would want to know and you can tell exactly what is going on. It is a delight! Watch that fancy footwork!

The webpage of Taiwan Pictures Digital Archives has many old images of weavers and spinners in Formosa at work like the one below:

John G Kreifeldt, whom I met recently online because of his interest in Asian art, allowed me to show a picture he took of an Atayal woman weaving during one of his visits to Taiwan.

Here you can very clearly see the shed rod (with which I am in love!) Those of you who use a pair of sticks or a forked stick in a second cross in your backstrap warp which you grasp and twist to help open the heddle shed, will understand immediately what is going on with that stick. I put together something similar in my ikat piece right now so that I could try it out. But, more about that next week…

As for the kinds of textiles that are produced by these weavers and their traditional uses, I am trying to gather information about that for a future blog post.

About that fancy footwork…when I think about it, I have been using similar foot movements to operate warps that I attach to my big toe, that is, a movement which relaxes the tension on the warp. I found that while I was weaving with such a set-up, rather than moving forward to relax the tension on the warp, I would simply flex my foot. It was done unconsciously and was such a natural and logical movement.

Now, I am not saying that tipping and controlling that big and heavy looking box with one’s feet is natural and easy. I imagine that the feet must go through a long period of training to get to the point where they can manage the moves well.

Which is precisely what Tracy Hudson told me when I asked her to describe her experience weaving in Laos with looms that require some fancy footwork.

In Tracy’s words:

I encountered this weaving method at the Ock Pop Tok Living Crafts Centre in Luang Prabang, Lao PDR in 2013, where I spent six weeks on an internship, working with the traditional textile collection.

One photo shows me using Keo’s loom. My feet are flexed to release tension as I open the heddle shed, holding a bar wrapped behind the other shed sticks to assist the process.

The other photo is Keo, a Katu weaver from Salavan Province, my teacher & friend. You can see how all her toes are involved in the adjustment of tension. This complex use of the whole foot & toes was the most inaccessible part, since my feet are completely untrained!

When releasing tension, Keo can hold the bars high in her toes while flexing back with her feet. When I do this, there is a danger of losing my grip on the loom bar and it pops over my toes toward my body. So I tend to bend my knees a bit to loosen tension. But the bar still has to be propped high on the toes, so that it doesn’t drop to the ground beyond the feet.

Tracy has made a video available on Youtube of a Katu weaver at work which includes their beadwork and you can read more about her experience in Laos on her blog.

The pieces that make up the backstrap looms used by the Li weavers of Hainan Island are beautifully constructed and include bars with decorated paddle-like ends against which to place the feet…

A Li weaver demonstarting at the Santa Fe International Folk At Market. Picture by Pam Najdowski. — A Li weaver demonstrating at the Santa Fe International Folk At Market. Picture by Pam Najdowski.

I love seeing experienced toes and feet in action with the dexterity of hands and fingers. I found that my pathetic gringa big toe got sore and chafed with the rubbing of the tightly twisted handspun wool when I was weaving with my teacher Maxima in Cochabamba, Bolivia. After a couple of hours I transferred my warp to her big toe and we both wove attached to hers!

Toes can be used to tension the warp while making heddles or weaving or even to tension the heddle string. Below you can see my teacher Hilda using toes to hold her kinking overspun yarn taut as she makes heddles…

A big toe makes a fine warping stake but toes can be employed in other ways during the warping process…

Dennis Penley collection C Philip Willet

This picture of a gentleman in Ecuador winding a circular warp was taken by Dennis Penley in the early 1960s and is used with the permission of C Philip Willett.

The first time I got to use a foot brace with a circular warp was when I was visiting with Ju Nie, a Montagnard backstrap weaver, in North Carolina. When you don’t have the traditional items on hand, like a nice hefty piece of bamboo, you have to improvise. Here Ju Nie is using a cardboard roll. The ability to brace the feet is so essential that Ju Nie and her fellow weavers would be unwilling to demonstrate their backstrap weaving if a foot brace could not be set-up at the venue.

Here is another Montagnard backstrap weaver with an improvised set-up outside her home…

From Betsy Renfrew's webpage blackstrapweavers.blogspot.com — From Betsy Renfrew’s webpage backstrapweavers.blogspot.com

A Burmese weaver that I visited in Massachusetts had not yet found a way to set up a foot bracing bar in her home. She had her circular warp placed around a rod that was fixed to the window frame and sat at a distance away from the wall that did not allow her to push against anything. As I watched her weave, I noticed her idle feet stretch and flex as she unconsciously worked them against a non-existent foot brace. Such is the training and the muscle memory.

Backstrap weavers in Ecuador can weave indoors all year round if they please. They use circular warps which take up little space within the home compared to the amount of space needed for a warp created on a single plane at full stretch. Weavers that I spent time with in San Roque have a permanent weaving area in the home, in fact they had two, with blocks of wood stacked against the wall to accommodate the varying leg lengths of the different weavers in the family. This meant that each person could sit and comfortably brace their feet.

fluffing the woven fabric with thistles Ecuador

And just for fun…

Sometimes backstrap weaving doesn’t involve the feet at all. It is just about kicking back, putting the feet up and relaxing. Here’s one of my weaving friends in Texas…

Enough about feet. Next week I want to talk more about the Atayal shed rod and nifty ways for opening heddle sheds.

I’ll finish with some great projects from Ravelry and Facebook friends and students…

Emerald has put together a gorgeous warp with three sections for Andean Pebble Weave. This will be a Christmas gift pouch for her sister.

Julia is practicing motifs from the Peruvian highlands that I have charted in my second book…this is simply beautiful weaving…

And Marsha is back at the loom, this time with an adjustable vertical frame loom that she built herself. She is using the intermesh technique that I teach in my second book and cleverly combining it with plain weave. The frame is fixed to a piano stool so that it can be raised or lowered as needed.

Back to the loom, back to the warping board, and here’s hoping for another week of weaving distractions.