Tag: tubular woven bands

Backstrap Weaving – Highland Holiday

I’ve been up to the highlands and am now back again in the hot tropical lowlands. Yes, I’m still in Bolivia. Australia is there waiting for me and I’ll get there event-u-a-lly…..

I meant to write a blog post yesterday but once I got into sorting and editing the photos, I found myself completely overwhelmed. Lest that happens again today, I’ve decided to make this just an overview. Anything that doesn’t make it into this post will probably show up now and then in future ones as well as in my Facebook and Instagram accounts.

So, on this ten-day visit to Independencia , Cochabamba where my weaving teachers live and where Dorinda was also vacationing, here’s a run down of some of the things I did…..

I took the five-hour minivan route to Independencia from Cochabamba instead of the eight-hour one by coach. I’m guessing that the minivan is capable of traveling on roads that are perhaps unsuitable for the larger bus and that the bus remains in service because it’s required to service many tiny communities that are scattered along its longer path. The minivan route is no less scenic than the one I traveled last time by bus. In fact it may be even more so.

From the town of Quillacollo just outside Cochabamba city we head straight for the mountains and in under an hour we had zig-zagged our way up to around 3700m leaving the city of Cochabamba a mere blur in the distance on the valley floor.

From there it’s a journey along slopes of deep narrow valleys high above lively rivers (it’s wet season). Water cascades down the slopes above, crosses the dirt road ahead of us and continues tumbling its way down to the green valley floor. Then we go up over passes to continue along the next valley, up again and so on. I was sitting in the second last row and it was like riding a bucking bronco back there with every descent from the passes. I gave up trying to take photos and instead just tried to imprint the scene on my brain.

And then we stopped so that the driver could negotiate the carrying of some freight for a couple who had flagged us down and it was one of those perfect moments for getting a nice shot. We happened to be on a relatively flat and open area with the setting sun casting a golden glow on the hillsides and I was able to hold my phone steady for a change and get a photo of the peaceful scene. I thought that if I just get one nice photo from the five-hour trip, I’ll be happy.

So much for this just being an “overview”. I’ve already spent too much time just on the van trip! Back into overview mode….

On the surface, the town didn’t seem to have changed much since my last visit….

How such a wickedly steep street can look so mild in this photo is beyond me!
These rocky streets in town become slippery with mud after rain but dry up miraculously quickly.

However, some things had changed….Maxima was now living in a house of her own with a lovely view and even had wifi.

Charqui (jerky) on the washing line in the patio in front of a nice view across the valley.

With Dorinda, my teacher Maxima, (long time followers of my blog will know them), her daughter, Vilma and the grandbabes, we dyed a bunch of skeins of handspun yarn with indigo in a banana-based vat.

I mashed overripe bananas with Maxima and little Mayra for the indigo dye bath.

I think this was only the third time that Maxima was attempting to dye with indigo. The second time had apparently failed and so I spent a lot of time wondering…are we doing this right? Will it work this time? Well, it did and I got to keep one of the skeins. I can’t wait to use it in a project on my backstrap loom. The skeins are made up of the ladies’ doubled handspun wool singles. Once dyed, the doubled threads are then tightly plied. I’ll get to ply my own skein which pleases me because I’m not fond of weaving with the high amount of twist that these weavers typically put into their yarn.

Maxima and daughter, Vilma, showing off the aguayo (carrying cloth) Maxima wove for a custom order from the USA. Indigo-dyed yarn from the first attempt can be seen in the stripes. This cloth is gorgeous! The colors are so rich and Maxima has included a stunning variety of figures. It’s all Maxima’s work except for the tubular edging.
A close-up view of a small section of the center of the aguayo where you can see some of the indigo-dyed yarn in the decorative joining stitch.
We made skeins. I’d never made skeins just on my hands before and was happy not to have mine end up in a tangled mess. The singles yarn immediately kinks back on itself when not under tension and can make things difficult to control.
Immersing skeins in the indigo dye pot with Dorinda, granddaughter Emily and little Mayra always there in the mix. We wore gloves but still managed to get the dye on places where it didn’t belong.
First results once again against that lovely backdrop. One of those skeins became mine 🙂
On the following days, Maxima continued experimenting on her own and tried over-dyeing some naturally-dyed yellow to produce that pretty green.
And yet more on another day. This time over-dyeing a cochineal-dyed skein.

So, I came home with this (below). The mug is for scale more than anything else because those balls of yarn I bought are huge! I bought those two balls from one of the weavers from the outlying community of Huancarani that I visited on my last trip up here. The ladies from Huancarani come into town on the weekend to sell their produce in the market. We attempted a trip to Huancarani on the preceding Thursday for a weaving get together much as I had done on my last visit but it had rained heavily all through the night and a landslide had shut the road.

Plying all this yarn will keep me busy for a while. As if I need even more stuff to lug back to Australia but who in their right mind could resist?

Here’s a flashback to that Huancarani trip and the fun day we’d had all weaving together…

When not dyeing, I would visit with Max and weave with her as she had asked me to teach her some new patterns in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave.

When I was walking in the market street on the Saturday, I was stopped by one of the Huancarani ladies who asked “Where’s Berna?” That’s the name they know me by. No one calls me Laverne in Bolivia. Bs and Vs are pronounced virtually the same and they don’t recognise that the La is part of my name as La is often placed before any woman’s name when referring to her as a third person. So, here in the lowlands I’m Verny and up there I’ll always be Berna/Verna. The Huancarani ladies had been expecting my visit on the Thursday and so now that they were in town, they were looking for me. Of course they didn’t recognise me as the lady with long dark hair that had been to their community to teach patterns seven years ago!

Back in 2017 I went to Huancarani and can be seen here with that long dark hair guiding Maxima’s sister Narciza through the steps to weaving a pattern from my More Adventures with warp-faced Pick-up Patterns book. It’s a motif from a Central Asian textile that I had adapted to the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave. It had caught Narciza’s eye and she was keen to learn it and not let me go until she had conquered one repeat.
We just managed to get through one repeat before it was time to leave and I left wondering if she would ever use the pattern. I did leave behind a woven sample just in case.

You can see the unique way weavers in these communities in this part of Bolivia manage their warps. They don’t attach them to their bodies with a string or backstrap. Instead, they have the warp suspended between an index finger and a toe. Together with the middle finger they form a picking cross of the two “pebble” sheds and then do all the pick-up and loom operation with just the one free hand. It’s amazing to see! I did this with Maxima back in 2011 when I visited her in Cochabamba. Even though the structure is the same as the one with which I am thoroughly familiar, this method of weaving it was completely foreign to me and it took me some time to get used to it.

So….back to the lady in the street market who stopped me. Once I told her that this white-haired person was indeed Berna, she pulled out a couple of bands to show me, one of which is pictured at left. Sadly, Narciza hadn’t been able to come to town that weekend as she has a herd to attend to but it seems that Narciza spread knowledge of the new pattern to other ladies in the community. How happy that made me!

And Maxima had taken advantage of the copy of my book that I’d left behind with her on my last visit.

Maxima and a group of weavers are seen here studying and discussing images in the book shortly after my visit.

Maxima showed me what she had woven from the book….

It’s a belt that she wove for daughter, Vilma, to wear on festival days. It’s woven in the bright tightly twisted acrylic yarn that the weavers here love to use.
The ladies love to be able to show off “new” patterns in items they use for special occasions.

On our first morning weaving together, Maxima chose to use some of the crochet cotton that I’d brought. I think her unfamiliarity with the material left her a little frustrated. These weavers create a very tight weave, squeezing the weft into place with a tremendous amount of pressure. The cotton thread just wasn’t behaving the way her handspun wool or re-spun acrylic thread would. Those materials have a certain amount of stretch which the cotton simply doesn’t. While she was able to weave the little motif she had chosen correctly, it just didn’t look right with that tight, tight beat.

Maxima preparing a cotton warp for our first session together. The end of the warp is temporarily tucked into the waistband of her skirt while she uses two hands to make heddles, Later the end will be suspended on her index finger. Anything that happens to be lying close by such as this comb can be called into use to hold the cross.
Starting with a little plain pebble weave.
Meanwhile Mayra and Ana who seem to see all forms of household chores as play, were happily washing their toys. At one point I saw them playing chop-the-head-off-the-chicken-for-the-pot with the cat!

My second session with Maxima was completely different. She used her re-spun acrylic thread this time and the results were completely different. She confidently chose larger and more complicated patterns from my Complementary-warp Pattern Book (all the patterns therein are in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave) and her joy at watching the figures appear and then reaching the stage where she could predict what was to come next, was apparent.

Starting with a fresh warp of respun acrylic thread for wider, more complicated patterns.
The young ladies on this morning were on chicken duty…..that is, keeping the chickens from wandering from the yard into the kitchen.
One of the four running-horse patterns that creator Deanna Johnson calls Elmy’s Mustangs, is almost complete.

Here’s a video clip of Maxima doing the last row of pick-up for the horse pattern….

She also selected the viscacha pattern from my book. I’d charted that pattern from a fragment of pre-columbian cloth that I’d seen online. I’d been able to track down the owner of the fragment and get him to send me close-ups so that I could decipher it.

The cat figure,also from pre-columbian textiles, that Maxima chose was not completely successful but I know it will be in her next attempt now that she has understood how to weave the eyes of the viscachas.

This is what I was doing in the evenings to entertain myself. I was using Alison Irwin’s idea for weaving letters in the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave to make a key fob for the lady who ran the hotel in which I was staying. Inti means sun in the Quechua language and Wasi means house.

I also wove a bunch of patterns to leave behind for Maxima to study and attempt in her own time after I left. When I showed Maxima the hotel key fob, she loved it and so I offered to make one with her name as well as for her daughter. Her husband then laughingly asked why I wasn’t offering to make one for him. I was happy to oblige. Dorinda took this photo of Maxima after I left as I wove the fob on the last night and wasn’t able to deliver it in person.

I think she liked it!

And then it was my turn to learn some new weaving thing. I noticed that the large aguayo that Maxima had woven was edged with a patterned tubular band that is known in some parts as nawi awapa. The weavers here call it chichilla or simply nawi (nawi meaning eye). Maxima handed that task off to another weaver as she has forgotten how to weave these patterned tubular bands. She generally edges her carrying cloths with crochet. The customer in the U.S however, wanted the more traditional patterned tube. What I noticed in this particular tube was that the color arrangement would flip back and forth along its length. The zig-zag would change colors every now and then as would the inner eye color and I was mad keen to meet a weaver who would show me how ro do it. Maxima’s sister Narciza knows how to do it but she hadn’t come into town.

So, on Saturday market day I visited with the Huancarani ladies in the street and asked if any one of them knew how to do it and if they would be willing to teach me. Of course no one just happened to be carrying colored yarn and besides, all except Justina said that they didn’t know how it was done. I invited them to come up to the hotel so that I could show them a nawi awapa band that I had started and also show them some other bits and pieces that I thought they might find interesting.

Squeezed onto the balcony of the hotel, I showed the ladies any woven thing that I happened to have. Here they’re examining my double weave belt with its Bedouin patterns which are completely foreign to them.
I brought out my cotton spinning bag and everyone fell in love with the tiny takli spindle and wanted to take it home. Only Justina was “brave” enough to try spinning cotton with it and she did a great job.

Justina examined my ñawi awapa warp which was set up in the way I had been shown in Chinchero, Peru. It turns out that while the results are exactly the same, the weavers in this part of Bolivia set up their warp for the ñawi awapa in a slightly different way. It’s slightly different but different enough to be confusing to Justina who said that she wouldn’t be able to teach me using this warp. I was a disappointed but interested to know exactly what the difference was. Time didn’t allow further exploration but Justina returned the next day and agreed to teach me if we created a new warp from scratch. I was thrilled!

Gathered the next day in Vilma’s sewing workshop with Justina deciding that she had enough time to teach me if I could bring some yarn. So, out came the crochet cotton again to the rescue…not ideal, but good enough for learning.
Creating a fresh ñawi awapa warp while Maxima went out to look for a forked twig to use. It holds the cross….more about that later. On the floor you can see another stick that is used to save one of the picked-up sheds for later use. The weavers here call this stick “el muchacho“.
Justina guiding me. Yes, I learned it! Maxima and Vilma looked on. I wonder if Maxima absorbed enough by watching to be able to do it on her own. Wouldn’t surprise me. I offered to let her sit in my place and try but she declined.
When I got home of course I had to weave one straight away. I still have lengths of fabric that I bought from the ladies back in 2019 and I used some of Verna’s cloth to make a little pouch that I could edge using the Huancarani set-up and color-changing method.

Justina told me that they call the forked stick illawa, which is the same word used for string heddles. Perhaps these weavers use the word for any device that enables them to create sheds. I do love the name for the other stick….el muchacho, which strangely is in Spanish rather than in Quechua.

A closer look. You can see that the color arrangement in the tube along the base of the pouch is different from that along the side. This is a much nicer photo of the beautiful natural dye colors used by the ladies in these textiles. I used commercial wool from my workshop stash for the edging.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this visit. On certain afternoons Dorinda and I would walk up and up and up above the town to get some exercise. I was suddenly very much aware of my calves. I was really pleased with the way I was dealing with the altitude.

One afternoon, Sandra, the hotel manager, took me down to her orchard. So that was a down, down, down walk with the harder part coming at the end of the day. I was happy to see custard apples growing for the first time and to be able to pick quinces which Dorinda later made into jam. We took back apples and Dorinda made a pie. How spoiled was I? The biggest thrill was seeing a hummingbird nest with two eggs in the orchard. The photo needs something for scale. The nest and eggs are tiny!

There was time first thing in the morning to hang out on the balcony with hotel cat, Garfield, and watch some young girls herding their flock of sheep onto the football field. Stray dogs would arrive to romp and freak out the sheep who would bolt out the gate and into town with the little girls running screaming behind them! It would happen pretty much every other day.

Got my nose burned on day one in the high altitude sun and so did not go out hatless ever again after that.

We got stuck in the mud on the way back to Cochabamba. The mud sucked the soles right off my sandals and I never saw them again. Then we got caught up in protest roadblocks as we neared Cochabamba and it was quite a saga getting from there to the airport. It involved walking with soleless sandals through shin deep water and taking the train that was packed to the gills. It was so difficult getting on and even more so getting off! If my flight had not been delayed, I might have just missed it. To be honest, if the road had been closed due to the landslides and I had been stuck in Independencia, I might have chosen to just stay on until Dorinda’s visit ends on the 10th. It was a glorious visit and I really had no need to leave when I did.

We all got filthy. The quiet sleepy group of passengers up to this point turned into a happy chatty group after successfully getting the van out of the mud and back on its way. How was I going to get on a plane with my feet in this filthy state? Never mind, there were flooded streets to walk through further along once we hit the outskirts of town and had to get out and walk due to the roadblocks. Feet were squeaky clean by the time I got to the airport.

And the scenery on the way back….could it get any better? Yes, it could. It was and had been raining a lot and in the red rock sections the waterfalls that had sprung up and started to flow down the other side of one of the valleys, were running bright pink! Mud and rain-streaked windows made decent photography impossible but I burned those images into my brain!

Back in Santa Cruz and once I’d woven and documented the color-changing nawi awapa, I turned to other projects. I’d taken some garabatá fiber to Independencia to toss into the indigo dyepot.

The top left bunch of thread was dyed in the indigo pot. At bottom right you can see a tiny pouch I made using the Dosapey pattern. That tiny bag holds a tiny booklet and mini pencil. Now to decide how to combine colors in a new project. Roció, my Ayoreo teacher, contacted me for a class while I was away. I’ll have to let her know that I’m back.
This is the start of a larger Dosapey pattern that I finished just before traveling to Independencia. I dyed the black for this project.
I just had enough garabatá thread to create one face of a pouch. I wove the other face in cotton and sewed the two together. This pouch held my passport, tickets and money purse and went with me on the trip. I used the edging stitch used by the Weenhayek artisans along the top.

And now I’m working on something a little unusual. An expat gentleman who runs wildlife tours here with a particular focus on the endangered jaguar asked me if it would be possible to weave a jaguar skin pattern. He would like to commission Guaraní weavers to produce small bags with the print to offer to his clients. He is and always has been keen on promoting the handwork of the artisans that live in this lowland part of Bolivia. He showed me a tapestry pattern that he’d found online and I took it as a challenge to try to reproduce it in one of the warp-faced structures that the Guaraní weavers use. With this I can show him how much pattern can fit into the dimensions he has in mind. He can sketch out his ideal pattern and then approach the weavers with a proposal. This way they won’t have to waste time and yarn sampling and experimenting. Besides, you know me….always looking for an excuse to weave.

Using the Moisy technique which is one of the two pick-up patterning structures that the Guaraní weavers use. I set this up all ready to go before I left on the highland holiday.

So, the overview grew somewhat as I settled into writing and felt less overwhelmed! I hope you’ve enjoyed these tales from the Highland Holiday.

Until next time…..

Backstrap Weaving – Ummmmmm……

I was recently asked to describe the kind of weaving that I do in an audio-only interview. Ummmmmm ….I was completely stumped and now I don’t even remember what kind of awkward response I made! When talking about my weaving, I’ve always been in settings in which I could basically just let the textiles do most of the talking for me. Although I ramble on in these blog posts, I always try to include lots of captioned images for those who just want the eye candy yet still want to get a general idea of what I’m talking about.

Even when I am away from home and on a plane, for example, chatting with a stranger and the topic of what we do comes up (it doesn’t always), I can just show them perhaps a wrist cuff, my belt or a purse I’ve made with my woven cloth to give them an idea.

Although I don’t typically wear four at once, I’m almost always wearing a wrist cuff when I’m traveling.

I remember the time I was at the CNCH conference in 2010. Inkle weaver Annie MacHale messaged me to see if we could meet up. We’d never seen each other and she spotted my woven belt first from behind and was immediately able to identify me. The weaving did the talking.

Wearing my woven work, such as these belts, is sometimes more effective at gatherings than wearing a name tag!
A more recent addition to my belt collection using both warp and weft-faced structures.

And then there are always my bags and purses. In the last few years I’ve gained more confidence in my hand-sewing and have created quite a few more but there was always one to carry to show to curious strangers.

Using my cotton-spinning bag as a purse on an outing with my friend Emerald in Australia. Multi-purpose items are a bonus when traveling with limited space in luggage.

I was never without my big camera in the earlier days of my travels and a camera strap is always a nice way to give folks an idea of what I do (not forgetting of course all the images stored in the camera). Of course we all prefer to be able to touch textiles, right? We see textiles online and want so much to be able to reach out and touch them. We have to imagine how they feel. What about when you can only hear about them in an audio-only context? Um, I hope I did a decent job of answering that question.

My updated camera strap woven in my own handspun wool and original hummingbird figure in three-color reversible pebble weave.

It was nice when I got my little iPod and was able to leave the bulky camera behind on trips. I would use it as my camera, wearing it around my neck in its special woven pouch. It was often a conversation starter because it was plain to see there hanging around my neck…

Backstrap loom weaving with camera at the ready. There was to need to let the pouch do the talking in this case as there was plenty going on there at my loom.

Which reminds me, there are also woven necklaces like the one I’m wearing above to do the talking on my behalf.

Wearing jewelry in the street here in Santa Cruz is not a good idea. I learned that the hard way in my first months here. Naturally, I do enjoy being able to do so when I’m away.

After the iPod, I got a phone to use as a camera but I found it hard to find a commercially-produced case for this Redmi brand. So of course I had to weave fabric to make a case instead which allowed me to show it as an example of some of my work with wool…

Fabric for the phone slip case on the loom. I only use it when I travel.

Perhaps when I complete my move to Australia and live in the cooler Blue Mountains, I’ll be able to use my scarves and neck gaiters when those “let the weaving do the talking” moments arise. I confess that those items have only very rarely been worn here in the tropics. Even putting up with their unwanted warmth in order to photograph them was a big ask.

Hurry up and get the shot before I melt!

So when I was faced with the question of having to describe my weaving just in words, it was a big “Ummmm” moment. Even given a second chance, I’m not sure I could do it. As I wrote in a previous blog post, I feel that I’ve drifted away from having a particular recognizable style…my style actually being the loom I use rather than the kind of cloth I produce. As I get more and more into creating my own original patterns and change my home to the other side of the world, maybe a whole new assortment of patterns and structures will emerge. Whatever happens, I hope there’s more growth.

Designs with SE Asian leanings have already been starting to appear.
Ikat, rep weave with pick-up, warp-faced double weave, open balanced plain weave with inlay, complementary-warp pick-up, supplementary weft patterning.

I put this collage together to show some of the different kinds of things that I do. But of course, if you’ve been following my blog (maybe there are some die-hards who’ve even been with me for the last 15 years!) you’ll already know. I guess my purpose in writing this post is to to see if I can in fact, by way of these ramblings, answer the question for myself in my head….how would you describe the kind of weaving you do? I often find myself pondering certain things at the time I’m writing a blog post and find a solution right here as I sit typing. That’s one of the reasons I keep writing this blog and am so grateful to all of you who follow along and “listen”. It really helps clear out the mental clutter.

Until next time…….long-time blog followers may remember this dearly loved one making appearances in various posts. Rest in peace sweet girl.

Ozzie
April 1, 2003 – August 29, 2024

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Backstrap Weaving – I Have a Cunning Plan….

I was actually originally going to simply call this blog post “Oops!” and leave it at that. I made a mistake in my latest ikat. Oops! Of course to me, the maker, it’s a glaring one. However, I’ve since come up with an idea which just might turn the blip into “beauty”…if not beauty, at least something acceptable. The lesson learned is to be extra careful when my first dye color very closely resembles the color of the ikat tape.

Anyway, more about that a little later.

Since I last wrote I have had and recovered from Covid…almost exactly two years since the last time I had it. For me it’s not a question of whether I have a just a regular flu or Covid….the symptoms are different enough for me to be quite sure it’s Covid. Nevertheless, I did get tested just in case it turned out be something else altogether that needed antibiotics.. We still have to do PCR tests here as the home RAT test kits are not available. I have no idea from whom I might have picked it up and I’m pretty sure that I gave it to a friend before my symptoms showed the day after our lunch together and I think that two days earlier my dentist might have been exposed to it from me as well. This is just awful and unavoidable unless we all go back to routinely wearing masks again.

I really felt the need to sleep a lot and rest this time. The problem is that I really don’t do well with not being productive. Fortunately, I had a little unfinished object which allowed me to sit and do some quiet work.

You may remember that I had gathered all these left-over scraps from old projects in order to test my idea for my wallet project. This was meant to be the prototype but I abandoned it because I had become convinced that my plan would work and that a sample wasn’t necessary.

At the point of abandonment I had sewn my stitched shibori cloth as lining for some left-over pebble weave fabric which formed the main body of the wallet and created the storage pocket for bills. I’d also just started to construct card slots with the shibori fabric. There’s some left-over blue ikat fabric woven with my own handspun cotton singles as well as plain black cloth that was at the end of another ikat warp, again in my handspun cotton. It’s hard to throw handspun scraps away!

So, I picked it all up again to finish. The part I enjoy the most is adding the tubular edging. This enables me to cut the closure flap of the wallet into a curved shape knowing that the tubular band will enclose and protect it.

I used multiple tones of blue for the tubular edging band rather than making it just one solid color. I love the way it came out.

The tubular band gave me the chance to use even more leftovers. I had dyed cotton thread various tones of blue to use in a complementary-weft project and there were just odd short lengths left over. They were perfect for this project.

The project that had combined both complementary-warp and weft structures had required only small quantities of each dyed weft color.
If you think that two wallets is one too many…..well, how about three? Yep, my latest ikat cloth is also destined to be a wallet.

The ”scraps” wallet also as a coin purse with expandable sides on the back. I used the black handspun cotton cloth for the sides. I took a deep breath and threw all remaining scraps away but only when I was completely convinced that they weren’t going to be useful in any way for any thing.

I was really delighted recently to see this picture of scissor bags made by Shahsavan nomads of northern Iran (courtesy of one of Sue Richardson’s wonderful posts on textile events on the Oxford Asian Textile Group blog).

The image is from a recently published book, Scissor Bags and Sheep Scissors in the Nomadic Tradition, by Peter Umney-Gray.

I have to wonder if the fabric for these bags was specifically woven for this purpose or if the nomads are using off-cuts or leftovers from larger projects in much the same way I have. I love that so much care has been taken to house these important implements in such a beautiful way.

I’m currently working on a three-color ikat piece (two dye colors plus original warp color) with my handspun cotton singles for wallet number three. The design is one that I have used before. I just added more threads to each ikat bundle this time in order to make it a bit wider.

The warp is double the width you see here. It’s been folded in half so that I can tie the repeating pattern on both halves at the same time.

While looking around online, I’ve seen various ways that ikat artists measure out and mark the pattern on the warp which is then tied with tape. Here’s a photo that my friend Pam shared with me of a gentleman in Uzbekistan just eyeballing it while marking the pattern lines with a charcoal stick.

I’ve seen weavers in the islands of Indonesia mark out an entire grid of lines on the warp which helps the artist tie sections of equal length and consistent spacing. And I’ve seen an artist working with the warp suspended over a grid of lines as a guide rather than having the grid marked on the warp itself. I haven’t come up with a good way yet. I just measure and mark with charcoal pencil as I go. If I get out of alignment by a millimeter or so here and there, it all adds up and then things end up noticeably misaligned. I tend to find it much easier in my larger pieces, like this one…..

Larger patterns with wider ikat bundles seem to be easier for me to measure and mark. This one is 60/2 silk.

Or with smaller scattered patterns….

Using 20/2 cotton with a scattering of small individual motifs.

Here’s the warp after the first dye color….so far so good.

The pink tape is reserving all the parts of the warp that I want to have remain the original white. Before I dye the second color, I need to add more tape to reserve the areas that I want to remain red. The final dye color, black, will cover all the remaining unprotected red areas.

And there’s the blip…can you see it? At this point the warp is stretched out on my backstrap loom and I’ve removed the second application of tape which reveals all the red areas. However, one bit that was supposed remain red is now black. I’d neglected to wrap it….after having checked three times!

I could just leave it as a reminder to be careful in future or I could find a way to “make it work”. Hopefully my plan will work. I decided to do what is called “spot dyeing”. Black dye is added (outside the dye pot) to other red areas in order to balance the mistake and add symmetry…..in other words, make it look like it was meant to be!

I’ve seen videos online of ikat artists in India routinely dong this spot dyeing, not to mask a mistake as I am doing but rather to add additional colors to their ikat warp. They carefully dip a small section of warp that is flanked by resist ties into a dish of dye and vigorously work the dye into the fibers with their fingers. I don’t know how wash resistant this kind of spot dyeing can be but it seems to be a normal part of the process for adding small sections of fourth and perhaps fifth colors to an ikat piece in certain parts of India.

I’ve also seen additional colors being painted onto ikat warps in some parts of Indonesia. My wallet won’t be getting washed at any stage and so I think that my spot dyeing will be safe. I am however very curious about the dye solution that is used by the artists in India and Indonesia for this kind of spot work because I’m quite sure that the fabric they are creating will be laundered many times. If I were making an item to be worn and washed, I’d just throw the warp back into a black dye bath and overdye all the red areas black. That would cover the mistake and give me a simple black-and-white pattern that I know would be safe to wash.

I had some experience with spot dyeing many years ago when I created this ikat fabric for a book cover. It’s a piece that has never been laundered.

I was using Dylon cold water dyes for cotton for the book cover project. Terracotta was the first color which was then overdyed with blue to give the darker chocolate-like color. These were three separate warps which I later combined on the loom. The easiest way for me to overdye the terracotta cross in the center block with blue was to spot dye. However, this was back in the days when I was using cassette tape as my resist material. For some reason, I made up a dye solution for the spot dyeing with very hot water. The cassette tape didn’t like that water temperature at all and the blue color seeped under the tape into the white. So then I had to rescue it by also spot dyeing a section of white with the blue to even out the bleeding. It added something totally unexpected to the project.

You’ll find out in my next post if my not-all-that-cunning spot dyeing plan worked. I’m still at it. If I remember, I’ll also wrap and spot dye a small sample so that I can see how it goes in the wash.

I’m going to leave you with something that I think is really spectacular. As some of you know, every now and then I do some reversible three-color Andean Pebble Weave and I get a lot of requests for instructions. I will be publishing on it but I can’t say exactly when. Life is a little topsy-turvy at the moment. The instructions that I have published on Andean Pebble Weave so far have been on the much more common two-color version which in itself is an awesome technique. For those who are hankering after the additional color and complexity of the three-color technique, I hope you find it interesting and inspiring to see what can be done with the basic two-color structure and a little imagination….

Julie Beers sent me this photo of her work with one of the double dragon patterns that I have published.

The richly-colored Lunatic Fringe cotton that she’s using really makes this piece glow and I also think that it makes it look deceivingly complex. It’s still just the two-color structure that we all know and love. Thank you, Julie, for allowing me to share this here. It’s so inspiring.

I gathered together a handful of these historic double dragon patterns that I’d seen on tablet-woven bands and transposed them into the Andean Pebble Weave structure. They’re published in my More Andean Pebble Weave Patterns book. I’d originally been asked to transpose one of the dragon patterns by a weaving acquaintance on Ravelry so that it could be woven with string heddles rather than with tablets. I shared the chart and this is what Penelope Hemingway did with it, adding it to a hat that she’d made with nalbinding.

I don’t have the stash to be able to get into the kind of colorful work that Julie is doing right now. Or do I? I just remembered this…..

My 30/2 silk cochineal stash. I’ve yet to come up with a project for it.

This might be next on the drawing board. I have more white 30/2 silk left as well as a new supply of cochineal. Maybe I’ll be able to add some more colors to this collection.

See you next time.

Backstrap Weaving – The Empty Wallet!

With the new year comes a new (woven) wallet. I’m still very much a cash person which probably comes from the fact that I’m still living here in Bolivia. I had the experience of almost going hungry while spending an eight-hour layover in Atlanta airport recently. I couldn’t find a place that took cash but in the end was able to buy a yoghurt from a juice bar. It wasn’t quite the full American breakfast I had been promising myself after the long overnight flight. For a variety of reasons I didn’t have usable cards on me. Even the vending machines only accepted cards!

Mind you, Bolivia is moving along rapidly. It’s not unusual to see vendors in the street market displaying signs with their QR code on their humble stands. I find it’s way too easy to spend when using a card or electronic device. I prefer to go to the market with X amount of Bolivianos in cash and thus oblige myself to stay within budget.

If I were superstitious, I might think that I’m jinxing myself by starting the new year with an empty wallet! On top of that, I didn’t wear yellow underwear on New Year’s Eve which is the local superstition for attracting money. Red underwear attracts love.

If you read my last post, you’ll know that I wove a sample using my handspun cotton singles thread in preparation for this wallet project to see how it would stand up to being used for pick-up patterning. It involves a lot more handling than simple plain weave.

The finished sample showing its two faces. I used the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave.

The sample gave me the information that I needed for calculating the number of ends that would give me the right width for the wallet. I dyed some of my handspun cotton dark blue and black.

Here are my 632 ends set up with the two sets of heddles that give me my “pebble sheds”. It’s so satisfying sitting there and finally making the very last heddle and knowing that I’m all set to go.

However, in this case, I was not. I had neglected to dye some of the thread for weft. I could have got away with using white weft because I was after all planning to edge the piece with a tubular band which would cover the selvedges, but there’s always a chance that I’ll change my mind and go in another direction, in which case I wouldn’t want to see the dots of white weft at the edges. So, it was back to the dyepot. Luckily it’s summer here and things dry really quickly.

I decided to use part of the sample pattern that I had designed. And because I loved both faces of my sample band, I decided to plan this so that both possible faces could be seen at the same time.

A little progress and all going well. No broken threads yet. In the end, only one broke.
At this point, I was ready to put a bit more thought into exactly how I was going to construct the wallet and therefore, the layout of the pattern.

I got the idea of using the sample warp as a coin purse on the back of the wallet. I am always dismayed by the amount of coins I seem to accumulate when I am traveling. Australia has dollar and two-dollar coins (no one and two-cents) and the fifty-cent piece is huge. It’s not unusual for me to be carrying up to twenty dollars in coin! And in the US I’m forever handing over notes to pay for things because I never know how much something will cost until the tax is added at the register. With a line of people behind me, I don’t want to be scratching around in a tiny coin compartment for the right change. Urgh….all those pennies!

So, I wanted a large coin compartment from which I could quickly and easily fish out what I needed as well as comfortably carry all those bulky Australian coins.

This meant that it would be a waste weaving pattern for the back of the wallet only to have it covered by the coin purse. I got to do some plain Andean Pebble Weave instead which certainly accelerated the pace of this project. I returned to the pattern just to weave the final section for the closure flap.

Here are the completed pieces. From left to right, the front, plain back and closure flap. Construction can begin.

As usual, fusible interfacing was my friend when It came to cutting the cloth. I had a selvedge at one end but I cut a curve at the other for the closure flap. I used some black fabric that my friend Claudia had given me for the lining and to create the pocket for bills. All these pieces got held nicely in place by the tubular edging. The woven tubular edging that I use is woven and sewn at the same time around the edge. The sewing thread doubles as the weft. It fully encloses the edge rather than just perches along it. It’s a wonderful way to stabilize and protect cut fabric.

It can be plain (which is how I wove it for the wallet and the bag flap above) or patterned as you see below in the edging I used for a wrist cuff.

You need to get creative with how to hide the cut unwoven warp ends when you have stitched around and returned to the beginning. On the wrist cuff, I wrapped and sewed the cut end to the cloth. It wasn’t pretty but it was secure. I then covered it with a button which was part of the button-and-loop closure that I often use for my wrist cuffs.

For my wallet, I simply sewed a small tab of black fabric to cover the join.

Then came the task of figuring out card slots, zippered sections etc. on the inside. I created some black stitched shibori fabric for this. I included an unusual tiny pocket that I have always wanted to have in a wallet….a pocket that can only hold my door key. Nothing else fits! I get fed up with searching for my key in pockets amongst all the other paraphernalia that accumulates there.

The tiny key pocket is just to the right of the card slots. There’s a zippered pocket on the right for other odds and ends.
I remember being so pleased when I discovered that my key fit perfectly in the tiny pocket in this pouch that I wove. This pocket is part of the original warp and was not added later. Creating that special kind of warp that includes a pocket is a technique that I learned with one of my teachers here in Bolivia.

Here’s the coin purse on the back of the wallet…..

It was nice being able to use the sample for something.

And because I am skilled in creating expandable sides after my two recent folder projects, I added expandable sides to this purse. It’s very easy to get my hands inside, quickly find the right coins and avoid receiving yet more unwanted change.

So, wallet number one is complete. As I mentioned in my last post, I think I’ll make another using an ikat pattern this time. I’ve crunched the numbers and can start warping.

Here’s a reminder that I wrote a tutorial some time ago showing how I cut and prepare my woven fabric to take the woven tubular edging. At the end of the tutorial there’s a link to the tutorial that shows how I weave the actual tube.

I’d also like to give a big thank-you to those who responded when I plugged a couple of my books in my last post. Thank you for your support!

I hope you’ve had a wonderful start to the new year. Take care and see you next time.

Backstrap Weaving – Making it Work

The bag is done! Phew, I made it work. Actually, I lie…it isn’t quite done. I still have to apply the magnet snaps…one to close the mouth of the bag and one to pin down the flap. I put the word out that I was looking for the kind of round magnet snaps that you see here and, like magic, a friend who happened to be out and about this morning found them. While I do enjoy an excuse to poke around the street markets, it is also nice to have the goods just handed to you like this…almost like shopping online! I am so grateful. The street market that is three blocks from my place has one whole section dedicated to fabric. That’s where I eventually found the fusible interfacing. Just beyond the market is a street of leather and faux leather supply stores. In amongst them is a fabulous store called “Hebillandia” which would translate to Buckleland. That area would have been my first stop on the search for the magnets.

Looking back through my photos and notes, I see that this bag project sort of got started way back in January with this….

3-color reversible pebble weave in 8/2 tencel.

This was an exercise in getting my head back into three-color reversible pebble weave after a break of a few years. I guess I will always associate this particular band with Covid as it was during this project that I got infected. I had to put it on hold until the brain fog had cleared.

But going even further back, you could say that it started with this….

Yarn that I started spinning and plying while enjoying covid Zoom gatherings in 2020 and 2021.

The idea was to weave an item with my hand-spun wool using the 3-color pebble structure that would allow both faces to be seen. I decided to weave a strap. The bag idea grew from there.

Lining cloth in doubled 20/2 cotton.

I’ll say it again…I don’t need a bag. I just like to weave and this project has kept me weaving and out of trouble for some time. I also knew that it would teach me a lot. For example, I learned about fusible interfacing: what it’s called in Spanish, the difference between woven and unwoven, the various weights, how to apply it…most importantly, where exactly I can get it in the street market (although I think that I have bought a lifetime’s worth in three different weights!) Things can just inexplicably disappear from the stores here, like the alum that I had suddenly found so hard to find. I figured I should stock up on interfacing! I learned what makes a good DIY reed-threading hook and about doubling threads in dents. People do think that I am quite mad for weaving the lining fabric for the bag but I did learn a lot from that experience, used up some stash for which I had no other use, and I really like knowing that I wove absolutely every part of the bag (except for the interfacing).

I learned that with determination, or some might say stubbornness, I could make some things work. I might just happen to stumble upon the right way to do things. If not, I learn what not to do for next time. I did try to cut down on the “fails” and “do-overs” by asking for advice in online groups.

Some of the pieces coming together.

I had read about procedures for adding lining. One way is to sew it to the outer fabric before sewing the body of the bag together. Another way is to sew it on its own and then “drop” it in later. It seemed to me at first that the former would be easier and so I am glad that I asked in the Many Shuttles Handwoven Bags Group that Kathrin Weber started on Facebook as the majority of responders seemed to favor a dropped-in lining. I got the tips I needed. It would never have otherwise occurred to me that the lining should be sewn in exactly the same size as the outer fabric. I chose to ignore one tip that I had been generously given and regretted it. Hence the lining had to be dropped in twice. I learned that my “make-it-work” hand-stitching is hard to rip out!

Here is the flap fabric that I showed you last week and some of the other pieces…

Lining fabric, intermesh sides and base, strap and warp-faced plain weave body fabric.

I had so much fun weaving the flap fabric. I think that much of that came from the sheer relief that it was going to work. I had had some serious doubts about the 20/2 wool being able to stand up to this three-color structure. I only broke one thread. Strangely, I broke two when weaving the much simpler intermesh band that encircled the mouth of the bag. I needed that band to cover the top of the pleats that I had placed in the body of the bag. The pleats are supposed to make the whole thing slightly less box-like.

One of the scariest, and subsequently most fun, parts was finishing the flap. I had planned it to be twelve inches wide and that’s precisely what it ended up being. However, when I placed it on the bag with its strap sewn in place, it turned out to be too wide. I had to cut off the natural selvedges which, along with the curve that I wanted to cut into it, gave me way more raw edge with which to deal than I had anticipated.

I applied interfacing to the flap fabric and a hand-woven backing fabric. I sewed a line of stitches just to the inside of the proposed cutting line. Then I cut and applied the tubular band.

I love using woven tubular edgings! The raw edge is entirely enclosed within the tube and well protected. It goes on like magic! I hope that you can make it out on the curved part of the flap in the lower right image. It’s such a neat finish which also serves to strengthen the edge. The very top pattern on the flap fabric is the part that sits on the back of the bag. I have a tutorial on cutting a curved flap and applying tubular bands here.

So, after all this explanation, here is the finished bag. The first shot is the only one that shows that there was an attempt made to shape the bag with pleats. My pleats were probably too small. I’ll show the bag with open flap once I have the magnets in place. Lets see if I can make that work without having to gouge holes in the fabric.

All notes were recorded in my Weaver’s Journal, of course! I used my drop-spindle-spun yarn for the strap and the tubular band. The lining was in 20/2 cotton and a balanced plain weave. Everything else is in the 20/2 worsted-spun wool (that you can see in the skein) in tight warp-faced structures.

What’s next? I think that a couple of days of cotton-spinning on my takli are needed to clear my head. I am thinking about using it in a balanced plain weave (not yet in the open sheer cloth that I have mentioned here before) with some tiny bits of inlay in natural green and brown cotton. I might weave a fairly short piece to use as something very light that sits around the neck. I have decided that I am done with scarves…all that length and those ends flapping around to deal with…they annoy me! Maybe you have to have been raised wearing scarves to have learned to deal with that. In all the years that I lived in ski resorts and Patagonia, I never once wore a scarf. Nevertheless, I won’t be cutting down the ones that I have already woven. Tour de Fleece spinning teams are starting to form on Ravelry. I won’t join a team but I will follow along with my cotton spinning.

My slow-growing takli-spun cotton stash.

I would also like to use some of my hand-spun wool to weave a three-color camera strap. And then there’s a wool Finnweave project calling to me for which I am gathering ideas and a silk ikat with thread that I dye with cochineal…. and maybe a hand-spun cotton ikat?? if I can find cotton dye. That’s plenty to keep me out of trouble!

I will tell you which of these has won top position next time.