warp substitution – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Falling into Spring

Back home in Bolivia!

September is the first month of spring. Big rains extinguished all the fires that normally choke the skies with smoke at this time of the year, the green and white flag flies proudly and Santa Cruz celebrates its beginnings.

September 24 is the big day of celebrations and above you can see one of my English teaching colleagues, Lalenya, wearing the tipoy, the typical dress of Santa Cruz (only worn on such fiesta days) with some students from the instutute wearing the light white cotton outfits and sombrero de sao which complete the typical man’s costume for these days of celebration.

Lalenya’s tipoy is patterned with images of the patuju flower which is one of two Bolivian national flowers. One flower represents the lowlands where we live and another the highlands.

Next week the US will be celebrating Spinning and Weaving week (is this an international celebration?) and I will be spending the week in Cusco, Peru at a weavers’ gathering…yay!

I got to enjoy some wonderful late summer/early fall days in Europe. After what I am told was a wet and horrid summer, I was treated to day after day of sun and perfect temperatures in both Holland and the UK.

Here is part of the group that came to meet and weave with me in the Netherlands. Artist, author and tablet-weaver Marijke van Epen, is just behind me. In the chaos that typically accompanies packing up at the end of a weaving day, two people left before I remembered to get a posed group shot but here they all are weaving…

We wove in the workshop and exhibit area in Marijke’s lovely home, a beautiful light and airy space with walls covered in Marijke’s stunning tablet-woven art.

This rainbow piece covers an entire wall and comprises tablet-woven linen spiral bands with twisted paper weft. The slightest movement nearby will set the pieces in motion, gracefully turning. Standing by the green bands as they gently twirled reminded me of being in a forest with dappled light. I can imagine this hanging in a bedroom accompanied by the sound of a gurgling stream and breeze…how relaxing that would be!

Other walls were adorned with smaller tablet-woven pieces. Being behind glass, it wasn’t possible to photograph all of these well.

Yes, these have been woven with tablets!

One of my favorite pieces is Marijke’s reproduction of a tablet-woven band which belonged to Bathilde, Queen of the Franks (7th Century) which was found among other textile fragments in Chelles Abbey. Look at the little “pebbly” figures that run along the bottom edge of the band. They could be woven using the Andean Pebble Weave structure.

And then, upstairs in the loom room where I slept, I had these to keep me company…

This is just a handful of the bands that reflect Marijke’s love of ethnic textiles and motifs. She has dedicated a lot of time to figuring out how to reproduce the structure of pieces, which have been created with pick-up techniques on backstrap looms, using tablets instead. In this way she has been able to create multi-colored pebble weave bands instead of just limiting herself to two and three-colored bands as are most often seen in the Andes these days. At times she found that she couldn’t find an efficient way to reproduce a certain structure with tablets and so she would weave the piece doing pick-up with a backstrap loom. She is just as skilled at doing pick-up with her backstrap loom as she is with using tablets.

And, as you can see, she also loves to cover her woven pieces with finishes and embellishments…braids, pom poms, tassels, straps, edging bands. All her pieces are impeccably finished down to the very last detail. That is an inspiration for me as I sometimes don’t take as much care with finishing the inside of my pieces as I do with the outside. Above you can see Marijke practicing her ñawi awapa tubular band. She had learned how to make this beautiful band from the writings of Adele Cahlander and I was able to show her how I was taught to make it in Peru.

It was a lovely week in the small village of Gelselaar, village of geese, in eastern Holland. Much time was spent indoors with Marijke as we poured over weaving books, discovered the many similarities in our interests, peered at photos and tried to figure out structures. We wove the special rolled tubular edging used by the Wayuu weavers on their si’ira belts described by weaver and author Mirja Wark. Together we also figured out how to weave a new tubular band from Chahuaytire…what fun! And then there were evening strolls around the village…breakfasts of typical Dutch treats, Hagelslag – chocolate sprinkles which you have on toast rounds – and morning coffee break with stroopwafel, my favorite!

Two of Marijke’s friends offered to drive us north to spend the day with Mirja Wark. It was a lovely drive with lots of horizon to be seen! Mirja has her home in a remote area on a large piece of property on which she has her weaving school and studio. How tranquil and inviting is that? Students are invited to pitch their tents, if they like, in the orchard that lies on this side of the pool.

It was another glorious early fall day. We sat outside while Mirja brought us the si’ira belts which she collected and catalogued while living in Venezuela. We also saw three reproductions that she herself has made.

There is a whole lot involved with the creation of one of these belts. Firstly, there is all that pick-up to make the pattern (I know! I am in the midst of weaving a wall hanging using an adaptation of these designs), there is the special rolled hollow edging which you might be able to make out in the picture, there is a weft twined finish at both ends, loop braids and tassels….all of which are beautifully explained in Mirja’s book.

Mirja showed us how the belt is worn by men to secure their loin cloths. The pom poms sit right on the hips and jiggle about as the wearer walks. Below is one of the belts made by a Wayuu weaver. No one is weaving these any more and most of the belts that Mirja collected are quite old with many signs of wear, deterioration and multiple repairs.

Then we saw the typical embroidered cotton dress used by Wayuu women.

A belt concealed inside the dress allows the wearer to pull the dress in and around the front of her waist to give it some form. The back of the dress, however, hangs and flows freely. Mirja says that it is a lovely sight on the notoriously windy Guajira Peninsula to see the women with their dresses billowing behind as they walk.

Mirja was able to collect this young girl’s blouse and a chief’s ceremonial headdress. The patterned woven band of the headdress is almost completely obscured by the pink tassels.

And then there were the susu, or mochilas, the crocheted bags which come in many sizes. Large ones are carried by the Wayuu women while small ones, which are used for coins, hang from the mens’ waists. A crocheter I am not. Well, I do know a few stitches (are they even called “stitches”?) and this in spite of owning Carol Ventura’s wonderful books on tapestry crochet. So, for all the crocheters out there, I have taken a close up shot of the structure so you can see what’s going on.

Mirja has one of the very tiny crochet hooks that the women use to make these bags but in all the excitement of the showing and examining and photographing I didn’t get to see it. However, I found this very short segment on Youtube of a Wayuu woman making a mochila.

Now let’s look at more of these gorgeous bags that Mirja has in her studio…

And for the ply-splitters out there, some of the straps of the bags are made in this technique.

The bottoms of the bags, which probably are not seen very often when the bags are being carried, are also beautifully patterned (I have read online that this is one of the features that distinguish a real Wayuu bag from inferior imitations).

Here is something for the loop-braiders…one of the tiny coin susu that men dangle at the hip….

There was so much to see! Mirja has also lived in the Middle East and there were many textiles that she has collected, studied and reproduced throughout her studio. I will refrain from posting everything as I need to get some of the details sorted…so much information. However, I will show you this woman’s camel bag (the woman’s version apparently has only one pocket) from Oman as we have seen these kinds of Bedouin textiles here on my blog before.

Recognize this style of weaving?…the warp-substitution shajarah and the checkerboard al’ouerjan patterns (both these techniques produce long warp floats on the back). I love the red on black patterns! There is plenty to look at on this piece…all those marvelous finishes and embellishments. What a treat to be able to handle a textile like this!

This next piece that Mirja bought on an island off the east coast of Oman is interesting in that the weavers have tied down the warp floats on the back of the piece.

In a previous discussion about this in the Ravelry group we had assumed that this was done simply to make a textile more attractive for tourists and was not a traditional practice. However, Mirja assured me that this piece was not intended for tourists. The island was the only place that she saw traditional textiles woven this way. In other places the long warp floats are often hidden under fabric, as shown below, or left exposed.

So, that was the Netherlands…and two fabulously talented and generous weavers, writers and teachers.

Back in the UK I had one more day with Sue on the farm…ah, the peace, the sunsets, the walks with the dogs, the gorgeous garden… and then I headed down with Sue to Weybridge where I stayed with a Braid Society friend, Norma.

On the way we stopped at the Handweavers Studio and Gallery. Owner Wendy Morris was away at Complex Weavers in the US so I didn’t get to meet her. I went a bit mad and bought a bunch of 60/2 silk with no project in mind. A little voice keeps telling me to “make do with what you can get in Bolivia!” and not to have longings for these other kinds of thread but I have an urge to weave some very fine things with something other than the cotton sewing thread that I get in Santa Cruz.

Sue bought some beautiful handspun and naturally dyed singles yarn form Ayacucho, Peru.

A flyer in the store told the story behind this yarn and it was funny recognizing archaeologist Barbara Wolff’s, name there. I met her at Maryland Sheep and Wool this year where she was promoting and selling weaving of Ayacucho – tapestries and pebble weave pieces. She has been organizing the spinners in the area to produce this yarn and Handweavers Studio is now one of the stores that carries it. Barbara tells me that they are in the process of preparing another shipment so I guess that it is all going very well.

Sue bought four colors with which to make ñawi awapa tubular bands. According to the swing tags and information in-store, the terracotta color comes from masacopa root, the yellow from the chilca bush, brown from nogal (walnut) and the green from tara pod.

Being a Braid Society member Norma is of course passionate about all kinds of narrow band weaving, ply splitting, tablet weaving, loop braiding, kumihimo etc…and I gave her some lessons in Andean pebble weave and tubular bands while I stayed with her in Weybridge. She showed me her collection of textiles including the gorgeous ply split camel girth above.

Norma’s family is from India as am I, and so, I had a week of authentic home-cooked delicious Indian meals…south Indian curries and sweets! We went to Southhall to an enormous Indian supermarket where Norma and her family helped me choose a few bits and pieces to take back to Bolivia. I am afraid that I cheat and use the prepared curry powders.

The following day Norma and I went to nearby Hampton Court Palace, residence of Henry VIII. My gosh, I have loads of pictures to show you from there…the Tudor and Baroque architecture, the interiors, the gardens, courtyards, squares, paintings, tapestries, furniture, chapel and kitchens. However, in an attempt to keep this post mostly textile-focused I will just show you one tapestry…two small segments of one of my favorites…

Such detail in this! It is entitled The Triumph of Fame over Death and hangs in the Great Watching Chamber.

Well, okay, just one more picture from the palace…I can’t resist. This is from the Apartments of William III….

Every inch of ceiling, wall and all that lies between is decorated.

My last day was spent very nicely with Norma on a visit to Rodrick Owen in his home in Oxford where we were able to sit and chat at ease after all the rushing about at the Braids conference. We saw some of his large works…interlaced wall hangings and even clothing!… and had the chance to examine some pieces in his South American study collection.

On the way back to the strain station, Rodrick led us on a short walking tour of Oxford. It was another gorgeous late afternoon with the rowers training on the Thames among the ducks and swans, youngsters playing rugby against a backdrop of the magnificent Oxford colleges with the sun casting a lovely golden glow over everything. It was a beautiful last day.

It was just cool enough to have us wearing light sweaters…fall is on its way over there while over here in Bolivia spring has taken its hold. However, I have to say that we don’t really have a spring….just two seasons really…hot-and-humid and warm-and-humid and “hot ” is definitely starting to push “warm” out of the way. Ah well, I will be heading to the highlands this Saturday and an overnight bus trip from La Paz to Cusco will certainly cool things down.

A couple of things to show before I go…

I am happy to have received the first woven feedback from my new book!

Bobbie in the US is weaving the first panel for a bag project using the knot work patterns that are charted on pages 43 and 44.

Camilla in Sweden is doing one of the things that I hope many people will do with my book, that is, she is using the designs charted in my book as inspiration for her own unique patterns. Camilla has allowed the hook design that is woven in various parts of the Andes to inspire her work arranging and placing them on both pebbled and twill backgrounds.

I am looking forward to seeing more projects from people who are using the book.

Finally, CraftDesignOnline has put up what they are calling an Interactive Grid Designer on their website. They say that this is the first of a new range of design tools they are planning. It allows you to create patterns by filling in and coloring squares which can then be printed. This style of grid is perfect for warp-faced pick-up pattern structures that incorporate warp floats like Simple Warp-floats, Pebble Weave and other complementary-warp structures. Note that Double Weave, Warp Substitution or Supplementary-weft patterns are best done on charts in which the cells are staggered rather than stacked one above the other.

In my next post I will tell you about the Cusco event, hopefully while still in Cusco. Fingers crossed that my cheapo hostel has wifi service.

Backstrap Weaving – The Weaving Melting Pot

The Weaving Melting Pot….that is what I have bubbling away here. Every time I start a new piece on my backstrap loom I am so aware of the vast array of sources from which I have drawn technique and inspiration. I have studied weaving on a variety of simple looms here in South America, in Central America and even in North America and bring a little of everything to my work when I set up to weave on my loom of choice…the backstrap loom.

I even draw inspiration from the online weavers who work on floor looms…a handy tip about how to handle the two wefts in rep weave from Tom Knisely, ideas about finishing pieces from shadow weave weave-alongs, lessons in handling floating selvedges from discussions on twill, or from card-woven and inkle loom-woven warp patterned bands…all far removed from the Bolivian weaving environment in which I live.

They all go into the pot….stir, stir, stir….add a dash of ideas I have developed from my own experiments and onto the loom it goes. Some of my ideas having nothing to do with the traditional way of doing things……..

like using cable ties to lash my warp to the loom bar and a bicycle spoke instead of a yarn header cord. I was using cassette tape to wrap my warps for ikat until I was given “proper” ikat tape which seems acceptable in place of cabuya fiber and other natural materials in many “traditional” settings these days.

Plastic and metal??? One of the weavers I met in Candelaria found using what looked like a steel railway spike far more efficient than the traditional llama bone tool for beating in her weft. PVC pipe often replaces wooden shed rods. It’s like the time I had a lovely wooden Navajo weaving loom made for me when I lived in southern Chile and used rope to tension the warp only to find that a lot of the Navajo weavers are using metal looms and turnbuckles for tensioning. After weaving for some time on that Navajo loom I found that copper pipe for the loom bars worked much better than wood anyway.

I travel from place to place and see things and bring back ideas to add to the ingredients that go into my weaving melting pot.

And now I am about to apply some Bolivian highland weaving technology to a weaving tradition on the other side of the world.

I am jumping the gun this week by sampling for the next piece in my red, black and white wall hanging series and I am concocting quiet a brew in the old melting pot.. I say jumping the gun as I am nowhere near finished the third piece which is coming along veeeeery slowly! The other two pieces while off the loom are not yet completely finished. But the temptation to put an idea into action once it develops and starts churning in my head is irresistible!

You can see the melting pot at work in the above pieces…I took a motif designed by a German weaver for tablet weaving and wove it in an Andean technique, Chilean ponchos called chamantos influenced the leaf design hanging to which I added weft twining which has nothing to do with Chilean ponchos and the piece inspired by si’ira weavings of northern Columbia and Venezuela has more than a few of my own added touches.

Some of the traditional colors of Bedouin weaving make that the perfect influence for what will be in the fourth piece in the wall hanging series… in red, black and white, of course.

It was a weird and wonderful path that led me to Bedouin weavings way back in October 2010. I was Googling weft twining techniques after having seen the twined work of Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) backstrap weavers in North Carolina in August 2010.

A book on the Taaniko twining practiced by the Maoris of New Zealand helped me to get started on my own off-loom experiments…. a Maori technique for Vietnamese patterns…straight out of the melting pot!

This piece has Montagnard designs as well as motifs found in both Bedouin weaving and twining. My Google searches led me to sites with Bedouin weaving and I was in love! I bought Joy Totah Hilden’s book on Bedouin weaving after finding her website and was pleased to be able to see images of the back of the woven pieces making the technique easy to identify as warp substitution which I already knew how to do. There is a link to a pdf on Bedouin weaving by Hilden on my RESOURCES page.

It was clear from the book that the Bedouin do their twining both on and off the loom and so I was interested in trying it on the loom…it’s so much easier when the warp is under tension, as far as I am concerned, and that enabled me to use much finer yarn than I had used for the off-loom piece.

Here is the first piece with its al’ouerjan (in which I had made a warping mistake) and shajarah patterns. The al’ouerjan pattern is the checkerboard type design on the sides.

The twined sections are sometimes worked in the middle of the woven piece as well as at both ends.

I then dove into the melting pot and added a finish of wrapped warp ends…

I enjoyed the process and I wanted to know more…both about weft twining in general and about Bedouin weaving.

I was especially curious as I found out from Betsy, who works with the Montagnard weavers in North Carolina, that their weft twining technique is done off-loom and this astonished me as the yarn they use for their designs is so very fine (Cebelia #20 or finer). I had to see and learn this! Betsy was happy to have me visit and I was able to learn from Jarai weaver, Ngach.

And in the meantime, Tracy, a member of the Backstrap Weaving Group on Ravelry, started showing us gorgeous pictures of Bedouin textiles from the souk in Doha Qatar where she currently lives and telling us about her experiences watching a Bedouin weaver at work.

From books and images on the internet to suddenly finding myself seated next to Ngach, watching her bobbins twirl as she gracefully applied weft twined patterns to her large blanket piece off the loom, listening to her stories about her desire and determination as a young girl to learn to make the traditional kteh patterns. It was a dream come true.

Once back home, I stirred the tricks and tips I had witnessed with Ngach about color changes, hiding the ”bump” and other details into the pot and made my own kteh designs on my backstrap woven piece which you can see above.

I did it on the loom as my off-loom techniques still really needed some work! The advantage with off-loom twining is that several backstrap woven pieces once off the loom can be joined together and then the weft twining can be added along the edge of the entire piece. I have yet to do that and will definitely do so one of these days. I have my bobbins and thread ready!

Much later, the following year, came a golden gift in the form of bag made from pieces of Bedouin weaving that Tracy sent to me through a friend who was visiting Bolivia.

Once again, imagine the thrill of getting to feel and smell the real thing…forgive me but that coarse handspun wool is just begging to be smelled! The bag is pictured above on the right next to the cotton piece that I made.

As you can see below, the floats that form in in the shajarah pattern area (the black and white design strip) are really very long! Some of them are even broken from possibly having gotten caught on things.

Now back to the sample I am weaving for the fourth wall hanging. I want to do a Bedouin-style piece but I do not want the long floats on the back. Tracy showed us images of pieces from a co-operative in Oman in which the weavers had found a way to tie down the floats in the al’ouerjan parts (the checkerboard patterns) of their weaving possibly to make the pieces more attractive to foreign customers. It didn’t take long for me to see that they were using a second fine weft to do so. This makes the woven cloth more practical too.

You can see the long floats that you typically get on the back of the fabric in the lower right hand corner of the image on the right and see how the appearance improves when the second fine weft is used. Unfortunately the second fine weft does not do much for improving the appearance of the shajarah patterns (the larger back and white patterns).
The solution to that is to go once more to the ingredients on the shelf and add some of the Bolivian highland weaving technology that I mentioned earlier to the mix. So I added embedded double weave to my sample, a technique I learned while studying with weavers in Potosi, Bolivia.

This technique allows you to weave sections of double weave alongside plain weave in the one piece. It is essentially the same warp substitution technique but with an extra step or two which basically insures, with the use of a second weft, that all the warps are interlaced with none left to float on either face.

The two-color center section of the band at left is double weave alongside a plain-weave single-color border.

What I sometimes don’t like about the embedded double weave technique is the obvious transition in the fabric from plain weave to double…the climb from single layer to double layer and back again which naturally has to occur….it is sometimes more obvious than at other times depending quite often on the kind of yarn used, and I have been experimenting with various things to help soften that. I don’t want to make the entire piece double weave either.(The three-color double weave that would be required to weave the al’ouerjan pattern is bulky and unattractive). And that is where I throw my very own bit of spice into the melting pot!

It is still in the experimental stage but what I am trying to do is combine double weave with plain weave, add the thin weft for tying down the al’ouerjan warp floats and make the transition from plain to double weave section as subtle as possible with a trick I am trying out.

There is my first Bedouin piece on the left and the new sample on the right. The upper surfaces of both look the same and I don’t think you can tell that the center of the new sample is double weave.

The big difference is the back side of the fabric. My embedded double weave sample is on the left and my first sample with its long floats on the right. If this goes along well, I shall use this technique for my fourth wall hanging using the deeper shade of red that I have used for the other piece and incorporating more traditional Bedouin patterns.

So, enough red, black and white for goodness sake! Bring on some other colors. Here are projects from Ravelry group members and other online friends to save the day…

Oops! My bicycling friend Anna in Australia just happens to be using the same colors in a double weave piece. This is a Mapuche design from the book in Spanish by Enrique Taranto.

A new member to the Raverly group, Rob, showed us what he has been doing with simple warp floats inspired by a Guatemalan piece that Jennifer found on the Education and More website. You may remember that Bobbie wove a very large version of this in naturally dyed Guatemalan cotton thread that she bought from Education and More. Rob has added his own twist to the pattern at left.

Here are some of his other bands with simple warp floats and supplementary wefts. He used two supplementary wefts in different colors at the same time and says that one color stands out more than the other depending on the angle at which you view the piece….

Another new member, Tracy, blew us away with her first ever piece made from her own handspun wool…we love her loom set-up!

And Xav dove straight into double weave and the llama figures that I have charted here on the blog…her first ever backstrap woven band!

Jeen used her pebble weave experiments as embellishments on a couple of bags she completed. I love what she calls her “ball bag” and I think her use of variegated yarn for the border of her plain pebble weave band is so cool.

From Sweden Camila sent me pictures of her bands….

Some fun and clever designs with simple warp floats….she wove a pattern which is traditionally woven in a complementary- warp technique in the two-color simple warp float technique instead and it looks great!! On the right she has a pebble weave design from my book on her backstrap loom.

Well, I am off to continue my small sample as I think I can make something with it, weave a few rows on the third big wall hanging piece and see what unusual combination of ingredients might inspire the next piece on the loom…..

Backstrap Weaving – Little Things, Big Smiles

I was going to name this post “Taming the Tube” and that would have possibly been one of the weirdest titles I have come up with for a blog post so far but I decided to go with “Little Things, Big Smiles” as I have had a few things to smile about this week. They reminded me that it is often the little things that bring us most joy. Like the fact that my friends are on a road trip in Colorado and Wyoming and post pictures of every step of the way on Facebook so that I can be with them and share a little of the experience. And it seems that the Santa Cruz winter is over and I am back in shorts and tshirts before I can even run out of clean socks.

As for the tube that needed taming, well, I am talking about tubular bands. I have been following on with the experiments I was doing last week. These little things have brought a smile to my face as I figured out at last how to stop them from spiraling. Yes, it’s just a small thing but it gave me quite a kick!

Of course some bands look great when they spiral and that is precisely the effect that you want.

But that wasn’t what I wanted when I made a pebble weave tubular band. I wanted the woven design to lie straight along the tube so that it could be seen if the band was worn as a wristlet.

I am forcing the design to lie straight in the upper picture. As soon as I let it go, it spirals. I suppose the spiral version has its own charm but that is not what I wanted.

Most ñawi awapa bands that I have seen spiral…some to a lesser degree than others but there are some that pretty much don’t at all as you can see above. The more colorful ones in the center of the group spiral a lot while those above and below them have little or no twist. I LOVE that black one! So, clearly, there is a trick to getting them to lie straight.

I fiddled with this and that. Many warps went into the trash. Luckily I have my mini warping board and so was able to quickly and easily set up tiny two and four-stake warps so not a whole lot of yarn was wasted. And then I got it! He he…big smile.

So there’s a spiraling ñawi awapa band that I made ages ago and, below it, one I made this week that behaves nicely and lies straight. Again, I say that both types have their charms…it just depends what you want and now I have options.

Of course, when tubular bands are sewn to cloth as in this example from Peru, they are forced to lie straight. I was told by Nilda Callañaupa in Peru that tubular bands are sewn to pieces of cloth to help stabilize the edges and corners which tend to curl due to the highly overtwisted wool warp yarn that is used. Now I am wondering if the spiraling in the tube counteracts the curling in the cloth and is what allows the fabric to then lie flat.

I have always sewn my tubular bands to very sturdy material…edges of bags which are doubled pieces of woven cloth so the spiraling nature of the band has not had any effect on the finished piece….no twisting or distortion of the fabric has resulted.

So, after that, I just had to play with my new discovery and make some more tubular bands.

Thick ones, thin ones, in cotton and wool. The wool ones are much smoother and prettier….ñawis with their diverted and twisted warps, plain-weave, pebble weave and warp substitution tubular bands.

Maybe next time I am in the US I will get some caps and clasps and make some wristlets with these although maybe I should just go down to the Buckle Land store in the street market here and see what I can find.

However, if I am going to wear a wristlet, I think that I would rather make one of these…

These were collected and also reproduced by Anne Blinks and Nora Rogers and now form part of Martha Stanley’s collection. I believe that they were made by the Mayoruna Indians of Peru who live in the same region as the Shipibo in the Upper Amazon Basin. I was given one of Nora Rogers’s pieces in progress on the loom as well as a booklet on the technique from my friend Betty’s vast collection of resources on ethnic weaving techniques.

There it is all ready to be studied!

From tiny to tremendous, I pulled out this monster project this week too….

My tubular bands look quite ridiculous next to it!

That thing is heavy! It is was very weird sitting down to it after not having touched it for so long. It took me a while to get back into the rhythm…which swords do I use when and what sequence of moves had I decided were the most efficient?

Once I was back into it, the first thing I noticed was a mistake in the new pick-up pattern I am weaving which would have had very sad results further down the track. That meant that my first task was to un-weave….sigh! but I am smiling about having caught it in time.

Yes, progress is slow on this piece but if you are thinking that I am getting nowhere, let me show you that I have least gotten the design established. Most of the major scary counting is now over as each row of pick-up is now done based on the last, if you know what I mean….simply moving a little to the right or the left as the diagonal lines form. It is always exciting to be doing a new design and especially this one as it is my own adaptation of a traditional si’ira pattern of the Wayuu people from Mirja Wark’s book. After all the adjustments I made to have it fit my piece, it now has a lot of my own touches and so I am curious to see just how it will turn out.

So, this week I “tamed the tube” and smiled at many things…like seeing Jeen zooming on after having woven with her and enjoying herself with my pebble weave book using her rigid heddle loom. She is now an active member of the Ravelry group.

Now that she has woven the bird motif, she plans to try it with that gorgeous multi-color warp.

And Marge, who also wove with me, is trying warp substitution with Bedouin patterns as a warm-up to double weave.

She was a bit dismayed by the long floats on the back until we assured her that that is what happens with warp substitution.

She will be able to take the skills she learns from this experience a step further when she tries double weave.

Alison wove a backstrap with a striking pattern and beautiful edges…

And then made a pebble weave band on her inkle loom using many of the motifs from my book.

Jenibug blew me away by taking the llama patterns that I have charted here for warp-faced weaving and adapting them to balanced double weave pick-up on her floor loom…

Here they are in warp-faced double weave…the little llama heads come from a Bolivian band. I added the body embellishments and backgrounds.

And here is Jenibug’s balanced weave project…How neat is that?!

And here it is off the loom and wet finished. Are you sitting down???

Isn’t that spectacular? She took my charts and translated them to balanced weave pick-up…blows me away!

And here are Loli’s pebble weave projects…beautiful bands!

Now can you understand why I am smiling big smiles?!! My experiment with tubular bands brought a smile but seeing cool stuff being made by the Ravelry folks is the best weaving therapy of all.

And just in case your socks are still on after seeing all that, I will leave you with another picture of one of the stunning bands from Ayacucho, Peru that I saw at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I will leave you with bright cheerful colors and these playful figures, one of which is so similar to the ones I was taught when I studied pebble weave in Peru.

Backstrap Weaving – A Little Weaving Therapy

I guess that two months isn’t really such a long time to be away from home. It’s just that I haven’t done an extended trip like that in a long time. I am reminded of the times when I lived at the southernmost tip of continental Chile and used to go up to Peru and Bolivia for the winters. I would spend months away wandering about, only going home when I had become too skinny and undernourished (I always traveled on a typical backpacker’s budget!). It is always bewildering after you have seen so much, experienced so many different things, met so many cool people and learned so much to go home and find that everything is the same!

How could this be when you feel so different?! However, returning home this time was a little different because things had changed. Stuff happened, people disappeared, things accumulated….one of them being DUST…two months of the wretched stuff!

But now I am back into the old routine. Yes, here I am blogging away on Thursday in socks and sweaters. Fifty-five degrees…that’s COLD for Santa Cruz. The palm trees look rather forlorn against the grey sky.

Time for some weaving therapy!

I made up the bag for the wee Casio camera.

This project accompanied me on the road and was hitched to numerous places along the way. I finished the weaving while I was up in Massachusetts. The pattern is one from Bhutanese textiles. Now, how to sew it up?

The first idea was the one on the left…a bag with a flap which I would cut and shape and edge with a tubular band. However, the motifs were not ideally placed for that and so I ended up with the style on the right.

I squared off the bottom of the bag and added a single large snap closure on the inside. It is edged with a sixteen-end black plain-weave tubular band. I continued weaving the tubular band after covering the edge so that I could also use it as a strap and then added a four-strand braid to that for extra length.

The transition from tubular band to four-strand braid is covered by a tassel…a trick I learned from my sling braiding teacher in Peru.

I think these tubular bands are very cool and so handy. I have been playing with some other plain-weave ones in different materials. The one on my bag is in #10 crochet cotton and here are a couple of others that I made in wool.

The yellow and blue one is woven with a DK weight wool I love the way the simple stripes spiral.

The other one is in a lighter weight wool and you can see that even a lightly twisted yarn works. As the warps are so narrow, the problems of stickiness that usually occur when using wool in warp-faced projects are not a big deal. The warps did not break but my weft did once from pulling it very tightly but that was not a problem.

Another cool thing about tubular bands is that it does not matter what the lower face of the band looks like. That gets hidden within the tube.

I wove a ñawi awapa band (see some ñawi awapa bands pictured on the left) as an experiment as a flat rather than tubular band and saw the chunky chaos of crossed and twisted floats that is created on the back side of the band from all the strange warp crossings and manipulations.

But that does that matter? No! All that gets hidden within the tube.

Now what other technique do I know that has a pretty “right” side and a messy “wrong” side of awkwardly long floats?…the warp subsitution technique, of course!

Actually, any warp-faced band whether it be plain or patterned with any kind of pick-up can be made into a tubular band but, since the warp substitution technique is often overlooked because of the long floats that are created on the reverse of the fabric, why not use it for tubular bands where none of that matters?

So, the other band pictured above has three-color horizontal bars which I was able to create with the warp substitution technique.

All the cumbersome long floats are hidden within the tube.

These bands are fast and fun to weave, quick to warp and can be stretched between a toe and finger to weave.

If that doesn’t suit you, you can attach one end to your waist with a cord through the end loops.

If you don’t fancy using your big toe, as the weaver from Tarabuco pictured at left is doing, a cord can be passed through the end loops at the other end of the warp which can then be wedged inside a drawer or looped over a “C” clamp.

I am going to use these tubular bands as pretty ties for my loom and any other time I need cord for my weaving projects and I hope to experiment a lot more with designs and colors.

So, that was one on-the-road project finished. My other demo warp is something quite different. A big white canvas looking at me and asking to be decorated…

There is something very lovely and somehow “earthy” about creating this plain and simple warp-faced white cloth and I want to make any patterning minimal. I have added a couple of weft-twined sections. Perhaps I will do some more weft-twining or maybe some soumak with a bit of added patterning with supplementary wefts. I left a lot of unwoven warp at the start in case I want to add a large weft-twined pattern later. As usual I don’t have plans for the finished piece. I will just see what happens.

Then there was time to do something with a sample piece that I had completed shortly before leaving.

You may remember the ikat weave-along that we were having on Ravelry.

My friend Betty in the US gave me a huge roll of ikat wrapping tape so there will be many more ikat experiments in my future!

I have been using cassette tape until now and had a small “oopsy” in my last project when my dye solution was too hot for the tape.

I am sure that this special tape has been designed to stand up to being boiled in dye baths. It is very wide but tears easily into perfectly straight narrower strips…what a dream!

Here is the second warp which I tried after the green one above. This was my first time trying over-dyeing with a second color and spot dyeing.

My friend Jeen in the US gave me a lovely travel journal and, even though its cover is very beautiful, I decided that my experimental ikat piece would make a wonderful jacket for this book.

I have to admit I was a little nervous. Was I about to ruin both sample and journal?

I used contact cement which is pretty strong stuff. Would it eat into the material on the journal’s cover and destroy it? Would I mess up and glue it on crookedly?

I have done that before with contact cement when gluing cork sheets to a table top. Once that stuff is ready to go you are pretty much committed and it won’t forgive any mistakes! Fortunately it all came together and I am very happy with the result.

The little vessel in the picture was a gift from a friend in Ecuador. The pen is made from sandalwood and was brought to me from India over forty years ago! Goodness knows how I have managed to hang onto it after all these years of moving around and having to abandon possessions along the way. The mug rug on the far right is part of a set inspired by African designs that I made on my backstrap loom in double weave.

My new-to-me used camera got a dressing up too with a new strap. I was happy to have a chance to weave that bird design again…the one on the old fragment that Tom Knisely showed me…

Here it is off the loom and on the camera…

And here it is on my backstrap loom. I love the way the bird motif changes from black to white along the length of the band.

And now I have a new strap to study which was lent to me by Susan who visited me when I was traveling. She brought it along and I was delighted to be able to see both sides of it. There are so many pictures online of these bands from Oaxaca, Mexico but you never get to see the back side. There are many more examples of these on Teyacapan’s Flickr page of Mexican textiles.

Perhaps this structure is woven somewhere here in South America too but I have never come across it so this is a great opportunity to take a good look. Maybe it was woven here in pre-Columbian times. She urged me to take it home and just send it back to her when I am done. How cool is that?

I have this urge to go back to some simpler things and explore them more…like the white plain-weave piece I am doing, some more very simple ikat motifs which again involves just plain weave and I have been also looking again at simple warp floats.

One of my weaving friends in the US wove this cool backstrap after having woven simple warp floats with me.

We just played a little with floating both colors and she went on and ran with it.

At left you can see various parts of Kristi’s backstrap which is patterned with floats in two colors. She used it the second time we wove together.

When I was at Maryland Sheep and Wool I got to see many people of all ages being introduced to fiber activities.

Elisabeth Hill, who I have known some time online and whose fabulous work on deflected double weave I always follow on her Flickr page (she’ll be teaching it at Convergence), came to Sheep and Wool with her niece Kylie. Kylie got a class in inkle weaving from Sally Orgren on her famous and well-traveled loom when we had a Weavolution meet-up at midday. Look at that smile. It looks like a new weaver has been born.

One of Elisabeth’s deflected double weave pieces won first prize in the exhibit at Sheep and Wool. I don’t think the picture I took does it justice so please take a look at her Flickr page to see all her beautiful creations.

Some lessons, like the one Kylie had, were completely impromptu. I wonder if as Kylie grows and continues to weave (and what wonderful inspiration she has in her aunt Lisa) she will remember her very first lesson there in the Rabbit Barn at Sheep and Wool on Sally’s “Inky”. Other classes were more formal…

There’s my friend Claudia chatting with spinning teacher Maggie Casey before class and Richard Ashford was at The Mannings booth giving spinning tips with Tom Knisely looking on.

And the guys were into it too. Here is a gentleman having a spinning class on the ”Pocket Wheel” which was a big hit.

It was fun to see the team of young guys and gals who entered the Sheep to Shawl Competition this year.

Some things I saw at Sheep and Wool inspired this little project this week…

A simple little pebble weave band, right? But wait until you see the band that inspired this…

Isn’t that spectacular! Now you can see where my little purple and yellow band fits in! This was woven in Ayacucho, Peru and is probably from the same area or at least very close to the place from which my pebble weave teachers originated. Although they taught me in Huancayo, they are natives of Ayacucho and the little animal motifs on this band are very much like the ones they taught me. I would guess that this band was woven with the same two-heddle method that I learned in Huancayo with some additions for the third color.

The quality of the weaving is superb. Sadly it probably won’t be “popular” with some tourists who generally seem to prefer handspun wool and natural dyes. There is so much weaving in Peru that we just don’t get to see and coming across these bands at the Sheep and Wool festival was such a treat for me especially since I have not seen anything like the motifs I was taught back in 1996 in the books I have on Peruvian weaving.

Except for the purple and yellow section, it is a three-color pebble weave. Aren’t those braids and pom poms beautiful?!

Here is a little something I picked up from the same stand. I was tipped off by braider Rodrick Owen that these were available there….a sweet braid with tassels from Ayacucho being sold as a keyfob.

And finally, here is a wonderful display of bands made by Yonat. Yonat feels more comfortable on an inkle loom and so takes what she weaves with me and transfers it to her loom. Not everything here was originally backstrap weaving. Some bands, for example, are from the workshop on Sami weaving by Susan Foulkes and others are Yonat’s original creations.

See you next time. I hope that all of you can take some time off for a little weaving therapy this week.

Backstrap weaving – Staying on Track

I have been trying to resist the urge to warp up for an al’ouerjan project and join in on the fun in the Ravelry group. You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, after having posted the warping tutorial for these traditional Bedouin patterns, Tracy suggested a weekend warp-along. Now we are seeing the increasingly large and impressive results of all that warping practice. Take a look at the bag strap that Tracy made at left.

But…I am staying on track which means that I am sticking to my chamanto-style leaf-patterned wall hanging (although I couldn’t resist throwing in a bit of weft twining). I finished the first pebble weave hanging in this set with weft twining and so I decided that, apart from the common color scheme, the weft twining would be another theme that would tie all my planned wall hangings together.

While I sit and pass the shuttle, strum the warps, beat and coax the sheds open I think about what will be next in this series. I have no problem whatsoever in coming up with ideas…the problem is that I want to weave them all at once!

I stand back and look at this piece and I still can’t get used to it.

It’s not quite like anything I have done before but I have to say that I am having fun with it especially adding in that twined section with the motif within. I had to stop for a bit to chart those smaller leaves on their vine, sample them etc…It took a while to get them right.

I think that all my planned red, black and white pieces will look pretty nice when hung all together. The question is….where? Although I have been doing some major cleaning out, I still haven’t managed to uncover any significant amount of wall space.

Next on the clean up list is my dear old Ashford traditional wheel. Yes, I have a spinning wheel…who knew? It has been sitting there so long unnoticed, dusty and in desperate need of oil…poor thing. It was born in New Zealand and made its way all the way over to the Falkland Islands before finding its way into my home in southern Chile. I left a lot of stuff behind in Chile but the spinning wheel came up to Bolivia where it has sat in the corner for almost 14 years…shameful! I won’t take a picture of it now in its pitiful state. I will clean it up and get it back into shape. I have room to use it now!

I only had it for four months before leaving Chile and just got into using it and being able to turn out something consistent. I did, however, spin enough yarn to construct a vest, knitting the natural colored front and weaving the dyed brown back. The edging has been worked in cross knit looping.

This, too, sits neglected here in this hot steamy climate. It is a souvenir at least of the Patagonian sheep.

But, back to the al’ouerjan and let’s see what else the Ravelers have been up to…

So, there’s the strap that I showed you earlier on the gorgeous bag that Tracy made. She will line the bag to protect the warp floats on the inside. She used an additional weft to secure the floats on the strap. You can see details about how that is done here. One of Tracy’s other warp-along products is the pillow cover which includes some tapestry-style twining in the lower left hand corner and a striking and beautifully executed joining stitch.

Aunt Janet’s piece above left is in her own handspun wool. She has three sets of al’ouerjan patterning and that blue looks amazing.

Traudi so loved Tracy’s piece that she got into the act too using brown instead of black which looks fantastic. She twined along the bottom of the piece too. We are seeing more and more twining in this group…cool. Here is the tutorial for basic weft twining.

Jennifer did some charting and planning for the shajarah patterns before warping a wide piece that also includes an al’ouerjan design.

The charting paper with ovals which is useful for double weave, warp substitution and supplementary weft patterns can be found here. A tutorial for weaving these kinds of warp substitution patterns is here.

So, January has gotten off to a great start in the Ravelry group! Pantoffels has been wrangling with what she calles an ancient inkle loom and still managed to make this pretty needle pouch with plain pebble weave patterning.

And then she got a new inkle loom under the Christmas tree and will now try the pebble weave patterns in my book Andean Pebble Weave.

While I have been weaving my “leaf” piece based on the Chilean ponch known as a chamanto, I have been getting out other pictures of ponchos that I have to study the design layout that weavers use on these large pieces.

I own one poncho which I bought in Calcha, Bolivia many years ago. It is made from very fine handspun wool which has been colored with natural dyestuffs. It is patterned with simple stripes, some very narrow and simple ikat bands as well as several very narrow strips of pebble weave.

It has been woven as two panels with four selvedges each and a woven band has been sewn around the four edges with an added fringe. Don’t you love that decorative stitch that has been used to join the panels?

There is definitely an art to stripes. You can see the clever placement of fine white stripes to break up some of the richer colors.

An extremely fine and simply patterned manta from Chile. It is always interesting to see how the colors and stripes are distributed. As is typical, a broad band has been woven and sewn to the four edges of the piece and there is no fringe.

The typical poncho of Tarabuco and the smaller version known as unku can be seen above.

At a handcraft fair in Tarabuco I saw weavers making the long poncho panels. My friend, Anna, showed me the unku on the right that she had bought in Tarabuco when she came to visit me.

I spotted this gentleman in his much more subdued woolen poncho in a small plaza in Sucre. He was performing an offering to Pacha Mama in the early morning. How wonderfully simple and light the poncho looks although I am sure it is extremely warm and virtually waterproof.

And then you have the incredibly intricately patterned calf-length ponchos woven and worn by the men of Chahuaytire in the Cusco area of Peru.

From Argentina and Chile we have the Mapuche makuñ with its ikat patterning technique executed in such a way that there is virtually no blurring of the design. The popularization of the poncho, from what I have read, is generally attributed to the Mapuche who wove them for their own use as well as for barter. On the right you see the chamanto of the Chilean huaso, with its leaf, fruit and floral motifs, which are said to have both indigenous and Spanish roots.

I have a few pictures from Ecuador too…scans of old prints…

This is the “jijon” poncho which is factory-made in Quito and worn by those men who can afford one in Otavalo. You can see it being worn with its grey plaid face showing by the gentlemen on the left and with its darker face outward on the right. These men were wearing their ponchos to the market on a regular day. Apparently there is a much more costly blue double-faced poncho which is woven on the backstrap loom made-to-order. The ownership of one of these special ponchos indicates wealth and high social status.

On Sunday, which was both market day and church day in Cañar, a very social time around the main square and surrounding streets, I saw quite a few ikat-patterned ponchos being worn.

And finally there’s Juan below, (my pebble weave student!) with his mother and neighbor. Juan put on his narrow, black fringe-less poncho and felt hat especially for this picture. On another visit during a festival all the men were wearing their ponchos for the occasion.

You can see the backstrap looms on which I was teaching Juan and Natalia pebble weave tied to the pole. In exchange Anita introduced me to her cousin on my next visit and he taught me to weave the typical supplementary warp patterned belts of Salasaca.

Okay, so I promised you some double weave edge samples this week, right? I am sorry, I didn’t get those done. I was busy trying to stay on track and not get “dis-track-ted” by all the goings-on in the Ravelry group. I want to finish my leafy hanging. but I must say that I have a bowl of tencel calling to me wanting to be made into a scarf…

That blue ball is indigo-dyed Japanese silk…a fabulously thoughtful gift brought to me from Japan by one of my old teaching colleagues here.

Hopefully I will get the leaf piece off the loom this week, plan and warp the next hanging, play a little with my tencel, get the Ashford Traddy up and running and do those double weave samples for the tutorial too….phew!

Oh, and I have started a new page for RESOURCES. You will see the tab for that on the header and I am slowly extracting all the links to interesting sites, articles and products that I have linked to in my 105 posts so far. This is quite a job but I hope to add two or three links to the page every week. I hope you find it useful.