Tag: weaving with silk

Backstrap Weaving – Are Two Sides Better than One?

Sooooo busy lately with other stuff with little time to devote to weaving! I did, however, find time to make a little experiment with something that I’ve been wanting to try for a long time.

The experiment involved one of the patterning techniques with supplementary weft thread that I learned both here in Bolivia and in Guatemala.

One of the techniques involves carrying the supplementary weft thread all the way across the warp from selvedge to selvedge. I can use it to create all kinds of regular and irregular shapes and it’s the technique that I chose to weave many of my hummingbird figures as well as the silk pillow cover that I showed in my last blog post.

The teal supplementary weft travels from selvedge to selvedge of the band and you can just make out the little teal bumps along the edge where the weft exits one shed and turns to enter the next.

Naturally, adding a supplementary patterning weft to the main structural weft in each shed will thicken the fabric. Sometimes that’s exactly what I would like to have happen if I’m planning a product in which the fabric needs to be quite sturdy. Other times, I use a much finer structural weft than I would normally use to make up for the added weight of the supplementary weft. It’s what I do when I want the final product to be light and have more drape.

In this silk scarf project I used 60/2 silk as the structural weft in the sections that didn’t have pattern and changed to a 140/2 structural weft when I added the supplementary weft.

At other times, I’ve chosen to use a different technique in which the supplementary weft only travels from one edge of the actual motif to the other rather than across the entire warp. The weft turns in this case to surround the motif forming a sort of frame. This only looks good when I weave more geometric-type shapes with quite smooth sides. The weft-turns sit on the surface of the cloth following the contours of the motif. It wouldn’t have looked good at all around my arrangement of paisley shapes or hummingbirds.

I carried the supplementary weft from selvedge to selvedge to create the patterns at the two ends of the scarf. The little flower motifs in the main body were woven using the “frame” technique.
All the samples here used the “selvedge-to-selvedge” technique except the white band with turquoise pattern second from the right. There you can see how the turquoise weft turns on the surface of the cloth to frame the pattern of triangles.

Another patterning technique that I studied in Guatemala that uses supplementary weft involves wrapping the weft around certain warp threads rather than just having the weft float straight across the surface of the fabric.

The dark brown base, stem and branches of these plant figures were created with this wrapping technique. All other parts of the patterns were created using the “frame” technique.

The wrapping technique enables me to create those fine horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines (note: horizontal lines can be created in the other techniques but their length is limited. Long weft-floats on the surface of the fabric are not practical and can at times sag.)

It was exciting to discover that learning these same wrapping techniques enabled me to replicate motifs that I had seen on textiles from Bhutan (although the actual method of execution of the horizonal lines, is not exactly the same). These little differences in methods used in vastly different parts of the world that produce astonishingly similar results are always fascinating to me.

The upper pattern of horizontal and vertical lines was woven using the wrapping technique.
The scarf I wove using various Bhutanese motifs and two supplementary-weft patterning techniques.

All the techniques for patterning with supplementary weft that I’ve shown so far are single-faced techniques. The pattern only shows on the upper face of the cloth.

You can see the front and back of this profusely patterned head sash from Aguacatan, Guatemala on the left. The back is plain red. The supplementary weft threads only travel within the shed or float on the upper face of the fabric. They never appear on the back.

Sometimes the finish tail of the weft is pulled through to the back of the cloth and left hanging there rather than snipped off.

This is the back of my learning piece that I wove with one of my Guatemalan teachers. You can see all the weft tails have been left hanging. They could be cut shorter and left there or snipped off flush with the fabric.

My teacher would cut those tails to about 1 1/2″ length and leave them. The fabric is used to make the typical woman’s blouse (huipil) and the ends on the inside of the blouse can’t be seen when the piece is being worn.

This fabric that I was told is from Chichcastenango, Guatemala is part of a huipil that has been worn and laundered over many years. You can see how the weft tails have become tangled in a merry mess on the back.
I like the back of my textiles in these techniques to be open and plain. This is the back of the paisley scarf I showed above. Creating a “clean” back is, of course, is easy to do when the supplementary weft runs from selvedge to selvedge. When there are various color changes happening across the width of the warp as there are in the Guatemalan textiles that I’ve shown here, there’ll be many more weft tails with which to deal and carefully snip at the back of the cloth.

I did study one double-faced technique when I was in Guatemala in a town near Antigua. This technique allows the motif to appear on both faces of the cloth in exactly the same colors.

You can see the two faces of the Guatemalan textile on the left showing the double-faced nature of this technique. On the right is my own attempt at the pair of Guatemalan quetzal birds.

The Guatemalan women use these fabrics to create their blouses. The fact that the fabric is double faced cannot be appreciated when the blouse is being worn. The little baby’s cap with drawstring top, worn here by my teacher’s nephew, was woven in this technique making it reversible.

It’s the very slowest technique that I’ve learned so far! I wove a few motifs including the pair of quetzales when I got home and haven’t used it again since. My quetzal project was poorly chosen as I used the fabric as the cover of one of the books that I made in which I recorded instructions for the technique. The back side of the fabric can’t be seen! All that work for nothing.

This little bee pattern is the first double-faced one that I learned with my teacher. You can see that it almost looks like a cross-stitch pattern with it’s identical “stitches” stacked neatly in columns.

What I am heading to with all this talk about single-faced and double-faced patterning techniques that use supplementary weft is the latest experimental piece that I wove and mentioned right at the start of this post.

I wanted to see if I could create a double-faced pattern using one of the single-faced techniques….a pattern that appears simultaneously on both faces but without that sort of cross-stitch look.

I played around with that and it worked. In this example I used gold supplementary weft on one face and green on the other. I could have used the same color on both faces if I’d wanted to.

I used motifs that I’d designed for another single-faced project some time ago. This is black 60/2 silk and several strands of 120/2 silk as supplementary weft. I love the fact that the fabric can be double faced and have the smooth satin-y look that this technique with its longer weft floats allows. The problem is that using twice the amount of supplementary weft in order to cover both faces naturally thickens the fabric.

So, I need to think of a suitable product….something that requires a heavier fabric and which allows both faces to be exposed (so, that’s a “no” to the purses and bags that I like to make). Right now, as it is fresh off the loom, it doesn’t have enough drape to make a comfortable cowl or scarf (besides, I’ve decided that I don’t enjoy wearing scarves). However, I first need to wash and hard press it to find out how well it relaxes in order to see what kind of drape it gives me. It’s amazing how much my warp-faced silk textiles transform after a good hard press.

I’m big on process rather than product but I would really like to create something useful in this technique in which both faces of the cloth can be appreciated. If you have any ideas, do let me know, please. A bag strap has been suggested….but in 60/2 silk?….maybe not practical for everyday use. Maybe a silk strap for a silk bag for evening wear.

I’ll finish by telling you that Stacey Harvey-Brown’s book, Woven Optical Illusions, Pattern and Design from Four to 24 Shafts (The Crowood Press), has just been published. I was excited to be asked to contribute this photo of my backstrap-loom-woven Finnweave piece to the Gallery section of the book. I might try one of the four-shaft patterns in the book on my backstrap loom some time. Details on how to purchase the book are here.

Backstrap Weaving – An Unexpected Match

Once again, other projects have kept me away from my loom which means that I’ve only just finished the silk cushion-cover fabric on which I’d been working.

In my last post, I left you with just the tail feathers of a hummingbird figure making their appearance. This isn’t a new pattern. It’s one of the figures that I designed during the pandemic when I was in my “hummingbird phase” and so you might recognize it.

The white-on-white leaf pattern continues along the sides. While it was tempting to fill all that center space with hummingbirds flitting amongst flowers, I decided in the end to keep it pretty open and quiet and only added one more figure.

Here you can see the head-less second hummer as I add a second beam to roll up the woven cloth and advance the warp.

Finished with the second figure and glad that I hadn’t cluttered the center space.

And then it was time to embark on the home stretch by duplicating the strip of foliage pattern that I’d woven at the start.

This photo gives a better view of the white-on-white pattern which is sometimes very hard to capture well. Note how the variegated thread mysteriously changes tone right at the middle of the warp.

With that, it was done…done on the loom, at least. I have yet to wet-finish it.

When laid out flat like this, it’s a bit disappointing how “flat” it looks considering that it is, after all, made from silk.

If I crinkle it up a bit it catches the light in places and shows off some of its sheen….

Of course, I know very well how silk behaves from the many silk projects I’ve woven in the past. It can be deceivingly dull, stiff and almost cotton-like on the loom only to melt into slinky, shiny softness after being washed and, most importantly, given a hard press. I’ll just have to be patient.

Here’s another look at the white-on-white patterning on the sides that I love so much.

When I eventually get myself over to Australia to live, I’ll use this as one face of a cushion cover in my home over there. While thinking about that, I remembered other hummingbird and foliage pieces that I’d woven during the pandemic that I think could be combined to match this project surprisingly well.

I wove this long silk hummingbird band for the pure joy of it. I didn’t have any kind of end product in mind and so it has been just sitting there in a drawer along with the two flower bands that I’d woven to accompany it. I used a warp-faced double weave structure using four sets of string heddles in this case in 60/2 silk. And here I was thinking that the colors in my latest project were all soft and feminine and not like me at all, forgetting that I’d already used very similar ones in this three-part project during those pandemic years.

Here it is with one of the two flower/foliage bands placed alongside.
The two flower/foliage bands together. I was particularly pleased with these two bands as they had been a study in how to switch background colors smoothly back and forth along the length of a band without using a harsh and sudden horizontal transition.

I think the three pieces could be combined to make another cushion cover and that both cushion projects would sit nicely together. So, it will take a move to the other side of the world before I can truly call these projects “done”.

I’ve absolutely loved having this wide-ish warp on my backstrap loom beams. I loved using the longest of my shuttles and hearing the clack-clacking of the long and heavy-ish swords as they worked together in the sheds. The silk was lovely to work with. I was able to create sheds easily with just a little gentle strumming action. I think my next project will involve experimenting and so I’ll most likely be back to good ol’ sampling on narrow warps to see how well my ideas translate to cloth.

Once again, thanks to Will for the gift of the lovely 10/2 variegated thread, to Susan for the white 20/2 and to Betty and Deanna for the white 30/2. This just about finishes off the cone of 30/2 silk with which I was able to do so much! But this isn’t the last I’ll see of it. I still have the little skeins of cochineal-dyed 30/2 which is one of many experiments that I used it for. I’ve yet to come up with a project for those.

I’ll leave you with images of two little slices of culture here in Santa Cruz…

On the left you see San Roque church which is two blocks from my home. It’s one of the venues for the International Baroque Music Festival which takes place here every two years. It’s nice to be able to stroll over there to enjoy a few of the concerts. This year’s festival starts tomorrow night and all the concerts are free (which can make things a little tedious as people line up early to get in on a first-come basis.)

On the right, I give you the view while dining outdoors at Burger King, would you believe?! Indoors, it’s your standard BK unloveliness. That’s the top of the San Lorenzo cathedral that you can see half a block away in the main square.

Until next time…..

Backstrap Weaving – What’s My Style?

Many years ago an online acquaintance told me that she could instantly tell which of the images of woven pieces that had been posted to one of the online groups were mine. I thought that was fun…wow, it seems that I’ve developed a “style”. However, as I think back to some of the things I have woven over the years I’m sure that’s not true at all.

I’m thinking that perhaps my work was so easily identifiable back then because it stood out as being warp-faced in a group where the vast majority of work wasn’t. Also, in those days I did seem to weave a lot of patterns that could be described as big-and-bold and decidedly “ethnic-looking” at a time when replication was a big part of my learning process. The products were hardy belts, straps and shoulder bags. The thread I used was locally-sourced 8/2 cotton which was almost all I had access to here for this kind of work.

Now, I’m not quite sure that I want my work to be so easily recognized. It feels like that would mean I was not branching out and trying new things or heading in new directions. And that might very well have been the case if I hadn’t been given so much yarn by weaving friends over the years….yarn that I probably never would have chosen on my own…like the cones of 140/2 silk I was given by two friends, eeeek! Who would ever contemplate weaving with that? It was offered to me, gratefully accepted, and eventually I used it (and loved it!). I can only hope that I wove something worthy of the lovely gift.

One of the projects using the 140/2 silk as warp was the last two panels in my Within These Walls series.

I suppose that if there had to be something that somehow categorised what I do, or my “style” of weaving, I would like it to be the fact that I use a backstrap loom. For me, the process in most cases is more notable than the product. I’m rambling on about this a bit because of a couple of things that I have seen in my online groups recently. One was a comment on a photo of my latest warp…

The commenter asked me to make sure to eventually post the finished project because she is fascinated by “backstrap weaving”. The thing is, once the fabric is off the loom, there’ll be nothing to indicate that it was woven on a backstrap loom. It could have been woven on any kind of loom that allows one to create 18- 1/2″-wide warp-faced cloth. For me, the product isn’t “backstrap weaving”….the act of creating it is.

What I’m trying to say is that I think that the term “backstrap weaving” is suitable for describing the act of weaving on a backstrap loom…. I’m out in my back yard today backstrap weaving, for example. I don’t think it works as a word to describe the cloth that comes off the loom and I have a feeling that this is the way many people use the term. I suspect that the person who asked the question is interested in seeing the cloth (and of course that’s fine) thinking that somehow it’s exclusive to the backstrap loom. If she had been interested in “backstrap weaving”, the activity, I think she would have asked to know more about the loom, my set-up, how it all works etc..

It makes me wonder, as I have often done in the past, what people think “backstrap weaving” is. And it makes me regret not having made it clear when I decided to name this blog Backstrap Weaving almost fifteen years ago. Maybe I was unclear about how the term should be used myself back then or at least unaware of how it might cause misunderstandings. I know that in the past I have been guilty on my many occasions of referring to my cloth as “my backstrap weaving” as a quick way of saying “pieces I have woven on my backstrap loom”.

One clear indication of misunderstanding was when someone posted that they were doing backstrap weaving on their inkle loom (simply because they were using a pick-up patterning technique that is often used by weavers who use backstrap looms in the South American highlands).

So, here I am “backstrap weaving”. The cloth that I’m weaving is in a balanced doubleweave pick-up technique known as Finnweave which can be and is woven on other kinds of looms. I don’t think anyone is going to pick up my finished cloth and identify it as “backstrap weaving”.

The fact is that, with will and skill, so many different kinds of fabric can be woven on a backstrap loom (with obvious width limitations, of course). The fabrics don’t have any particular characteristic that make the backstrap loom the only possible piece of equipment. The product could be weft-faced, balanced, warp-faced. It could be cloth where all structural and pattern elements are created by pick-up, or the loom could have been set up with multiple sets of string heddles and other aids to make those elements completely loom controlled, or a method that lies somewhere between those two could have been used.

A weaver from Pitumarca that I watched at Tinkuy 2010 creating weft-faced fabric on his backstrap loom.
A weaver from San Ignacio de Loyola in Peru has made the weaving of her warp-faced pattern totally loom controlled by using multiple sets of string heddles.
My weaving friend Sharon Kersten is currently sampling balanced cloth on a backstrap loom using a 15-dpi rigid heddle. Note her cool temple…push pins in a length of balsa wood.

By the way, I seem to have been asleep the last few years as far as rigid heddles go. I had no idea that they’re now available in 15 dpi. Sharon says that unlike other weavers who tend to have shaft envy, I on the other hand have dent envy.

This gorgeous sheer cotton cloth was woven on a backstrap loom by a weaver in Mexico. It’s yet another kind of fabric that I think is more accurately described as having been woven on a backstrap loom rather than with the blanket term “backstrap weaving”. The range of achievable structures and techniques is wide! (Image from the Flickr page of Teyacapan and used with her permission).

The other thing that had me pondering what is meant by “backstrap weaving” was a question in another group: “What is the best book on backstrap weaving for beginners?” It leaves me wondering if they’re referring to the activity or the product. Do they want to know how to make, set-up and use a backstrap loom or do they already have one and just want to learn the patterning structures that are most often associated with this kind of loom? Are they looking at “backstrap weaving” as the process or the product? I haven’t asked but I am curious to see what other people reply as I think it will give a good indication of how others understand the term.

Anyway, let me get on with what’s currently on my loom…..I’ve been working on my latest project with the latest gift of yarn from my friend, Will, in Australia….some lovely variegated 10/2 silk which sits alongside some luscious white 20/2 silk that Susan had given me many years ago. I have admired work done with variegated thread but never thought to branch out and buy any because I really had no idea what to do with it. With the gift of this lovely mother-of-pearl thread, I’ve been given the push that I needed to come up with something.

My piece is all kind of soft and feminine-looking which might shock you if you’ve come to think of my style as big and bold. This is another example where gifts are ensuring that I don’t fall into any particular style box in terms of product. The common factor is the loom. It’s all about the loom.

It’s always lovely when the threads have all been settled into place and I can get started on the pattern.

The colors in the variegated thread have aligned themselves quite differently from the way they did in my much shorter sample. In the sample there was less space between the darker threads across the warp which meant that there was higher contrast between the leaf shapes and the surrounding white supplementary weft. The effect in this longer warp is much softer. I’m doing some white-on-white patterning with supplementary weft on the sides. (This isn’t the “mad” idea I mentioned in my last post. I decided I wasn’t going to take a chance on trying that in this “real”project).

That’s the extent of the foliage pattern. I’ll weave this band of pattern again at the end. I am, however, continuing with the white-on-white along the sides.

I’ve had to keep an eye on the width because I broke one of my rules and didn’t sample the doubled 20/2 silk on the sides to get a width reading. That’s the price I pay. I guessed how those threads would want to settle and now I have to keep an eye on them in case they decide otherwise.

And now a hummingbird and flowers start to make their appearance. This might be the only motif I weave between the upper and lower strips of foliage….keep it clean and simple, perhaps. We’ll see.

I’ve just joined a hummingbird group on Facebook and it’s so much fun seeing the joyful posts as people announce the return of their friends after their winter away.

Before I switch off the bedside lamp at night, I take a quick look over the edge of the bed to see my loom with its limp warp lying on the floor. I love the way this looks in the soft yellow light. I wonder if I can get silk thread in these colors?

I’ll leave you with this photo that Kate sent me after having read my post last time which touched on the subject of width. Kate recently returned from a trip to Mexico in which she was able to visit with backstrap loom weavers and received permission to share this photo. As I sit at my loom quite pleased with my eighteen-and-a-half inch warp, I am in awe of the forty-eight inches (by Kate’s estimate) this weaver is managing…..and that’s wool! The fabric she produces is used for a very unique kind of cloth which is used as a man’s garment about which I’ll tell you more in my next post.

A backstrap-loom weaver from the Chamula municipality of Chiapas in Mexico.

Backstrap Weaving – Wonderfully Wide

It’s been a while since I’ve had something wide (wide for me, anyway) on my backstrap loom. The last thing was the cotton rep-weave warp from which I made a backstrap/loom carry bag. This one was 15 1/2″ and had 800 ends.

The warp is made up of white and cochineal-dyed cotton from Guatemala. I dyed some of the white black.
The finished backstrap which doubles as a loom and tool tote bag.

As I said, these kinds of warps are wide for me but not necessarily for backstrap loom weavers in other parts of the world. The widest warp that I’ve seen over here was 39″. It was a light cotton ikat warp that was being woven by a weaver from northern Peru. She stood while weaving in order to manage the width. That makes my 15 1/2″ seem quite ridiculous. Backstrap loom weavers in parts of SE Asia routinely weave what look like even wider pieces while seated at their looms. Maybe when I am eventually living back in Australia, I’ll be able to explore that side of the world and maybe sit beside those weavers to see how they skillfully create their warps and manage those widths.

An ikat shawl weaver from Tacabamba, Peru, standing to manage the wide cotton warp on her loom.

I like the fact that, as far as the loom is concerned, going wide simply means getting hold of some longer sticks. I have a piece of painted metal curtain rod that I’m using as the cloth beam of my latest project. A dowel rod acts as the warp beam. The weft thread can be wound around a suitably long stick if I don’t have a long enough shuttle.

My Montagnard (Vietnamese hill tribe) teachers always use the beams and swords that are designed for the widest pieces of skirt and blanket fabric that they weave no matter how narrow the piece they happen to be weaving.

My current project is 18 1/2”…a very humble width in comparison. However, to me it feels wonderfully wide and I love having my beams loaded up like this.

The other thing to which my “Wonderfully Wide” blog title refers is the fact that I feel that I have a wonderfully wide range of techniques and structures that I can draw on when it comes down to planning a new project. I wandered through several ideas when it came down to figuring out what I would do with the silk thread that I had been given by a couple of fiber friends in Australia.

I wasn’t one hundred percent sure about the size of this silk thread but after fishing out silk examples from my stash drawer that range from 30/2 to 140/2, I came to the conclusion that the variegated is most likely 10/2 and the white 20/2.

I thought about doing rep with alternating thick and thin weft and some pick-up. That idea got discarded in favor of ikat…a variegated ikat pattern on a solid-color background. In the end I settled on using supplementary weft to play with positive and negative space.

I felt that I’d already explored the idea of a variegated ikat pattern in this piece (although the thread in this case isn’t actually variegated. It’s just a mix of lots of different colored ends of warp). I had to look back at this to be reminded that I hadn’t particularly liked the effect at the time (although it’s funny how things can grow on you!)
When I do ikat on a multi-colored warp, I prefer having wide stripes of color so that there’s only one color in each pattern segment, as you can see in this silk example I made some years ago.

The warp on which I’m currently working will hopefully be fabric for one face of a pillow/cushion cover. I am using the 10/2 variegated thread alongside doubled 20/2 to give me the width I need. Please bear in mind that I’m not saying that doubled 20/2 equals a single strand of 10/2. I’m just hoping that the two will play well enough together to give me the width that I need.

But first, as always, comes the sampling. The pattern will be foliage and hummingbirds. I wanted to weave the foliage using white supplementary weft (multiple strands of 30/2 silk) to fill the negative spaces. This means that the foliage pattern would be revealed in the underlying variegated ground cloth. Normally it’s the supplementary weft itself that forms the positive part of the pattern.

This covered book that I created is already living in Australia. I dug up photos to see what the various colors of supplementary weft looked like in the upper and lower foliage patterns. Again, it isn’t variegated thread but rather a combination of four strands of three different colors. In this case the supplementary weft is used as the positive part of the pattern on the green background.
In this example, the gold supplementary weft has filled the negative space around the flower pattern which is revealed in the black ground cloth. The red patterning shows the use of supplementary weft in both positive and negative space.

So, I wound a warp of what I figured would be a suitable width to give me the information I needed for the larger project. With this sample I would find out the number of ends I needed to create X inches of cloth, the number of strands of 30/2 silk that would give good coverage as supplementary weft, the best weight of silk to use as the main weft and the warp span of the longest practical weft float. I took some old foliage patterns that I had created for other projects and altered them to reduce the negative spaces to what I guessed wouldn’t create impractical lengths of floats….the kind that would sag or get hooked on things when the cloth was in use.

The pattern needs to be busy so that there are never any excessively long floats of the white supplementary weft.

I was very happy with the result and made a note not to have the pattern on the real project extend all the way to the selvedges. The first couple of little triangles you see there are where I was testing the ideal number of strands of 30/2 silk to use for the supplementary weft. The 30/2 silk comes from my weaving friend Deanna. We made a swap….a very large cone of 10/2 cotton (which had also been a gift from my friend, Betty) for a cone of 30/2 silk.

Susan’s gift of 20/2 silk is being used as warp alongside the Will’s variegated 10/2s in the real project. Deanna’s 30/2 silk (which in a roundabout way also comes from Betty) is the supplementary weft. I am weaving the generosity of all these fiber friends into this piece!

Off the warping stakes and onto the loom. As usual, when winding wide warps, I wind several small sections removing them one by one from the warping stakes and placing them on the loom beams that are waiting nearby on the floor. I don’t take any risks with having my warping stakes lean, even if ever so slightly, by having too much thread loaded onto them.

The next task was to make 593 heddles.

I placed a couple of cardboard strips in the sheds to help me see if any sections of the warp are set more closely than others…as I’ve said here many times, there are varying degrees of “warp-facedness” which means that some warp threads might be positioned closer together than others. When weaving with supplementary weft I need to weave a little narrower than is my natural tendency so that I make sure that the patterning weft is not exposed at all when it travels between the layers of warp. That can be a bit tricky….fighting against muscle memory.

It’s normally my habit to start with a selvedge in which case I would remove those cardboard strips and start weaving right at the base of the warp. However, I decided to leave them in place this time. Although the two aren’t visible in this photo, I can tell you that the 10/2 silk and doubled 20/2 seem to working together well.

This is the point where I will start weaving the pattern. And here I’ve stopped for the time being while I figure out my design. My sample was on 142 ends. I need to extend it to 1186 ends! I plan to have a strip of pattern the same length as my sample, once again using the supplementary weft to fill the negative space. Then I plan to weave scattered frolicking hummingbirds in white supplementary weft, this time using the variegated thread as the negative space surrounding the figures. I’ll finish by repeating the first strip of pattern. Well, that’s the plan anyway.

I’ll have a choice in the style of hummingbird figures….either using the supplementary weft to “draw” the swirls within their bodies as can be seen on the left, or use the weft to fill in the negative space within their bodies so that the swirls appear the underlying ground cloth, as on the right. I’m leaning towards the latter but maybe a combination of both?

This is what I mean by “wonderfully wide”. Choices, choices, choices. I have another idea, which I won’t go into yet, for including some very quiet pattern in the white sections of warp. I thought of it about two minutes ago! There’s something about writing this blog that helps with the creative process, it seems. The idea is a little mad so I might wait and see how that goes before I reveal it….or not! The madness might be just temporary, lol.

So, thank you so much all my extremely generous fiber friends for these lovely gifts of thread. Here I am weaving in a color palette that is not a common one for me. It does remind me a little, though, of the piece I wove when weaving friend Marilyn let me pick colors from her stash of 10/2 cotton.

Maybe this sunrise I had witnessed with Gwen while in Florida was on my mind at the time……

The lake had alligators in it!

I’ve spent several evenings now just working on the pattern. Let’s see how much progress I’ve made when next we meet…..

Backstrap Weaving – The Right Stuff

We’re standing still as we enter the sixteenth day of a city-wide strike but I have been pretty busy and entertained during this latest of the stay-at-home situations. It’s nowhere near as anxiety-ridden as the last time we did this for twenty-one days at the end of 2019.

This is what I have been up to:

SILK: soaking, scouring, squeezing, steeping, stirring

COCHINEAL: squashing, sifting, soaking, steeping, straining

DYEING: Sighing (over the dull colors), squealing (over the lovely ones), searching (for the right additives)

Dyeing experiments on silk with cochineal and alum mordant have kept me entertained during the strike.

But I don’t have the right stuff if I want to get the gorgeous reds normally associated with cochineal. Never mind, I’ll just pop out and get some. But of course everything is closed due to the strike. What I would like to have is cream of tartar and distilled water. The former is supposed to push the color towards a cherry red. Yum. My tap water is far too hard. I have read that dye molecules tend to adhere to the minerals in the water and not so much to the fiber. And that’s where the distilled water comes in.

Citric acid shifts the color to a strong orange.

The supermarkets have been allowed to open on two mornings a week from 6am to 11am. Imagine the whole city out trying to shop in those two time slots especially since the Day of the Dead fell right in the middle of it all. You would think that it would be a simple matter of getting some cream of tartar at the supermarket. I went to three and didn’t find it. I don’t have an oven and, therefore, don’t bake. I have never had a reason to look for it before. I found a place on Facebook that supplies commercial kitchens. Of course, it’s not open during the strike. I suppose I will have to buy a bagful! The distilled water will have to wait until the end of the strike too. In the meantime, I’ll just make do with what I’ve got and have fun.

This is the kind of red-ish purple that I got on my handspun llama with an alum mordant and tap water many years ago. I was really pleased with it. Many years ago, I used to have a softening attachment on my tap and I don’t remember if I still had it when I was dyeing this llama fiber. The company that supplied the cartridges for the attachment closed and that was the end of that. I know for sure that I hadn’t used cream of tartar.

In a way it’s a lot of fun making do with what you have on hand. Using coffee filters was suggested as a way to strain the bug particles out of the cochineal liquid. I don’t have any but I found that cutting two of the three layers out of one of the disposable surgical masks made a pretty good strainer. I could hang the elastic straps over two bottles to suspend the mask over a bowl. I had a little re-usable draw-string sack that can be used for tea leaves or yerba mate. That worked well for containing the crushed cochineal while the color was being extracted.

I got a few different purples…nothing terribly exciting….but adding lemon juice to the bath brought on a powerful zing of orange. Wow. Almost too powerful. I learned that I had to rinse the orange skeins in water that had a few drops of lemon juice. My first orange skein, rinsed under the tap, released a lot of orange liquid in the first rinse, a rosy quite attractive orange in the second, and then the skein magically turned purple before my eyes… and a very dark purple at that! Not a trace of orange left. How bizarre. I rinsed the others in lemon-y water after that and got some pretty colors.

Purple and orange and pink tones in silk from cochineal.

So, that’s what I have so far. I am looking forward to getting some reds when things are back to normal and I can get the right stuff. In the meantime I can start skeining and scouring and mordanting the next lot of silk. I have a new even greater appreciation for the person who prepared all these tiny sample silk skeins from natural dye experiments using all kinds of mordants and color-shifting agents.

Skeins of naturally dyed silk that were gifted to me.

I had so much fun combining those small skeins to weave book covers…

Hopefully I can get colors that work well enough together for a future ikat project.

As you can imagine, when doing this kind of thing there is a lot of time spent waiting for yarn to dry or soak or steep. I had to keep myself busy with other fiber pursuits so that I would stop impatiently poking at things in the pot. I am still spinning the brown cotton that is labeled as Cinnamon and am about to start experimenting with boiling small quantities of it for different lengths of time to see how that affects the resulting deepening of color. I first soaked one lot and allowed it to dry to see if the color changes at all from simply being thoroughly wetted. It doesn’t. Now it’s time to start boiling.

The color labeled Cinnamon is the uppermost one in this picture.

The other thing I did was weave a band in 60/2 silk to experiment with making jewelry…wrist-cuff bracelets and possibly pendants. I enjoy wearing these when I travel but am also thinking about possible income sources when I eventually return to live in Australia.

I added a hummingbird cuff bracelet to my collection of blue ones….

And then I unearthed a sample I had woven in indigo-dyed fine cotton from Guatemala. It will make a nice storage bag for the blue bracelets.

I finish my cuff bracelets in a number of ways. Sometimes I add a button to one end and a loop to the other. This involves finishing the raw edges of the band in some way. Usually the material is fine enough to turn under twice and hem. If not, I turn once and sew down after having sealed the edge with diluted PVA glue. This is not my favorite way as the dried glue can sometimes be scratchy against the skin. A more complicated but enjoyable way is to edge the perimeter with a woven tubular band. Using metal ribbon crimps and some sort of clasp takes care of the raw edges. However, cuffs with clasps like these are the hardest ones to do up. I have had lots of practice, though!

A tubular edging added to a wool band encloses and protects the edges.

Apart from enclosing and protecting the cut raw edges, ribbon crimps also allow you to wear the bracelet showing either of the two faces.

I wove my hummingbird design in warp-faced double weave. I love the smooth, solid color look of this structure. There are no floats and no spotted background. If you think that you would like to try double weave yourself, I have written a book which gives instructions via dozens of step-by-step photos, detailed explanations and video clips for those who like to weave bands on standard inkle looms. I think that it is a technique for those who have already tried and decided that they like the slower pace of weaving bands with pick-up patterns. It’s not the first-ever kind of pick-up patterning that I would recommend trying. I learned this structure in the highlands of Bolivia way back in 1997on a horizontal ground loom and have adapted the method to the inkle loom. Warp-faced Double Weave on Inkle Looms is available as a PDF or as a spiral-bound book at Taproot Video.

I made the most of every piece of this short band…

My friend Dorinda is back in the States now after visiting Maxima and all her other friends in the Bolivian highlands. Maxima runs a small grass roots weaving co-op made up of women from her town and neighboring rural communities far, far away from tourist trails. Pre pandemic, I was able to take and show examples of the ladies’ work that I own using their handspun wool and natural dyes and generate a lot of orders for them. The profits would go towards simple needs like buying supplies for their children at the start of the school year. If you were reading my blog during those years you will know that I got around a lot and there are now folks from Florida to Washington state who own some of the beautiful woven cloth. Although the ladies do sew the cloth into useful products, most of my weaving friends were interested in buying lengths of cloth that they could use in their own sewing projects.

Here are some of the youngest and newest members of the co-op who have recently graduated from the body-tensioned band loom to the leaning vertical frame loom on which they weave wider pieces. The youngest one has yet to graduate but will do so next year. Look at those lovely reds they get on the wool from cochineal. I need to get some of that good highland water!

Maxima’s sister, Narciza is one of my weaving buddies and is here showing the 4350 meters of yarn that she spun during the Spinning Week competition that Dorinda helped organize in October by seeking out funding for prizes.
Two groups of spinners competed for prizes. The first prize winners on the right are wearing their new skirts and the second prize winners received a knitted cardigan. Donated funds were used for the purchase of the skirt fabric and yarn and the skirts were sewn and cardigans machine-knitted by members of the co-op. 89, 887 meters of yarn were spun in the week! There’ll be plenty to go into the dye pots next season.

These ladies were the participants in the Spinning Week competition in the first week of October. It’s a very humble group of ladies living a simple rural existence deep within the highlands, growing vegetables for the Sunday market and raising livestock. There are no passing foreign tourists and no local interest in their woven goods in the nearest city nine hours away (it’s a spectacular bus journey!) Please do take a look at Dorinda’s blog, PAZA Bolivia, to read her fascinating stories about the lives of these women and their efforts to keep their spinning and weaving traditions alive. You might think about subscribing to automatically receive notification of her future posts. I hope that I can travel soon to promote their work and help out in my own small way as I used to. In the meantime, I’ll do my best via my blog.

I’ll leave you here with an idea for using ribbon crimps to make some tree ornaments. I show these every year! The bands don’t necessarily need to be holiday themed. I think any pattern looks good.

These are all woven using the structure that I call Andean Pebble Weave. If you would like to learn how to weave Andean Pebble Weave on an inkle loom. I have written a book that teaches just that: Andean Pebble Weave on Inkle Looms. If you use any other kind of loom to weave bands you can still learn the method that enables you to weave these kinds of double-faced bands in this book: Complementary-warp Pick-up. The advantage of the inkle loom book is that it includes instructional video clips in both its digital and physical versions.. Both these books teach the method that enables you weave all the patterns in my two follow-up pattern books.

Hopefully, the strike won’t last too much longer and there will be a peaceful end and a solution to satisfy all concerned. Until next time…..