weft twining – Page 6 – Backstrap Loom Weaving

Backstrap Weaving – Spinning Up Some Woolly Winter Warmth

It seems that I must have gone too far taunting the weather gods last week when I posted a picture of my friend Lalenya and I weaving in our summer gear in her beautiful flower-laden patio.

BAM! It got cold. Well, cold at least for here in banana land which means temperatures in the high 50s and low 60s. It’s sounds like a joke, I know, but we suffer here when the temperature drops that low in homes that are designed to stay cool rather than warm…cold ceramic floors, no hot water in the kitchen and electric shower heads that give tepid water at best unless you are willing to turn the pressure down to a dribble. And it is not only the people who are feeling it…thousands of fish turned up dead in the local Pirai River and Lalenya woke up to find her dog in a cramped up ball and had to take him to the vet.

Well, at least it has put me in a woolly frame of mind for the Tour de Fleece spinning challenge on Ravelry and it is fun reading posts from other wintry southern hemisphere folks in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and other South American countries who have been participating. And it is nice seeing the summery pictures from the northern hemisphere too.

ashford-gift — My Tour de Fleece challenge is spinning up the colors I like in this package of roving that I won from Ashford.

I got my socks on and spindle out and joined in what can only be described as a spinning frenzy. Everyday spinners post pictures of their progress. Some days have had over a thousand posts and while reading through and admiring the creativity of some of the shots, I have come to the conclusion that I am not a true spinner at heart. Again, I tell you that I don’t have a “refined palate” for spinning. All those pictures start looking the same to me after a while yet I do enjoy soaking up everyone else’s excitement and have looked at my own thread-laden spindle with a slightly more critical eye after reading a discussion on the beauty of the shape of a cop.

But the truth is…all I want to do is get this stuff spun and onto my loom!

Above you can see my progress so far…nothing compared to the majority of folks out there. On day one it was all rather novel , the cold, the wearing of socks, the spinning – that white roving was smooth as silk and so easy to spin.

On day two I really wanted to be weaving and so set myself up at the loom so I could follow online discussions and put in a turn or two on the spindle without even having to take off my backstrap.

In keeping with the Tour de France bicycling metaphor, my bike took a bumpy cross-country detour off the smooth race route with some crashes into bushes and rolls in the grass on the third day…that was a kind of rough and stubborn piece of roving. On day four I took my feet off the pedals and just coasted along… didn’t see much progress I am afraid but I was finally able to show off a fat cop on day five (very pleased with this new addition to my meager spinning vocabulary “cop”).

While others spoke eloquently of the breed of sheep and exquisite blend of fine fibers they were spinning, all I could say was that the white stuff was nice and the red was a bit tricky. (Again I can relate this to those of refined palate and taste who can make elaborate descriptions of wine while I simply know it as red or white).

I am pretty happy with the fact that I am spinning wool and can now add this to my fiber spinning experience which so far comprises llama….

and, more recently alpaca…

Although I have been spinning cotton in the way I was taught in coastal Ecuador, I need a lot more practice with that before I feel I will be able to weave with it.

In the midst of the spinning madness I was, of course, weaving and I have finished the first of what will be four placemats. This is not the first time I have made table ware and I have a few table runners and place mats, hotpads and mug rugs stashed away as gifts. I often forget I even have them.

I pulled out this one to remind myself of how to do hem stitching which is a finishing technique that I love and learned thanks to my friend Franco Rios who told me about this video. While rustling around in my gift basket, I discovered a bunch of bag projects that I had never completely finished as they are missing tabs, straps or buttons…out of sight out of mind. Some of them are now looking rather square-ish to me and I think I will try to cut and round off the flaps in the way my Guarani teacher showed me.

But, back to the new finished project, the place mat. The design is one that I saw on a woven bag made by the Shipibo people of tropical lowland Peru. I am hoping to make four placemats, each one being in a different color scheme and having a design from a different culture.

You can see that in the end I didn’t hem stitch the edges. I had originally wanted to twine the edges with a design based on the main motif much the same as I had done with this Montagnard piece…

That was the plan but when I finished the weaving I decided that I wanted to keep it simple and so twined in just plain brown instead.

I used the same yarn as I had for the warp and weft in the weaving and twined around groups of six warps.

In the past I have twined around four and the twined sections have ended up wider than the woven piece. A group of six warps seems to be the right size.

This was a nice way to protect the edges although a lot more time consuming than hem stitching. I am always happy for a chance to keep up the twining skills.

The design on the next place mat in the set will be based on a Mexican belt and these are the colors that I have chosen…

I hope to include a few small spots of supplementary weft patterning among the warp floats as I did in the small band experiment at left.

I really enjoyed this place mat project. It has been a while since I last wove a wide-ish piece and that terracotta color was such a pleasure to weave with. This is the first one I have made with #10 crochet cotton.

This was a new design for me and it is always exciting to see the pattern appearing. The designs I have planned for the next three are all new too.

Well, I hope all you northern hemisphere folks are having a lovely summer. I thought I would post a collection of pictures of backstrappers enjoying the outdoors and I hope you will feel inspired to gather up your sticks and go outside.

random posts — Sometimes you are lucky to come upon a random post or tree trunk in an unexpected place to which you can attach your warp. That’s my friend Ulla on the right with whom I traveled in Potosi.

salt lake and no tie up — There weren’t any trees on the Uyuni salt lake so Carolin used her bike. Janet has no need for such things…as a truly independent backstrapper, she uses her feet!

weaving at the lake and beach — Anna by a Chilean lake and me at the beach…Okay, so I didn’t find anything to tie up to in the sand. I inkled instead.

weaving with whatever is at hand — Bobbie has been camping at Sand Dune State Park and found something in the sand to tie onto. Sometimes you just have to get creative. Carolin’s warp is tied to a small table against which she is pushing with her feet.

It’s always nice when there is a deck rail to hitch to. Here at Lisa’s beach house we could listen to the birds and smell the ocean.

sheep and wool — Semi-outdoors. Weaving in the bunny barn and in the yurt at Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. The yurt had a hole on its top through which I could look up and see the sky.

I am risking upsetting the weather gods again but if you had a patio or a view like this how could you not weave outdoors! If you have an outdoor weaving shot, please send it to me. Meanwhile those of us south of the equator will huddle indoors.

Happy weaving to all where ever you are. 🙂

Backstrap Weaving – Sleeping in Studios

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — The view from Betty’s studio (my bedroom) over rows of blueberry bushes and the forest on her tree farm.

If you believe in that sort of thing, I should be simply bursting with creative energy after having spent the last week in the homes of weavers Betty Davenport and Linda Hendrickson sleeping and soaking up inspiration in their studios.

At Betty’s I slept under her very own handwoven blankets with a spectacular piece from Bhutan directly above my head.

Above that, the wall extended to a very high ceiling and was adorned with two gorgeous ponchos from Peru.

At Linda’s I was surprised I could even sleep at all with her life’s work of tablet woven and ply-split creations filling every single wall space around my bed not to mention pieces she has acquired from such artists as Bhakti Ziek, Peter Collingwood and a master camel girth braider from India.

But then there were those soothing bands of woven words…

Anyone who has been following my blog will know that I am a big fan of Linda’s tablet woven letters and that I used her book Please Weave Me a Message recently as inspiration to twine weft into words on the strap for my loom bag.

Yes, it was something else being able to spend time with these two rock stars of weaving and I mean “rock star” in more than one sense of the words when I refer to my friend Betty Davenport.

I am guessing that few people know about some of Betty’s other pursuits and talents away from the weaving loom. I will tell you just one of them for now: Betty is a climber…a serious hard-core mountain climber. Well, she will tell you that she doesn’t climb anymore but there she has her award for having climbed the sixteen major peaks of the Cascades. As a member of Washington and Oregon climbing clubs she has traveled to many countries to hike and climb and the part that most impresses me is that she managed to combine this with weaving!

A tiny tatste of some of the dozens of meticulously labeled and catalogued fabrics and tools that Betty has collected on her trips.

You have no idea how much I wish I had had my love for backstrap weaving back in the days when all I could care about was racing up mountains and roping into canyons. Betty has so many great tales to tell of her travels in the mountainous regions of the world not only bagging peaks and hiking high trails but also meeting weavers and collecting textiles….the perfect combination of activities!

Anyone who has followed my blog will also understand how excited I was to be able to handle my first Huichol piece in balanced double weave and that bone tool on the left is a pick that Betty collected in Peru made from the bone of a condor.

Well, you can be sure that I photographed pretty much everything and still need to do some serious fact checking before I dare to put the pictures here but you will get to see all these treasures as time goes by. When I get home from this trip I will go through everything including Martha Stanley’s wonderful collection and make sure that everything is properly labeled.

more from Bettys collection — A couple more pieces from Betty’s extensive collection.

And here’s a fun thing…I wrote to Betty back in December 1995 as my Navajo weaving teacher in Colorado had sent me a copy of classified ads in a Handwoven issue. There was an ad for a weavers’ trek in Peru led by someone called Betty Davenport. I had no idea who she was.

At that time I was dying to go to Peru from my home in southern Chile to learn to weave but was quite terrified as the Shining Path had been very active and independent travel in Peru was not considered safe.

However, I was on a tight backpacker budget and, as wonderful as Betty’s itinerary sounded, I could not afford her trip at that time. So off I went on my own.

Would you believe that Betty still had my letter after all these years? She found it amongst old files and gave it to me at Convergence! We met again at the Tinkuy in Peru and now have had some quality time to spend together.

Here’s one more piece of the past to share and this is such a gem! This picture was taken at the Beka Rigid Heddle Conference in 1980. There’s Betty with Adele Cahlander looking at Betty’s then recently published book Textures and Patterns for the Rigid Heddle Loom. Again, if you have been following this blog you will know my high regard for the work of Adele Cahlander and understand why I so love this picture. Look at Adele Cahlander’s woven neck piece. Betty has recently republished a revised edition of her Textures and Patterns…. book.

Betty was with us at the backstrap weaving gathering we had in Linda Hendrickson’s studio in Portland. Linda generously offered her lovely space to the participants and gave me a place to stay.

Time just flew…it was “a whirlwind” as Linda put it and I so wish we could have spent more time to chat about Linda’s two passions…tablet weaving and ply-splitting. I was taken on a tour of her studio when all the weavers had gone home and we just scratched the surface. Years of work are on display there with each piece created by Linda or given to her having its own intriguing story. I heard about other teachers who had given workshops in that very same space… among them Ed Franquemont and Peter Collingwood…phew!

Here’s the workshop group after two days of backstrap weaving…

It was a fun and intense time together. I think everyone was pretty tired after day one. At least I didn’t have to travel and got to sleep in our very weaving space. I know of one participant who went on her way after the gathering with her backstrap string still attached to her waist, a couple of others went to dinner with name tags still in place and another went home with one of her weaving tools still “parked” in her hair just like some of the Guatemalan weavers do.

Here are a few more shots taken during the two days…

portland weavers — Banding together in Linda’s colorful space. Interesting warp color combinations and use of contrasting and matching wefts to create a simple design with warp floats, a technique used by the cotton saddlebag weavers with whom I studied in coastal Ecuador.

4 stake warping — The twins, Marie and Jeanie practice four-stake warping while Anita and Diane do the same under the watchful eyes of Betty. Peter Collingwood looks on from behind a piece of his macrogauze on a poster on the wall.

lindas collection — Amongst the treasure trove of collected and gifted items in Linda’s studio….a Huichol double weave bag from Mexico, different to Betty’s example for the finish around the upper edge….a ply-split camel girth from India.

hat and gauze — A hat from Uzbekistan. My online friend Caroline in Australia bought a similar hat and puzzled over the band on its edge and how it had been created. Linda told me that these bands are loop manipulated and that people often mistakenly assume that anything that has twined warps has been card woven. The other piece is a macro gauze by Peter Collingwood.

And then, what about this tablet woven stuff? I dabbled in it a little when I lived in southern Chile shortly before getting into backstrap weaving.

I really enjoyed it but then Andean pick-up took over even though one can easily weave with cards on a backstrap loom too.

I do enjoy picking up those warps and moving them around but I would like to get back into some card weaving if only to be able to better understand some of the woven pieces that I have been running into lately.

Weft twining became such an obsession…why not delve into warp twining?

I am guessing that most people will have seen tablet woven bands with designs similar to that pictured at left.

Just wait until you see how far Linda has pushed this weaving technique!

And then these…

Can you believe these were done with cards? So, I am into analyzing structures and all that but look what fun stuff you can do with card weaving! Too bad I don’t live in a scarf-friendly climate…same goes for socks.

And then there’s the ply-splitting. I was first attracted by the Indian camel girths made in ply-splitting but Linda has taken this technique and run with it. Here is one of her creations:

Her latest book teaches with step-by-step photos and instructions how to make the following ply-split baskets…

Ply-Split Baskets from Linda's book — Photo by Linda’s husband, John.

You can see each of these baskets on Linda’s website and click to see a larger view with detail of the structure as well as order her book.

So, I have been hanging out in the Pacific North West so it is quite natural that Chilkat and Raven’s Tail weaving has been falling into my lap. First, on the trip up from northern California, my friend Janet and husband Larry took me to a museum called “End of the Trail’ which houses several private collections of Native American crafts, clothing and tools.

Weee! My first Chilkat blanket. No doubt there was one in the museum in DC…somehow I missed it! I had a bus to catch and so we had to limit our visit and just quickly take in as much as possible. It is worth several short visits I would imagine. Janet has been there many times and never tires of it or fails to see something interesting or notice something new from baskets made from rushes, nettles, porcupine quills, beargrass, maidenhair fern, willow, horse hair and wild rye amongst other materials, hats, beadwork and tools made from wood, bone, horn and tooth.

Everything I know about Chilkat blankets comes from Cheryl Samuel’s wonderful book The Chilkat Dancing Blanket which I bought back in the 90s and have never used.

However, this is just a beautiful book to look at, stunningly illustrated and just fun to leaf through. The technique is weft twining with certain special manouvers which allow the twiner to form rounded shapes.

From what I gather, the twining which I studied used by the Montagnard weavers would be referred to in this area as Raven’s Tail.

And that is all I dare tell you lest I get it wrong.

Fortunately Sally Ishikawa came to stay at Betty’s and take my backstrap weaving class and brought with her….

a loom on which she was doing a Raven’s Tail piece plus two completed pieces of beaded and twined work to show. I asked Sally if she would be willing to write something about the techniques and her experience with them and she kindly obliged and so I will leave all further explanation to her….

Raven’s Tail and Chilkat

Three hundred years ago the people of the Western Alaskan Coast wove dramatic, twined robes that were worn around the shoulders during traditional dances. As the robes were danced the bold black and white geometric patterns were reminiscent of the feathers of the Raven as it flew in the sky. Today, these robes are called Raven’s Tail Robes. However, after the 1850s the Raven’s Tail weaving knowledge was nearly forgotten, and only eight complete Raven’s Tail Robes now exist. A weaver named Cheryl Samuel became so interested in this type of weaving that she traveled the world to examine the existing robes, and wrote a book documenting her findings called “The Raven’s Tail”. Today, there are new weavers that are carrying on the Raven’s Tail tradition.

The Ravenstail designs are very linear and geometric, but by 1850 most of the designs being woven were rounded. Perfect circles were possible because of some new developments to the twining technique. More color was also introduced…..especially yellow and blue. Whales, bear, salmon and eagles were a few of the animals that were woven into the Form Line Designs. The robes twined with these designs are called Chilkat Robes. Cheryl also wrote a book called “The Chilkat Dancing Blanket” that describes the history and techniques to weaving this type of robe.

I took a class from Cheryl in both Ravenstail and Chilkat weaving several years ago and have been weaving off and on for several years. Mostly off, I’m sorry to say, but recently I’ve been driving to Portland once a month to weave with John Beard (google him) and several others under his wing.

There is a robe in Portland, Oregon called the Transition Robe.

The upper half of this robe is woven in Ravenstail and the lower part is Chilkat. Since I live close, I’ve been lucky enough to see this robe a couple of times. A few years ago I thought it would be fun to do a little bead weaving and came up with my rendition of the Transition Robe for that.

Now I am trying to recreate that little beaded piece by twining with wool in the Ravenstail/Chilkat tradition. I am using traditional thigh spun warp and 2/12 merino wool for the weft. The loom is a vertical loom with warps that hang freely. The weaving starts at the top and the twining is pushed up to compact.

Sally at work on her Raven’s Tail piece piece based on the Transition Robe.

There are many good books on the designs of North West Coast artists and many good weavers with webs that show really, really beautiful new weavings. Enjoy the search.

I will leave you this week by showing you what my friend Anna has been up to. Remember Anna bicycling her way from Alaska to Ushuaia? Well, she is back in the Netherlands now and is not idle! She is refining her spinning skills on the drop spindle and is taking lessons on a wheel. I think I have started something here.(yay) 🙂

This pebble weave band that she was weaving on the road using my book to reinforce the lessons she had in Peru and at my place in Bolivia is now done. She just tied up to her bicycle, a convenient picnic table or chair and wove every chance she could….all the way from my home in Santa Cruz to Ushuaia!

This is what she did with the band…

Beautiful!!

Her spindle collection is going and she told me that her wheel teacher is eyeing her Bolivian spindle but she is not letting go. I will send her another if the pressure becomes too much!

She has one more warp left from those we made at my place to take on the road…a two weft double weave….I recognize those colors!

Bye bye west coast…I am now in Massachusetts. I set off to fly to Boston via Dallas. I got on the plane in Portland and got off….but not in Dallas as expected. I was seated and buckled up ready to go and then a last minute passenger came and I was removed! So back to square one in Portland. Well that’s how it goes on standby!

I spent the night in Dallas airport outside the secured area and so bedded down in the chapel and then finally made it to Boston the next morning where Pam Engberg has invited friends to come and backstrap weave in her studio. Another gorgeous rural setting!! More about that with lovely spring pictures next week. See you then.

Backstrap Weaving – From Santa Cruz to Santa Cruz

Guess where…

I seem to be really lucky when I go to San Francisco and get mist-free morning views of the bridge.

I spent a night here at the Fort Mason Youth Hostel…what a great place, quite a change from the downtown hostel where I have stayed before. Actually, I stayed at this same hostel way back in 1992 on the first day of a 7-month backpacking and hiking tour of the US. Phew! That takes me back!

My friend Janet picked me up and we headed down south to Santa Cruz (yep, from Santa Cruz Bolivia to Santa Cruz CA) to stay with Janet’s cousin on the winery that she and her husband own. Lucky us, except that neither Janet nor I are wine drinkers! But we got to enjoy the beautiful landscape.The winery is perched on a hill surrounded by Redwood forest and has sweeping views down to the ocean and across the bay to Monterey which are especially nice when viewed from the hot tub 🙂

Eerie morning mists with weird faces emerging from the Redwoods.

The mists would rise to reveal Suzie’s pretty flower-laden patio which had a lovely Mediterranean feel. (or at least what I would imagine it to be. It is one of my dreams to be on the Mediterranean, perhaps Malta or some place like that).

Sunny afternoons were spent spinning and lazing on the porch or hanging out at the beach and Santa Cruz Boardwalk. The Boardwalk has a fantastic old carousel.

The sunsets brought a gentle glow and we sure enjoyed the swordfish steaks.

Forgive me but I just had to include this next picture. I am a cat person and usually don’t care at all for the small yappy dogs but these two guys were just adorable!

Then it was on to a visit with the Santa Cruz Handweavers Guild for a show-and-tell by members and a slide show by me.

Here, guild president Gudrun is showing her husband’s newly published book called “Quantum Computing” for which he chose to use images of her beautiful card-woven bands on the cover.

My slide presentation took people on a wee tour of the Bolivian high and lowlands, around the continent and then deep into the textiles, and my experiences learning to weave them. At the same time I got the chance to get reacquainted with some people I had met at CNCH last year as well as meet a lot of new folks.

The following three days were spent weaving at Martha’s beautiful cabin in the woods. That little cabin with the smoke curling out of the chimney warmly greeted us each morning. Martha would join us and entertain us with her tales in her sunny garden for our lunch breaks.

And here’s the gang of backstrap weavers and then with Martha popping in to make a matching bookend with me.

And yes, we did some weaving too. There is everyone “banding together”.

We wove “barefoot“-style and later with loom bars. Annie was happy to get to use a loom that she had bought in Guatemala as well as one of her own woven sashes as a backstrap. Yonat, above right, dove straight in and warped up for the widest motif. Ingrid, with hat, is practicing four-stake warping. That’s Ingrid Crickmore whom I met at CNCH last year. Ingrid is into all things braided and was using her pieces as loom ties during the workshop. The best news is that she has a blog with tutorials on loop braiding and will soon be adding video.

There’s Yonat on the left and Janet. We got to work with Janet’s handspun on day three when she also gave a combing and spinning demo with special tips for spinning for backstrap weaving and everyone loved her yarn.

Smiles from Dorothy and Annie, some “aha”s and a brow furrowed with concentration.

What was interesting and educational for me was the way people chose their colors and placed their designs…no two were alike. I get to learn too in these situations and I have some new color combinations circling in my mind. A friend had asked me to make him a guitar strap with southwest colors and, thanks to Janet, I now have the perfect combo.

Plain weave bands patterned with warp stripes and supplementary wefts, simple warp floats in cotton and pebble weave in handspun wool.

Barbara and Ingrid are at work above showing one of the many cool things about backstrap weaving…you can make short warps quickly and easily for the tiniest projects like a one-of-a-kind key fob or book mark.

During lunch break there was much to see as Martha would bring out textiles from her South American collection. Here is THE textile which I blogged about last week…

Backstrap Weaving – Variations on a Theme and a New Tutorial

I have been all over the place this week…sewing, braiding, twining and weaving four different patterning techniques. Keeps me on my toes!

There was a lot of sewing as I finished the loom bag finally! This has been a long project mostly because I chose to twine the strap for the bag and that was slow slow slow. I decided to twine the word “weave” in different languages into the strap and, although I managed to gather a lot of words from different online buddies, I could only use a handful on the strap. I will save the others for another project.

There is some of the twining as it progressed. I used the English, Spanish, German, Quechua, Gaelic, Swedish and Nigerian words. As for putting the bag itself together, I am not much of a seamstress and so just made it up as I went along using a camera tripod bag as the model. First I made the front panel with a pebble weave design.

Then came the sides and the panels between which the zip would sit all woven in plain warp faced weave..

Once the zip was in I added a zip pull made using an Andean sling braiding technique.

Meanwhile I was still slogging away at the twining.

Then I decided it would be more practical to have pockets for all the smaller items like belt shuttles, pick up sticks and small swords and so I wove another thinner panel with the same pebble weave pattern.

The thin panel was sewn to the back of the bag. I have received two donations of large bags of assorted zips from online buddies so it was just a matter of diving into those and finding three small black zips the same size and I was set. I am getting pretty darn good at sewing these in!

Of course I couldn’t resist adding braided zip pulls. I made a square, flat-ish and round-ish braid for the the three pockets. I must do a tutorial here on that flat braid one of these days. I learned it for making straps for chuspas in Potosi.

Last of all was the strap. the last word to be twined was the Nigerian one which had been provided by a Facebook friend.The problem with twining is all the weft ends that are left hanging at the sides. I had to weave yet another plain weave band to sew to the back of the twined strap under which to hide all those ends. Actually it gives the strap quite a cushioned feel – quite appropriate for something that will be hanging off one’s shoulder.

There’s the last Nigerian word below (two words actually)…

DONE!!

I wove a bit more on the tencel supplementary warp patterned band with its Celtic knot motif…

And I played a bit with a design I got from a Central Asian woven piece.

My friend Lisa photographed this piece at a reenactment event some time ago and sent me the image.

There was not enough detail to see what technique had been employed and I decided that it would look good anyway woven with a supplementary weft. The design is charted here.

Last weekend one of my online buddies sent me this same image saying that she had found it on her desktop and had forgotten from where it had originated and that she thought I might like to weave it in pebble weave. After I reminded her that it was actually from my blog, we both had a laugh and then I thought, “Huh, I wonder how this would look in pebble weave?” And then another “huh”. How would it look in other techniques?

Hence the title of this weeks’s blog post…Variations on a Theme.

Here is how it looked when I originally wove it using a supplementary weft…

I guess I am very lucky to have been able to travel so much here in South America and learn so many different techniques and designs. I have often met weavers here in my travels who are masters at two techniques and have been weaving them all their lives and who are delighted and bubbling with curiosity when I show them motifs woven in the same technique from another region within their own country. Others see a technique in my samples that they don’t know and plead to be taught it. Sometimes I have to push back my desire to learn from them in order to teach them. They are always so happy to have an “edge” over their other weaving companions with this new knowledge.

So, just for the fun of it I celebrated the fact that I have had access to many patterning methods and I adapted the Central Asian motif to three other techniques. There are still several more to try.

From left to right…in the same supplementary weft technique but in finer yarns (35 wpi ground), in double weave, the original supplementary weft (24 wpi ground), pebble weave and supplementary warp. I love them all!

I once taught pebble weave to a weaver in Ecuador. The weavers in his community weave with tapestries and belts patterned with supplementary warps. The pebble weave technique is not known. I left him with drawings of various Bolivian and Peruvian motifs to copy if he wished as I didn’t have woven samples to give him. Eighteen months later I returned to see his band with his attempts to duplicate the drawings but there was also a rooster motif which he had adapted from the typical supplementary warp belts and embroideries of his community.

And Juan definitely wanted to have an edge over the other weavers. He wouldn’t even teach the pebble weave to his brothers!

I shared a room at the tinkuy with a weaver from Cochabamba who was dying to learn the design on one of my pebble weave amulet bags. She already knew pebble weave but not this particular design. As there simply wasn’t time to learn it at the tinkuy I swapped my amulet bag for one of her spindles. I wonder if she has woven it and if her new design is envied by the other weavers in her community.

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The Weave-Along in the backstrap group on Ravelry is coming to its end on March 6th with what we are calling the “big bang”. There seems to be a lot of weaving going on by the handful of weave-alongers and we have even been hearing from a lurker or two. Projects are still being posted…

Tracy made one of her pebble weave bands into a cell phone pouch. She edged it with a single row of cross knit looping or Van Dyke stitch as it is in known in embroidery. (See the video in this post for instructions). Check out Tracy’s latest blog post on the textiles she saw in Syria.

Marsha (PandulaArts) wove these pieces on the left patterned with simple warp floats and then dabbled in a little double weave.

Toby, who is not participating in the weave along, but who is a regular contributor to the backstrap weaving group on Weavolution, has been trying warp substitution technique (on the left) using a Bedouin motif and double weave (on the right). The warp substitution technique is a very good introduction to the basic pick up patterning method which is also used to produce patterns in double weave. It is a good idea to start with this technique before advancing to double weave. As you can see, one of the disadvantages of the warp substitution technique is that it produces long floats on the back of the piece. The length of the floats can be reduced by carefully choosing designs and spacing. Toby’s design on the right is his own invention.

Tanyabe has been making her first steps in pebble weave on the left and Tracy is now weaving a Chinchero design in pebble weave. This design is charted in my book.

Jennifer’s Sami bands are gorgeous!! She has been doing these on her rigid heddle and inkle looms and I believe that she has one going in wool on her backstrap loom too. Once again I remind you that you can access instructions and patterns for these bands on the Yahoo Bands and Braids Group or by buying Sue Foulkes’s book here.

As folks finish off their projects for big bang Sunday, a couple have asked for a tutorial on the tubular bands that are often used here as decorative edgings for finished woven pieces. These are bands that are woven and sewn simultaneously to the edge of a piece of fabric using the weft as the sewing thread. There are several kinds of bands. Some are in plain weave and this is probably the easiest place to start learning about these.

I have put together a tutorial here with photos and a short video. I have also put a video there that I shot at the Tinkuy de Tejedores in Peru of a Bolivian weaver attaching a band to the edge of one of her bags.

These bands can be used to cover the raw edge of a weaving as I did with the edge of the cell phone pouch above. However, I would not attempt to do this until you have practiced the technique many times on the selvedges of your woven fabrics. It is far easier to learn to apply these bands to edges that are not threatening to unravel!

You can see above that a narrow warp is wound and set up with simple string heddles and a shed loop. I use a tapestry needle to carry the weft and sew the band to the fabric.

The purse on the left has been edged on three sides with one of these bands. See the full tutorial here.

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Greetings come from “bicycle Anna” this week who is now down in the Chilean city where I spent my first five years in South America. Punta Arenas is the southern most city on the South American continent. From the city you can see the island of Tierra del Fuego across the Straits of Magellan.

Anna stopped by to see me at home and have some weaving lessons. She is now in the land of sheep…tens of thousands of them and her new drop spindling skills are being honed. She is carrying llama and alpaca fiber that I gave her along with a Bolivian spindle and I am sure that she will be adding Patagonian wool to her fiber stash.

And look how she is getting on with her pebble weave with her loom tied to her bike! It’s summer down there…you wouldn’t think so from the gear she has on. The days are looong and if you get one without wind it can be heavenly.

Anna has been spreading the fiber love by teaching young fellow cyclist Kate to make the six-strand finger loop braid that I learned in Potosi (one of the ones on my new loom bag).

I must warn you now that this is pretty much the end for this post of anything related to weaving or fiber as I indulge in a little nostalgia trip to the place I called home for five years…the wild Chilean Patagonia. Some of these pictures are Anna’s.

A house at left is painted with a scene depicting the famous southern Chilean lamb barbecue – asado al palo.

The Andes dip down into the sea before reaching this part of the world creating a series of islands, fjords and sounds. The land is scrubby and flat and rather colorless. Trees grow sideways with the constant winds.

Punta Arenas is a city of houses walled with corrugated sheeting. Rather than let it all run to rust residents paint with soft pastel shades, splashes of color in the bleak landscape.

This statue of an Ona indian is in the Plaza de Armas in the city center. The toe shines as visitors rub it to insure their return to Punta Arenas one day. Puerto Natales futher north is located on Ultima Esperanza Sound and is the gateway to the spectacular Torres del Paine National Park.

Craggy mountain peaks, fjords and wildlife in and around Torres del Paine…a rhea or ñandu walks with her chicks.

Herds of Guanaco roam the park.

The hiking and scenery are superb but be prepared for a good battering by the wind! I got to go to Antarctica twice when I was there and thus add the seventh continent to my list. After all it is just across the Drake Passage! I will leave you with some shots from there.

Penguins, albatross and seals. This Albatross is in the Falkland Islands. Lots of whales too which I could never quite catch on film. And yes, I was weaving between all this!

They tell you to not to get within ten feet of the wildlife but if you just sit still on the beach long enough, the penguins all come to you!

Ah well, back to jungly steamy Santa Cruz. It’s time for coca tea and a mango!

Backstrap Weaving – Smoothing out the rough.

SMOOTHING OUT THE ROUGH.

SAMPLE! My own words are ringing in my ears….if you are using a new yarn or a new technique on your backstrap loom….sample, sample, sample. And don’t trust your first samples for making width measurements for future projects. You have yet to settle into the new technique and things are still bound to change. Keep practicing while you slowly smooth out the rough bits. Sample away happily knowing you can probably make something from the samples, no matter how small or silly! If not, put it in your notebook with lots of notes beside it…believe me, you will forget if you don’t write it all down.

Here are a couple of small samples that I managed to make into decorative and useful things. My log cabin sampler got used as the cover of a flip notepad that always goes with me on my travels. This notebook is now full and I need to get the cover off so I can somehow fix it to another notepad. My first ever shadow weave sample got pulled off the loom as I was satisfied once I saw that it was working and I didn’t really care for the color combination. It got made into a small sewing kit purse which also goes traveling with me.

And never mind if your sample ends up with wonky selvedges and you don’t know what to do with those pesky raw edges. There is usually a way around all that. The edges of my log cabin piece were turned around the ends of the notebook cover and glued down. Another piece of fine cardboard glued to the inside covered those edges for a neat finish. The zip took care of hiding and protecting the raw edges of the shadow weave piece.

I thought I would show in this blog post some of the finishes that I have used for my pieces, uses I have found for samples and different ways that I have dealt with raw edges.

You may remember from these previous posts here and here that I have been trying out finnweave on my backstrap loom. My first samples did not prove trustworthy for calculating the dimensions of my next project and so, what I had hoped would turn out as squares, ended up being more rectangular. Here is my warp set up for my square design samples…

And here are the rectangular results…

Width needed some adjustments and I learned to beat a bit harder as I progressed. I learned a lot about how to read from the weaving rather than from the chart with the design on the left. This is from one of the Prairie Wool Companion 1982 issues. There is a Chinese lattice work design charted and then three variations provided so that one can weave a set of four placemats. The version I chose is the one furthest removed from the original Chinese design. The design on the right is one I invented using the little pre columbian birds that I wove before and gave me more practice with filled-in shapes.

I was able to make something cute from the two samples…

This is a double weave and it is particularly tricky dealing with its raw edges. Folding over two layers to hem is bulky and unsightly and so I followed the advice that I read in an article and wove the start and finish of each piece as two separate layers with open edges.

The idea is to turn both edges inward and sew them together like that. However, I didn’t do that. As I was going to sew in a zip, I cut the white layer back as far as I could and then simply turned the black layer over it. The black turned edge got sewn down and hidden under the zip so all is well and protected and nice and neat to boot.

One thing I was not so happy about was the edges…

This may just be something that I am goofing up, but to my eye, the edge is ugly as you can clearly see how both layers of contrasting colors come together. A row of single cross knit looping covered that up nicely as you can see on the right. However, my eyes just about fell out…black on black. I had to stand right by the window in good light to do this.

So that was one solution to the ugly edges. On the other little bag, I added one of those woven bands that are woven and sewn simultaneously using the weft as the sewing thread. I used it down the side and along the bottom and it broke the design up nicely between the two faces. A four-strand braid for the zipper-pull was the finishing touch.

Speaking of braids I made the zipper-pull for my loom bag project…remember? – woven bag, braided zip-pull and twined strap.

It’s a 24-strand braid worked in the hand as my Peruvian sling braiding teacher had shown me.

I had not done this kind of braid in this size yarn before and so it was a bit of a challenge.

This is the base of the Margarita braid but as, I was so focused on just keeping everything in order while muttering the moves to myself, I did not venture into doing the changes in sequence that produce the diamond designs on the Margarita-style braid.

The cross knit looping that I used to hide the ugliness on my finnweave piece can sometimes be added to perfectly good looking selvedges as an extra decorative feature or it can be used to draw attention to or hide the place where two pieces of fabric are joined. This is also known as Van Dyke stitch in embroidery (see the video embedded in this blog post).

Other things that can be used to disguise a less-than-perfect edge or brighten something that is a little too plain are braids.

A two-color stitch can look good on the edge of a very plain one-color piece or hide its wonkiness if necessary!

This was a sample I made for a plain warp-faced weave weave-along. I sewed a four-strand braid around the edges which also served as a strap. Again, the zip handily hides and protects the raw edges.

This little pouch was started with a third selvedge which you can see on the right. I sewed across the raw edge with very visible stitches as neatly as I could by hand and then sewed that edge down.

Then there’s good old hem stitching which I only learned fairly recently from this video. I got such a kick out of learning and doing this the first time, I wanted to go around and hem stitch everything!

Teeny tiny “invisible” hand stitches seem to work well at the bottom of book marks and keyfobs. Warp ends can also be braided. I like to dab the ends of the braids with diluted white glue and squeeze them into a tapered shape as they dry. I think it looks better than having knots in the ends.

Above are some bookmarks decorated with Guatemalan supplementary weft designs, a double weave key fob and a pebble weave Celtic knot pattern.

I am not so convinced about the way that I chose to deal with the raw edges on these very thick double weave mug rugs.

This came after many attempts to sew them neatly and invisibly. They are too thick for the method I suggested earlier where you weave the two layers separately and turn them in on each other.

I figured if I couldn’t make the stitches invisible I would go for very visible and decorative, and something in keeping with the ethnic nature of the design.

This is the back side. The brown thread cannot be seen on the front.

I sewed these while they were still stretched out on the loom and had to put a mirror in my lap so I could see how the stitches were being placed on the back.

I am open to suggestions for improving this!

Montagnard (Vietnamese hilltribe) weavers often finish their weavings with weft twining. They then add beads and often a few more rows of weft twining. I wasn’t convinced that the weft twining would stand in place on its own and sufficiently “finish” a piece until I tried it myself. It is firm and sturdy and there is no way those twined wefts are going to work their way loose. Here is some twining I did in a traditional Jarai design on the end of a warp-faced piece…

On the Bedouin design wall hanging that I did on the right I also twined the edge and finished it off with wrapped warps.

Warp wrapping, braiding and other finishing techniques are covered in Finishes in the Ethnic Tradition by Karen Searle and Suzanne Baizerman.

My latest favorite edging which I learned at the tinkuy de tejedores in Cusco last November is the tubular woven band which is woven and sewn simultaneously to edges shown below on the right. This is another one that totally grabbed me. I had to stop myself from tubular banding everything in sight!

I decided to try a plain weave single-color band as an edging after seeing how Guarani weaver Angela edges her pieces and I used it on the cell phone pouch above. It very nicely covers and protects the raw edge where I cut and shaped the flap.

Well, enough about smoothing out the rough, brightening the plain and taming those wild warp ends. Back to finnweave. I am still enjoying the Cora and Huichol pieces and traditional Scandinavian patterns and have just learned that another Mexican group, the Otomí, also practice this technique. However, I am returning to my original goal now and am about to chart my first pre columbian design based on one of my textile fragments. This will be another sampler and I will wet finish this one.

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What have the weave-alongers been up to?

Linda wove her first band with horizontal bars getting warmed up for simple warp floats. She also made supplementary weft samples so she could learn about the scale of her charted designs against the woven fabric before launching into a project. Bobbie finished her piece with the central supplementary weft pattern. The chart for this design is here. I really like the effect of the different colored horizontal bars design that she used on the edges.

After finishing another pebble weave piece, Jennifer shifted to double weave and enjoyed sampling the technique in #3 crochet cotton. The llamas are charted here.

Tracy is back from her trip and back at the loom doing pebble weave.

Tracy’s latest band is on the left and Jennifer’s finished piece is on the right. You can see that her knitting needle is not standing up to the task of creating her third selvedge. You can read some tips about starting with a third selvedge here.

Both Marsha and Jennifer tried double weave in #10 thread but decided it was too fine to tackle yet. Marsha is doing a double weave band, her first with a pattern, in #3 thread. She is writing the name of her roommate on what will be the strap for a camera bag. Jennifer made a keyfob as her first attempt with #10 thread and is happy to continue sampling with #3.

And just wait until you see this…

Helena in Brazil finished her pouch and has attached an adjustable band with buckle for her sister to use on her trip to Australia. I love that orange! There are ideas here for fun ways to combine colors, right?

The central design is one I invented and include in my book. I made it to go in a wall hanging along with the adaptation I made of a Huichol motif. This design includes the diamonds, spokes and curls that were also elements in the Huichol pattern.

I will leave you with our Weave-Along group’s learning mantra:

Short, Narrow Warps and Sample, Sample, Sample!