I love how easy it is to warp for backstrap weaving especially after reading and hearing about what is involved with warping those bigger table and floor looms-all that threading! However, finding the place and equipment for warping for the backstrap loom is often the problem. Finding the sticks  to put a loom together seems to be relatively easy, making a nice beater takes a little time and thought but where and how to wind that warp-now that can be tricky.

As you can see above, my first weaving teachers in Peru taught me to make tiny bands using a tiny warping board. I learned two techniques with them and was eager when I got back to my home in Chile to incorporate both into one large piece.

Perhaps a  little over ambitious but you can see the results of my attempts to wind a longer wider warp. My warping stakes leaned horribly and I ended up with this wonky thing-look at the far loom bar and the tilt on it! Firmly grounded warping stakes are a must.

Well,  I persevered and put a lot of work into that piece but it was never quite right. At least I was satisfied that I could weave the techniques without the supervision of  my teachers.The piece itself ended up in a box. Recently I got it out and salvaged what I could and am now using it to cover some small photo albums that I take with me on my travels.

The colors and layout were inspired by woven sashes that I had seen on Taquile Island on Lake Titicaca,  Peru.

Photo album covers made with the two patterning tecnhiques I learned in Huancayo, Peru.

Hilda is poised ready to roll the ball of yarn to me.

A year later I went to Bolivia and studied with two sisters in Potosi. They weave their large pieces on a staked-out ground loom and only use a backstrap set-up for small bands. I love the way they warp there. Two women seat themselves at each end of the loom and roll the ball of yarn back and forth while winding the figure-of-eight. You can see at left that Hilda is pulling up on the end of the yarn with her left hand to maintain tension while she rolls the ball to me. I will do the same before rolling the ball back. The only problem–you tend to talk too much and lose count. Neither of us was counting in our native language-Hilda’s being Quechua and mine, of course, English. Between that and the chatting we lost count many times!

We are using respun acrylic yarn in the bright colors that the weavers in Potosi love. With two people, this would be a great way to direct warp for backstrap weaving.

The weaving I worked on in Potosi is almost finished here. It is a four-selvedge piece and there are a couple of inches to go to close the gap. It took all day to weave that last bit!

Warping the Potosi way (almost)

Probably nostalgia for the fun I had had with Hilda and her sister Julia in Potosi led me to try the following way of warping  when I got back home to Chile.

I can tell you right now that it is not as entertaining to do alone and it is pretty slow and difficult trying to manage two colors at once as you need to do for double weave and complimentary warp weaves.

Neverthless I got this warp done, it was well tensioned and even and I wove a big bold design inspired by designs of the Mapuche people of central Chile and Argentina.

One of the Mapuche inspired designs I wove into the above piece.

I traveled a lot more, met many weavers and saw a lot more ways to warp for a variety of looms and techniques, some of which I’d like to share with you here.

Making a circular warp for the collar of a poncho in Otavalo, Ecuador. Note the horizontal bar that helps stop the stakes from leaning in towards each other.

In Salasaca, my teacher Felipe wound a mini circular warp for me to take home just in case I forgot how to make one for the belt weaving technique he taught me. This was put together hastily. The sticks leaned and the resulting warp was crooked but it was just meant as a reminder and served its purpose..

Look at this beauty from Guatemala at a nice height so you can stroll up and down with your yarn.

Warping for a hammock in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. This would certainly give you a work out.

With my teacher, Trini, looking on I am learning to make a circular warp for a mini hammock in Zapote, Ecuador

Probably the set-up I would most like to have--just the 5 stakes that my teacher in Santa Catarina Palopo is using here.

My favorite way---group warping! We are making a straight warp here with stakes and metal rods driven into the ground-Salasaca, Ecuador.

Probably the most interesting system I saw, which, unfortunately, was impossible to photograph, was near Huancayo, Peru where a woman had stakes embedded in the walls of the hall of her home at chest level so she just had to walk up and down the length of the hall to warp. Now if only I had a longer hall……….

So what do you do if you don’t have a warping board? I have seen a Youtube video where a guy wedges stakes between books in his book case and warps around those.

I was lucky to have this chair to use when I first got settled in here in Bolivia.  It was useful for narrow projects- practice bands, small bags and bookmarks.

The way that I showed in my WeaveZine article using clamps  is fine as long as you can clamp those stakes down really well . Don’t use your good table for this. I have heard of people turning chairs and tables upside down and using the legs. I once used a coat rack in a hostel room where I was staying. Whatever way your creativity and circumstances lead you, just make sure that the stakes or posts are very well grounded and will not lean in at all as you wind your warp. Even the smallest amount of lean will make a difference.

If you see yourself continuing in backstrap weaving and making longer and wider pieces, it will be worthwhile buying a warping board or making something sturdy and more permanent. It doesn’t need to be fancy as you can see from my little ”beauty” here.

This allows me to wind a 36”  long warp which I have used to make shoulder bags, sets of three mug rugs, placemats, table runners, pillow covers  and wall hangings. For making longer pieces such as belts and guitar straps, I have had to get creative.

Basic warping involves winding your yarn around two stakes, like those seen above, in a simple figure-of-eight path. Your loom bars will replace the two warping stakes and the cross you have created will allow you to set up your two sheds using a shed rod and continuous string heddles. I often put a second cross in once my warp is on the loom. (More about that in a future post)

Warping with a single color

If you want to weave a  piece with horizontal stripes in two colors or weave simple warp float patterns or any other complementary warp technique you will need to wind two colors together. Again, this can be done on just two stakes. I like to place my balls of yarn in flower pots so they don’t roll about and get tangled. Other hints and tips will come up in future posts or you can find them in the Backstrap Weaving Group forum at Weavolution.

Winding red and yellow yarns together

Preparing to wind 2 colors together on my smaller warping board. Note the large loop of yarn around the warping stake which can be easily slipped off the stake and onto your loom bar.

Warping with 2 colors together will result in a cross like this.

The colors on this tiny band can then be rearranged so that the original cross can be replaced by a new one where each color along with the green borders is in its own shed.

Many Andean weaves are complementary warp weaves and require an arrangement of warps into sheds of two colors as shown above right. This arrangement of warps will allow you to weave something as simple as horizontal stripes or more complex warp float patterned weaves.

FOR THE ADVENTUROUS!!

The following is a video from my Flickr page which shows how I was taught in Peru to warp with two colors using four stakes. The colors are separated– each color into its own shed on the warping board itself as you warp–fast and efficient and especially recommended for wide warps. (The two additional stakes that you see in the video are temporarily fixed to the warping board with ”blu-tack”).

Just to finish off, here is what I am working on at the moment……

Two-weft double weave piece in progress

I fell in love with this design the moment I saw it posted at Weavolution. A member had woven a reproduction of a tablet woven curtain that hangs in a cave church in Abba Yohanni, Ethoipia. These curtains were produced and hung in many such churches in Ethiopia in the 17th Century. Rob S, who wove the reproduction, used over 300 tablets. This is just a small part of the overall curtain design. I am weaving it  in two-weft double weave. I have a strip of double weave bordered by plain weave. One weft weaves the plain weave and upper layer of the double weave. The second weft weaves the lower layer of the double weave.

This is quite a change after making all those colorful key fobs but now I have to deal with the black picking up every single speck of dust in the house! I hope to now reverse the pattern and weave a white motif on a black base. I am not sure what I will make of this piece. I’ll decide when it is done.

SUPPLEMENTARY WEFT PATTERNS-the tutorial.

A motif inspired by a Central Asian design and woven with a supplementary weft

A design inspired by weavings of the Huni Kuin people of tropical Brazil

You may remember these designs from a previous post on supplementary weft patterning. Now I am happy to present the promised tutorial on supplementary weft patterning together with a tiny project idea-key fobs.

This technique definitely falls into the category of those which are within the reach of beginners. We weave a simple plain weave band and then ”paint” in some motifs with an additonal weft.

A set of simple key fobs made with techniques suitable for beginners.

Let’s look at the above key fobs-nice beginner projects. A beginner in backstrap weaving will probably start by weaving a plain band like the light blue one on the left, learning to wind an evenly tensioned warp, set up the loom, operate the sheds and keep their edges straight and even. They may then move on to the next band adding some stripes to their warp-getting used to cutting and tying on new colors at the warping board and maintaining an even tension. From there they can try horizontal stripes which involves a rearrangement of the cross on the loom-a new skill.  More complex arrangements will produce staggered horizontal bands or ”combs” as in the red and black  and black and white bands.

And then we come to the two supplementary weft patterned bands on the far right. I aim to show you in the following tutorial how simple this technique is.

To weave bands decorated with patterns made with a supplementary weft, I start off with a warp prepared for plain warp faced weave. For this tutorial, I have used strong primary colors which show up well in photos. My yarn is 24 wpi mercerized crochet cotton. The blue base, seen below,  has a pale yellow stripe next to each edge. As I used my mini portable warping board, I have  just enough warp to make two key fobs. Instead of a shed rod I am using a simple shed loop and I have put the end loops on a needle to have a smooth rather than fringed start.

You can see more about the needle start in this previous post.

A warp prepared for plain weave. There are two sheds-the heddle shed and the shed loop shed.

Enough plain weave has been woven to be passed through the key ring, folded and sewn. Now I can begin the pattern.

We introduce the color of our choice as the supplementary weft with which to make our patterns. I am using doubled strands of embroidery floss which work really well with the 24wpi plain weave base. The supplementary weft always needs to be a lot thicker than the main weft. Embroidery floss is thick, lies flat and gives good coverage. Looking at the photos below, you will see the difference in width between the blue warp and weft threads and the yellow supplementary weft.  The blue weft will continue to form the structure of the plain weave while the yellow independently forms the motifs.

THE PATTERN CHART (All the pattern charts for these projects can be seen here)

Pattern chart for supplementary weft patterning

You may recognize this diamond chart from my double weave projects.

For supplementary weft patterning, we need to look at the chart in a slightly different way. In double weave the yellow spots would indicate the warps that need to be picked.

However, in this technique the yellow spots within the diamonds represent each warp that needs to be dropped in order to expose the supplementary weft.

Now let’s see this in action……..

WEAVING

Dropping the warps in the first row of pattern.

I have opened the heddle shed and placed my beater within and I am using a pointed stick to help select and drop my warps. Reading the pattern chart from right to left and starting at the bottom, I see that I need to keep the first six warps, then drop one, keep one, drop two, keep one, drop three and so on across the row.

Passing the supplementary weft through the shed from left to right. I am separating the warps to show the starting tail which is left hanging out under the weaving and which can be trimmed when the band is finished. You can see that I am laying in the supplementary weft only from one yellow edge stripe to the other rather than all the way across the band.

Passing the main weft from left to right under all the warps in the open heddle shed. This completes the first row.

I have opened the shed loop shed , placed my beater within and beaten. Now I am dropping the warps in the shed loop shed according to the second row of the pattern chart again counting the warps from right to left-keep six, drop two, keep one, drop two and so on.

Again, the yellow supplementary weft is passing from the edge of one stripe to the other turning on the surface of the weave. I am laying in the weft loosely and pushing it into place with the pointed stick .

After passing the main weft from right to left under all the warps in the open shed loop shed, I open the heddle shed, place the beater within and beat, ready to do row three.

I am finishing the third row. You can see that the yellow weft turns on the surface of the weaving at the stripes. I don't like carrying the supplementary weft all the way to the edge as I don't like the bumpy edge that that creates. I would rather have the weft turning against the stripe and use that as a decorative feature.

One half of the motif is finished. I can continue with the same color or introduce another. The finish tail of the yellow weft will be left hanging out the back of the weaving. If you have packed your wefts in firmly, you will be able to safely snip the tail off when you finish the band.

On this Central Asian design that I made you can see that the turning wefts on the left form their own decorative ''stripe' on the plain weave.

The turns of the pattern wefts in this piece virtually disappear against a stripe of the same color.

Several colors can be used for the motifs within one piece.

I have put the pattern charts for these motifs as well as the Central Asian and Huni Kuin inspired designs on a separate page. You can design and print out your own blank diamond charts here.

If you are planning your own designs, as a general rule, it is best not to have weft floats that span more than four warps. This of course will depend on how fine a yarn you are using and the purpose of the piece you are weaving. You need to consider that long floats on a key fob or bag will easily catch on things whereas on a hatband, for example, they may not be a problem. You should also take in account the fact that floats over a single warp, for example the points of the triangles in my sample design here,  can barely be seen. Try to have your weft floating over a minimum of two warps.

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I finished the motif in another bright photogenic color and have turned the loom around to weave another key fob on the other end. You can see that the design does not show on the back of the band.

Below are some more key fobs that I have made in a variety of techniques and yarns ranging from 12 wpi mercerized cotton to doubled sewing thread. I weave a few now and then to add to the collection and have them handy as gifts for my friends here, or back in Australia or for other travelers I meet on the road in South America. Some are finished and some are yet to be braided and sewn.

Two can be made on one warp. First I weave one and then I move the shed loop to the other side of the heddles, turn the loom around, pass a needle through the end loops and start weaving from the other end. I cut between the two small weavings when I have finished and then braid the ends or leave them as fringe.

Key fobs in earthy colors

And some in brighter colors.

SO WHAT HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN UP TO?

There’s nothing I like better than to see my instructions and charts put to use!

Here are some things that a couple of blog visitors have worked on……..

Amber's mug rugs look good with black motifs on white.

Amber made one African and two South American motif mug rugs on the one warp. She tied up her loom to the ladder on her sister’s bunk bed which I think is a brilliant tie up place. I am thinking about having a sturdy wooden ladder with several rungs built  and screwed into a wall so that I can have different tie up places at different heights.  When I am not using it for weaving, I can use it to hang things on or display weavings draped over the rungs. Thanks for the idea, Amber.

Courtney tied up her loom to a sofa bed to weave her llama band. You can read more about this project and her furry helper on her blog.

My tutorial for this one-weft double weave technique can be found in the Backstrap Weaving Group at Weavolution.

Courtney's black and red llama motifs.

If anyone else out there is weaving the designs or using the tips from my blog, I would love to hear from you and show off your projects here. Even if you have not woven a project yet, I would  love to see the backstrap loom you have put together. I hope to see what you have created with supplementray weft patterning.

Leave a comment for me here or contact me at Weavolution. You will need to join Weavolution to do so-it’s free!

Once again, thanks for visiting and thanks for all the comments!

© Laverne Waddington and backstrapweaving.wordpress.com, 2009-2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Laverne Waddington and backstrapweaving.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A bevy of backstrapped bookmarks

My favorite ”on the road”  project is weaving bookmarks. Many times I find myself at night in a deserted hostel in some small town with no internet access and nothing to do so I entertain myself by weaving bookmarks. There always seems to be a bed rail or something to tie my loom up to.  I make bookmarks, key fobs and sometimes small coin purses to give away to fellow travelers and weavers that I meet along the way. Often I swap coin purses with weavers and spinners for interesting spindle whorls, small tools or other bits and pieces. I take all my loom rods with me in my backpack as well as a nifty little warping board that I made which was inspired by my very first weaving teacher in  Huancayo, Peru. My teacher, Margarita and her daughter used to come into town everyday with their little warping board to teach me.

Warping with a board and nails in Huancayo

My warping board is even smaller than this one. It is basically a flat narrow stick about the thickness of a ruler and I use long screws in place of nails as I can secure them to the board with the nut-no leaning warping stakes. It gives me a warp just long enough to make one bookmark or two key fobs. I use two or three widths of warp from this board to make a coin purse.

I like to start my woven pieces with a smooth edge-that means one less hem, braid or fringe to worry about- and I achieve this by threading a steel needle through the warp ends and lashing that to the loom bar. You need to lash it firmly so it won’t bend when you put tension on the warp. Once off the loom, the needle is removed and I pass the first weft tail through the end loops back and forth two or three times on a large sewing needle.  Then I braid the other end or sew over the end and leave a fringe. The book mark sits within the pages of the book with fringe or braids protruding.

Part of my mini warping board. I wrap the screws with paper to stop the warps from catching in the screw threads.

Steel knitting pins and lengths of piano wire that I use to create a smooth start for my weavings.

Finishing the smooth start by passing the weft tail on a large sewing needle.

Finishes for bookmark ends-one has a sewn over edge with fringe and the other has 4-strand braids.

Two weavers from Yanque in Peru chose my bookmarks over the coin purses. Even the little guy got one!

For a nice thin bookmark that is not too bulky within a book, I use a 35wpi crochet cotton and recently used it to make a double woven bookmark with a cute llama motif. I made this one with a plain weave border in two-weft double weave but it could just as easily be made in one-weft double weave.

The llama is a much loved symbol of Bolivia and Peru but you certainly don’t need to be trekking down to South America to see this lovely animal anymore. There seem to be more than enough of them being successfully raised in many other countries around the world. I saw many on the outskirts of the city on my last visit to Sydney. There was even a llama festival on at the time.

Here in Bolivia and Peru the llamas have many uses. They are used as  pack animals for transporting grains in sacks, often woven from their own fiber, from villages to markets. Their fiber is woven into blankets, coca bags , belts and other accessories as well as braided into slings and ropes.

Their dung is used as a fuel for cooking fires and their meat is often enjoyed as charque-dried meat similar to jerky. The bone from a llama’s lower leg is shaped into a pick up tool and beater-the wichuna-part of a weaver’s basic tool kit. Enterprising locals pose with their beautiful animals for tourists and they are irresistable!

Dried llama fetuses are sold at the market stalls that sell homemade remedies. The llama fetus is buried at the cornerstone of a new house as an offering to PachaMama in the hope that she will bring prosperity to the home owners.

Ladies posing with their llamas near Cusco, Peru

Llamas carrying produce on the road near Yanque, Peru

Produce at an agricutural festival is displayed in sacks made from llama fiber and wool.

You can see the dried llama fetuses hanging up high in this market stall. On the table are drop spindles, llama fiber and wichunas.

A closer look at llama ''charque'', llama fiber and two ''wichunas''.

Slings, which are beautifully braided from llama fiber, are used, amongst other things, to hurl stones to help control animals wandering from the herd.

As there are no llamas here in lowland Bolivia where I live, I bought bags and bags of their fiber many years ago when I was in the highlands-enough to keep me occupied spinning and weaving for many years to come. I am no spinning expert and just do as I was taught here. The fiber needs to be spun very firmly to stand up to the weaving of warp faced textiles on the backstrap loom. All the weavers that I have studied with weave with a two-ply yarn and all spinning and plying is done on drop spindles.

From left to right-two shoulder bags, a tool bag and a band that I used for a journal cover-these are all made from my handspun llama fiber. The yarn for the band was dyed after plying with cochineal, coca leaves and spearmint leaves. The designs are inspired by designs of, from left to right, lowland Bolivia, higland Peru, and highland Bolivia.

I thought that you may like to have the pattern charts for the four llama motifs on my double weave bookmark.

Llama by day-motif one.

Llama by night-motif two

Llama with volcano-motif three

Llama with mountains-motif four

And, once again, the real thing-on the road near Tarabuco, Bolivia grazing alongside sheep, goats and cattle.

You could use these motifs in any project-not only in a bookmark. If you are not ready to try fine yarns yet, you could use a  heavier yarn and weave them into a shoulder bag, for example. Don’t forget that you can access my free tutorial on one-weft double weave by joining Weavolution and the Backstrap Weaving Group.

A full-page drawing by Guaman Poma de Ayala depicting part of a llama festival where a man is singing to a llama and, apparently the llama is singing back!

Finally, I would like to share with you all a spectacular web site with hundreds of beautiful drawings like the one above.. This is the offiicial site of the chronicles of Guaman Poma de Ayala, an indigenous Peruvian of a noble family who became disillusioned with the treatment of the native peoples of the Andes by the Spanish after the Conquest.

His  nearly 1200-page chronicle, written between 1600 and 1615,  is addressed to King Philip III of Spain and outlines the injustices of colonial rule. The 398 pages of drawings capture many aspects of daily life in pre and post Conquest Peru-festivals, costume, weaving, spinning, agricultural cycles,  Inca royalty, government……..

You can view digital facsimiles of all the pictures in this chronicle here.

An apology to subcribers to my blog who may have received multiple notifications. I have been doing some house cleaning and have moved pages around. One of the pages had to be republished which means that you would have gotten an automatic email notification for something that you had already seen. Sorry!

Thank you  for all your comments!

SUPPLEMENTARY WEFT PATTERNING

Lately I have been playing with supplementary weft patterning and, once again, have been inspired by Weavolution members. One member joined my Backstrap Group as she is interested, amongst other things, in reproducing a Central Asian yurt band. She has introduced me to many beautiful Central Asian designs and often sends me photos of pieces she has seen at reenactmant events that she attends.

Together we figured out the technique on a yurt band she had bought and even wove it simultaneously- all coordinated by email!

When she sent me this photo (at left) of a Central Asian piece she had photographed at one of the historical events, I couldn’t wait to weave the design into something. The technique wasn’t clear in the photo and, as I wasn’t concerned with reproducing the original technique,  I decided to weave it in either double weave or supplementary weft patterning. I chose the latter as, since studying this technique in Guatemala in 2008, I hadn’t put it to much use.

In this technique, it is really important to get the right balance between the weight of the warp yarn and that used for the supplementary weft and so I quickly wove a sample and then went ahead and made the table runner below in 4/2 cotton (24wpi) warp with 6 strands of the patterning thread that I had brought back from Guatemala as the supplementary weft. You can see that I added a little embellishment of my own to the pattern.

My colors are rather bland compared with the original. I love that orange zigzag next to the main design. Perhaps I will be more adventurous with color next time!

My table runner with a Central Asian inspired design

My other source of inspiration has been a Brazilian member of Weavolution who has generously shared what she knows about the weavings of the Huni Kuin people who live in the tropical forest of Brazil and Peru. They weave with backstrap looms using cotton that they spin and dye themselves. You can see a video of their work here and a photo of a Huni Kuin weaver here. Although they do not use  the supplementary weft technique, I chose to use this method to weave one of their designs into a bag.

A small bag with supplementary weft patterning inspired by a traditional Huni Kuin design.

Here in Bolivia, the supplementary weft technique is used by women to weave bands to decorate their hats. It is in these hatbands that I have seen the widest variety of woven designs. Except for in Calcha, where it seemed that the women had decided on one hatband design to represent their village, I have never seen two hatbands alike.

This Potolo woman is using three hatbands at once.

Hatbands from Bolivia. The top band is from Calcha.

Sometimes the supplementary weft is used to form the motif as in the small condors on the upper half of the center band above. At other times, it is used to fill the negative space to outline the motif on the ground weave.

From having purchased some hatbands here, I was able to see how they were woven. I made a few sample bands but, as I didn’t get the right warp to weft ratio, I wasn’t too pleased with the results and never really went on to explore this technique further- that is, until I went to Guatemala in 2008 and studied weft patterning with three teachers there. It was my first time in Guatemala and an absolute explosion of color and inspiration was awaiting!

This is the traditional hair sash used by the women of Aguacatan, Guatemala and is woven with supplementary patterning wefts on a plain red ground weave.

So I would like to spend the rest of this post introducing you to my first teacher in Guatemala and showing you how I learned supplementary weft patterning with her.

Lidia lives in the very small town of Santa Catarina Barahona near San Antonio Aguas Calientes in Guatemala. The typical blouse, or huipil of the area has designs woven in single and double faced supplementary weft patterning. The large areas of double faced patterning are those that most distinguish the huipiles of this area.

Typical huipil of San Antonio Aguas Calientes.

Single faced weft patterning. The patterns can't be seen on the back of the textile.

This double faced patterning looks very much like embroidery. The national bird, the quetzal, is a very popular motif.

Day 1-Lesson 1. I have chosen my colors for my piece and am winding the thread into balls prior to warping

Making a small warp for my lessons.

Once the loom was tensioned, the heddles were made.

The heddles were made and the shed rod put in place. Then Lidia's sister, Carmelita, showed me how the warps, under which the patterning wefts are placed, are picked and stored on two additional sticks. The resulting designs are called ''pepenado''. You can see one of these sticks up beyond the shed rod. Carmelita is in the process of placing the second stick.

The first design lesson-Lidia is weaving the"tijera" (scissors) pattern-this is a single faced design. She uses a pointed stick to hook the weft tails and draw them under the raised warps.

The finished "tijera" pattern

The second design lesson on day two -a double faced "abeja" (bee).

Three "abejas" that I wove when I got home.

The ”abeja” was topped off with another section of ”tijera” and that completed my second day of classes. Finally, on day three, I learned the ”arcos” (arches) pattern. This is a combination of weft inlay and warp wrapping.

Weaving the "arcos" designs

The finished "arcos" design

It looks like my teachers did all the weaving and I just stood around and snapped pictures! Well, I can tell you  that it wasn’t so. Lidia was a very ”hands-on” teacher and she would take over only when I got up to stretch and take photos.

But it wasn’t all hard work. Other family members and neighbors came to visit, we paused to make and eat tortillas, chatted and played with the nieces and nephews in Lidia’s shady yard and walked to town to go yarn shopping.

Snack time. While making my way around Guatemala I learned to recognize the ''slap slap slapping'' sound of tortillas being prepared.

Carmelita with her new nephew. Small woven rectangular pieces are covered with double faced designs and closed with a drawstring to make babies' hats.

When I got back to Bolivia, I finished off the piece that I had been making with Lidia and then wove another sampler to consolidate the weft patterning techniques I had learned before writing everything up in my journals.

And I used my lesson piece to decorate the lid of my weaving toolbox.

I went on from Lidia’s home to study with two other weavers in Guatemala but, more about that in another post!

Future weavers- Lidia's daugther Sara and her cousins

I will be doing a tutorial on suplementary weft patterning with lots of step-by-step photos here on my blog in the following weeks so that you can add designs like the Central Asian and Huni Kuin ones, that I showed you above, to your projects.

I hope you enjoyed this little trip from Central Asia, to Brazil, to Bolivia and onward to my teacher’s home in Guatemala. If you did, I would love to hear from you

A Weavolution member recently introduced me to Teyacapan’s fabulous Flickr page which has hundreds of images of Mexican people with their crafts and weavings. Honestly, you can get lost in that site for hours! I was very much taken by a photo of a weaver doing gauze weave and hope to go to Mexico one day to study with the gauze weavers. Mexico is very high on my list of places to visit and, as I am planning to go to Guatemala again in March or April, it will be easy to duck over the border. If I can spend so long just looking at the images on Teyacapan’s site, imagine how long I will get caught up in Mexico!!

I am lucky to have some great books on Mexican weaving and have been inspired by the images in Joanne Hall’s marvellous book Mexican Tapestry Weaving, to make some more mug rugs with Mexican motifs. I was given this book by my Navajo weaving teacher back in 1995 and made a Navajo style tapestry based on one of the pictures. It is wonderful to see that all these years later, the images in the book are still fresh and inspiring.

So, I am happy to say that I have woven a set of four Mexican themed mug rugs in double weave and have come up with a new double weave project-a hotpad.

hotpad and matching mug rugs

So, it was Mexican all the way for lunch yesterday with spicy beans and tortillas. I think that the hotpad is another perfect double weave project using 12 wpi cotton-it makes a good thick piece to protect your table from hot dishes and casseroles. I wove it on my backstrap loom and is a good project for those of you who are thinking about venturing  into wider pieces. Practice on a mug rug set first and then add your matching hotpad.

hotpad and mug rug designs

Although I am very happy with the hotpad design, I think I will make a few changes in the patterns I drew for the mug rugs. Perhaps I will break up some of the large red areas with a bit of black-what do you think? Once I have tweaked the designs and woven another set, I will post the pattern charts here on my blog for you all. In the meantime, here is the chart for the hotpad. I am only posting half of it as it is huge!

double weave pattern chart for the hotpad

If you would like to learn this double weave technique, you can use my free tutorials in the Backstrap Weaving Group on Weavolution. The tutorials have step-by-step photos and links to videos on my Flickr page. Remember that you will need to first join Weavolution and the Backstrap Group to obtain access to them.

Well, as much as I love Mexican food, I don’t think I could manage it every day (although, if I am planning that trip to Mexico……..). Anyway, here is another fun use I found  for my new hot pad. It fits perfectly on my breakfast tray where it stops my plate from sliding about and certainly “spices” things up a bit!

spicy breakfast!

I loved designing and weaving this hotpad and I have a bunch of designs in my head for others so you can certainly expect to see more of these in the future.

MAKING CONTINUOUS STRING HEDDLES………..

I warped up a couple of weeks ago for another set of South American themed mug rugs and used that warp to put together a tutorial on making continuous string heddles. This process is shown on the videos in my WeaveZine article but I have heard from many people on dial-up who have not been able to access the videos. I spend half my time on dial-up as my wifi connection is pretty erratic so I certainly know how it is. I kept all my photo files small  for this and I do hope that dial-up folks will be able to enjoy this photo sequence.

I learned this way of making continuous string heddles from my very first weaving teacher, Gladys Miller who taught me Navajo style weaving way back in 1995. I have seen many different ways since then while studying with my indigenous weaving teachers but none have convinced me to change my ways.

First I’d like to show you some pictures of a few weavers I have met and worked with here in South America and Guatemala and how they make their heddles.

Zapote, Ecuador. This weaver is using her flat tenter stick as a spacer around which to wind the heddle string. This helps her to make all the heddles the same length.The spacer will later be removed.

San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala. Here the weaver wraps the heddle loops around her hand before passing them to a stick.

Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Hammock weavers' warps are so wide that they can't use a heddle stick. They just leave the heddle loops loose and pull them in small groups across the width of the warp to open the shed.

THE TUTORIAL………

Larger and heavier versions of these tutorial photos can be seen here.

For double weave, your cross will look like this. Remember that in this technique you are using doubled warps. The all-black warps will form the black border. You have one white and one black warp in pairs in the area where you will weave your motif.

You will be putting each of the pairs of warps that are passing over stick B in a heddle. Open the shed and pass your heddle string through as shown.

Make a slip knot in the end of the heddle string and place it on you heddle stick. Leave a long tail as shown.

Reach down between warp pair 1 and 2 and pull up the heddle string as shown.

Put a twist in the loop.

Place the loop on the stick and anchor it with your left forefinger.

Put an extra twist in the heddle string forming a small loop.

Put the small loop on the stick and tighten it by pulling on the end of the heddle string.

You can now let go and see that your first warp pair is secured within its heddle.

Moving on.....heddles have been made around the 1st and 2nd warp pair and the heddle string is being pulled up to make the 3rd heddle.

Slip the loop on the heddle stick and adjust its length by pulling on the end of the heddle string. Once you have the length correctly adjusted, anchor the loop on the stick with your left forefinger before making your extra twist.

Continue like this, cut the heddle string and tie the start and end tails together. DONE!

I always use the same yarn that I am using for the warp for my string heddles.  A lot of my teachers use thin nylon thread or cord as it is less abrasive on the warps. I can’t stand using nylon but you should experiment and see which kind of heddle string suits you.

Here’s hoping you have found this useful. Maybe you know some rigid heddlers too who will be interested in seeing how to make string heddles so they can add another shed to their looms. Pass it on!

© Laverne Waddington and backstrapweaving.wordpress.com, 2009-2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Laverne Waddington and backstrapweaving.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Loom seller at Chichcastenango market, Guatemala

ALL THOSE STICKS!!!

Recently I found myself in the unusual position of having run out of loom rods.

This is because since joining Weavolution in June, I have been completely soaked in new ideas and inspiration for projects that I can adapt to my backstrap loom. Rather than adding them to my woefully long ”to-do” list, I prefer to at least warp up the project, get it started by weaving a few rows and then put it aside so that at any time when the urge hits me, I can just throw on the backstrap and continue weaving. This has resulted in a closet shelf full of loom rods with brightly colored warps attached. The days of one-project-at-a-time are long gone. Fortunately, this is one of the many wonderful things about backstrap weaving-you can warp up a project, roll it up and put it away.

So when I found myself needing to make up several warps for some tutorial pictures, there were no more loom rods to be had. I don’t like borrowing loom rods from unfinished projects so a new set had to be ”found”.

A quick scan of the halls and terraces of my apartment block did not turn up any abandoned brooms or mops whose handles make marvellous loom rods. So I actually had to go out, for the first time, and buy dowels. While doing so, I was reminded of my students and the new weavers in my Backstrap Group who go looking around the house, garden shed or hardware store for bits and pieces to make their first looms and was prompted to write a little piece about putting together a backstrap loom.

I showed the parts for the backstrap loom in my WeaveZine article but space did not allow me to cover the topic in detail and there are a few refinements and tips that I have always wanted to add and a lot more photos that I would love to share. So now that I have woven up some of those closet projects and have loom rods to spare, I have been able to put together a short photo tutorial on the backstrap loom.

First the loom rods……..

loom rods

From right to left….

A pair of my recently purchased 1” dowels;

A pair of 3/4”  broom handles;

The next three sets are from Guatemala. The middle set was bought at the stall at the Chichicastenango market pictured above. The other two are the loom rods from the weavings I worked on with my teachers in Guatemala. I brought these back to Bolivia with the unfinished weavings attached.

I weave happily with my broom sticks and mop handles. I simply cut them down to 19” length and I use these as my standard loom rods-even for the tiniest of bands. The shortest of the Guatemalan rods are 14” and these work well for me too although I prefer the longer length. The main feature of the Guatemalan rods is that they have grooves cut into their ends.

grooved loom rods

Personally, I don’t find these grooves particularly useful but my Guatemalan teachers do as they tie up their looms like this……………

tying up the loom in Guatemala

The grooves on the far end loom rod will stop the cords from which the loom is suspended  from slipping in to the center of the rod.

So, you can experiment with the ideal length of your loom rods and decide if you like them with or without grooves. In any case, you will need two loom rods.

Cross sticks, heddle rods and shed rods………….

It’s nice to have a good collection of thin dowels and sticks of varying lengths depending on the width of your project. Pencils work well as do chopsticks and kebab skewers and then you can always go out and buy dowel rods. Packages of thin, round craft sticks are ususlly available at the dollar stores and are probably the most useful things I have. These sticks have all sorts of uses-as cross sticks when you are warping, heddle rods, shed rods, their ends can be sharpened so they can be used as pick up sticks and they can be slipped under pesky warps that have gone slack to take up tension.

Those used as shed rods need to be thicker depending on the size of your project. I don’t use anything thicker than 3/4″ for the very biggest projects. I even have a set of cheap touristy pan pipes which are abundant here. This I have dismantled and the hollow bamboo pipes in their different lengths are lightweight and handy for all kinds of things-my apologies to the music lovers!

Above is a random selection of my thin sticks-one, as you can see, even gets used to stir the dyepot. It is very handy to cut grooves in these sticks eventhough my grooves are not exactly pretty.

grooved thin sticks

The grooves will help you tie your sticks togethers securely in the cross on your warping board and loom. They will allow you to secure your shed rod in the shed.  Anyone who has had sticks drop out of their loom will know just how important this is!

So, where are we now in our loom construction?

Let’s see our rods and sticks in action!

At left you can see the warp on its loom rods with cross sticks in place. These cross sticks are just that little bit too thin for grooves-I have snapped too many already trying to put in grooves-or maybe I am just not that good with the tools! Anyway, these are simply secured with adhesive tape.

The loom rod on the left with the knotted “start” and “finish” warp ends will be attached to a fixed point-a heavy piece of furniture or a tree (more about these options in a future blog post), while the loom rod on the right will be attached to you by means of your trusty backstrap – speaking of which……..

The backstrap…………….

a selection of backstraps

This  is all a matter of personal preference, but for me, the broader the backstrap the better. Those of you who have read my article on WeaveZine will remember the simple homemade backstrap shown there made from a pillow slip and will also recognize the red strap above. The straw one next to it is my all time fave-made for me in Peru and much chewed by my cat. Moving left, you see another one that I wove and, finally, a leather beauty that I bought in Guatemala. Weave your own backstrap-a wonderful first project to go with your homemade loom. Check out my instructions on WeaveZine.

Swords and beaters………..

I collect swords and beaters in my travels and have a ridiculously large collection of them but here are just a few……

The sword acts to prop open your shed so that you can pass your weft. It can also double as a beater to beat the weft into place once you have changed sheds. The bottom sword is my favourite for wide projects-a homemade job, can you tell?! Above it you can see an adapted ruler and, above that, my favorite small beater for bands-this one was made for me in Peru.

Bevel one of the long edges of your flat sticks as well as the ends and round them off as shown so that they will enter the shed easily. The upper stick at left was once a long shuttle for my Navajo loom, hence the “v” cut into its end-this is not necesary for your sword/beater.

I generally prefer to put a lot of tension on my warp and push the weft into place with a pointed stick in addition to some moderate beating and so I have never felt the need for a big heavy beater like those shown in the above photo. Everyone has their method. There is no one ”right” way to do it.

Let’s see another “”sticks-in-action”" shot……

almost ready to weave

“Almost” ready to weave?………What’s missing?

a shuttle and a weft "butterfly"

Shuttles………..

These carry the weft through the open sheds. I have the above  home made wooden job made with the help of someone who is handy with tools and a simple “butterfly” of weft. I would love to have a small wooden shuttle too but have been making do with a cardboard cut-out version these last fourteen years! My indigenous teachers simply wrap the weft around and around  and up and down a long stick.

Now we are on our way-the string heddles have been made, the shed rod is in place. I have added an extra stabilizing rod from my collection of small dowels. This will stop my shed rod  from rolling about in the warp and is placed in a second cross behind the shed rod.  I have even managed to weave a few inches. This is where the final part of the loom comes into play-the roll up stick. This should be, preferably, the same size as your loom rod and will enable you to roll up your weaving as you progress so that you are always in easy reach of your heddles, shed rod and weaving line.

By the way, if you have been looking for pick up sticks in these photos, you won’t see any. Pick up sticks are used to lift and hold the warps when you are weaving  design motifs in your cloth. My fingers are my nifty pick up sticks although I have a lot of bone and wooden tools for this purpose in my collection.

And now, a  few final words from someone who has been watching this whole photo taking process with much interest and who insisted on being in the final picture………..

The Backstrap Loom

Just remember that, although the basic elements are the same, backstrap looms take many different forms in different cultures around the world. There is no one ”correct” way to set up your loom and I have based these descriptions on the looms that I have seen and used with my indigenous teachers here in South America and Guatemala.

Now to finish this green band, make it into something useful and free up another pair of loom rods for the next project!

I hope you have enjoyed this little article and have found it helpful. If you have,  let me know-I love to receive your comments.:-)

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING………….

The red woven piece on which I posed the loom parts for many of the above photos is a weaving of the Jalq’a people of Potolo in Bolivia. Their weavings are almost exclusively done in red and black and have a chaotic display of figures called khurus, a word which means ”wild” or ”untamable”. Every space on the cloth is filled with strange figures. There are even creatures within creatures and I watched weavers forming the myriad of figures without reference to other weavings or swatches for help or inspiration. Incredible!

A weaving from Potolo, Bolivia

The weavers use a simple oblique frame loom and a long wire to pick up the hundreds of warps which form the patterns in each row.  Rather than using a beater, a wichuna-a bone tool fashioned from the leg of the llama- is used to push the wefts into place. The designs are woven into the woman’s axsu-a tunic cinched at the waist with a woven belt.

The typical loom of Potolo

I learned this warp-faced complementary warp technique with my teacher in Potosi, where it is used for a completely different design layout. I have never used the technique to create anything anywhere near this level of  complexity!

A weaver working at the ASUR Museum in Sucre, Bolivia

This Jalq’a woman is weaving a piece that will be sold at the ASUR (Antropologos del Surandino) Museum in Sucre.

© Laverne Waddington and backstrapweaving.wordpress.com, 2009-2010. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Laverne Waddington and backstrapweaving.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

WEAVING WIDE-Placemats and table runners.

Simple projects for extending your skills beyond bands

I happened upon a Wikipedia description of a backstrap loom recently and was disappointed to find that the author had limited the description of the loom to one that is used with a rigid heddle for making primarily narrow bands. It is quite likely that this person has only seen the commercially available backstrap loom kits, most of which seem to come with a small rigid heddle and it is true that a lot people use the loom only for making bands. Indeed I have had people ask me on several occasions why one would bother using a backstrap loom at all when an inkle loom can produce the very same bands.Well,I answer them by saying that one of the many beauties of  this loom is that you can also use it to go wide. Just how wide? Take a look at some weavers I have met in my travels……….

Cabanaconde, Peru

Gualaceo, Ecuador

San Antonio Palopo, Guatemala

San Roque, Otavalo, Ecuador

Well, you probably don’t want to go that wide at this stage!  I certainly haven’t contemplated attempting anything like that (yet!) In fact, the widest of the table runners I have made lately measures only 15 inches but, by branching out beyond band width, there are so many more neat and useful things you can make on your backstrap looms.  Just add a litte pick up to a plain weave background to make bags, pillow covers and table ware.

I see a lot of my students learning a pick up technique, weaving a few bands, moving on, learning another more advanced technique, adding to their collection of bands and so on and so on. While there are many beautiful and practical things that can be made with bands, I always hope that they will return some day to the simpler pick ups and use them in wider pieces-exploring and exploiting the techniques and going beyond bands.  I think the secret to successfully weaving on progressively wider warps is, first and foremost, to keep it simple. You will notice that all except one of the weavers here are weaving plain weave. The poncho weaver (below) in Otavalo has chosen simple warp stripes, the Guatemalan lady (left) has stripes and strips of ikat in her piece while the weaver in Gualaceo (above) is weaving up her ikat design entirely in plain weave. Only Estela in Cabanaconde is weaving very narrow bands of supplementary warp patterns in her carry cloth.

One of the simplest patterning techiques is the simple paired warp floats that I learned in coastal Ecuador and I think this is the ideal technique to use for the first experiments in wider pieces. You will find my tutorial for this technique in the Backstrap Weaving Group at Weavolution . You will need to join Weavolution in order to have access to the tutorial and I will be posting pattern charts here on my blog pages should any of you be feeling adventurous. I hope I have inspired you to be so!

Here is what has come off the loom recently………….

placemat and mug rug with a ''knot'' design

Those of you who have seen the tutorial at Weavolution will recognise the simple warp float technique. The mug rug, of course was woven in double weave. I fell in love with this knot pattern on a card woven band and also reproduced part of it on the mug rug.

placemat and mug rug with simple diamond design

You can’t get much simpler than this basic diamond warp float design, yet it looks very effective on this wide piece. Going wide doesn’t necessarily mean increasing the pattern area and, therefore, the amount of pick up you need to do. I did a small amount of supplementary weft patterning in the the center black stripe and wove the mug rug motif based on that. Don’t worry, I will be doing a tutorial here on supplementary weft patterning in the near future!

Here are some other projects to help get you started in simple warp float patterning and then, hopefully,on your way to wider weaves………

warp float patterning on a hat band

coin purse and bookmark with simple warp float patterns

I have short videos and pattern charts on my Flickr page to supplement the tutorial instructions at Weavolution.

And, by the way, I added to and edited that Wikipedia post so no one will miss out on knowing about the versatility and potential of this fabulous loom.

A LITTLE BACKGROUND……..Learning the simple warp float patterning.

Luz checking the warps selected for the eleven heddles

I stayed with a family of weavers in coastal Ecuador for three weeks in 2007 to study their saddle bag making process. Eighty-six year old Luz is the only weaver in the area who still makes the saddle bags with warp float patterning. Luz and her family prepare the raw cotton, spin it on simple hand spindles, double it and dye it , ready to be wound on the vertical loom and woven into a saddle bag. They were very generous in allowing me to study their techniques and, in fact, insisted that I be involved in every part of the process. It was a wonderful learning experience!

The typical pattern that they use has twenty-two rows and is horizontally symetrical which enables Luz to program half the design on eleven heddle sticks. Luz sets up the heddles and then steps back while her daughters do the the more physically demanding weaving.

The saddle bags would be slung over horse and donkey back and used to carry tools for a day at work in the fields. Men would often carry them on their shoulders on a trip into town. While saddle bags are still used, the cotton ones have been virtually completely replaced now by a plastic version and the art of weaving the warp float patterned bags is on the verge of being lost.

Trini opening the main heddle shed

Quite a bit of strength is needed to open that shed and look at the size of that sword!! Talking while weaving often led to disaster as the order of the eleven heddles would get hopelessly confused. But weaving was a family activity with everyone gathered around in the evening to watch and chat and the inevitable mistake brought laughter and teasing rather than frustration.

Trini and I at the loom with the finished weaving

Finally, Luz’s son Leonardo is modeling the finished saddle bag for us………………..

With saddle bag slung on his shoulder, Leonardo is ready for a a trip to town

while Trini and Catalina head off to the market with one of the new woven plastic versions on the the mule’s back.

A little ”taste” of Bolivian Christmas fare……….

Paneton and cola de mono

Instead of Christmas cake or pudding we have paneton, or Christmas bread. This is a mini paneton-they usually come much larger than this!

The drink is cola de mono-literally ”monkey’s tail” and is a traditional Christmas drink in Chile. During my five years in Chile we had this every Christmas but it was always home made and, therefore, always slightly different as everyone seemed to have their own recipe. The typical ingredients are coffee, milk, vanilla, cinnamon or nutmeg and cloves and a white alcohol, like white rum, pisco or aguardiente. I managed to find a bottle of it made here in Bolivia for this Christmas.

Those festive little llamas are bread dough figures that I bought in Ecuador. The town of Calderon, near Quito, is famous for these handmade figures. Bread dough baby figures were originally made and the practice has pre- Columbian origins when the figures were associated with death and burial rituals. The rituals were modified with the arrival of the Spanish and mixed with Christian traditions and are now made for All Souls’ Day ceremonies in November each year. Originally fashioned from corn, pumpkin, honey and beeswax, the figures are now made from wheat flour and heavily varnished for durability. All kinds of figures are now  made  and sold all year round.

Bread dough figures from Ecuador

Finally, they are all seated on a little pinwheel cloth that I have been making with a rigid heddle on my backstrap loom.

Salud! and happy holidays to all!!

Laverne

I love double weave! I particularly like the clean solid designs this technique produces on a nice smooth background. The same design appears on the back of the textile with its colors reversed. There are, in fact, two layers being woven together.

The problem with double weave for beginners practicing with heavy yarns, is that it produces a thick textile. Now this is just what you want if you would like to make a belt or perhaps a strap for a bag or a  musical instrument.

A double woven strap for a Bolivian charango

But what about a small project for a beginner who would like to learn this technique? I always recommend that beginners start with heavier yarns and gradually work their way down to the finer ones as they gain more experience. So I have been trying to think of a useful small project made in a medium to heavy weight yarn (around 12 wpi) that a beginner could make once they have practiced the fundmentals of the technique on a sample band.

And this is what I came up with……………..MUG RUGS!!

South American and North African themed mug rugs

Woven in a 12wpi mercerized cotton, these are thick and firm-they really feel like mini rugs- and look great on the table. I guarantee that these will protect your good polished table from the hottest of mugs!

The black ones have adaptations of South American motifs from several countries. I got ideas for the designs on the  brown ones from a book on North African carpets that I have. I really had fun making these. With the 12 wpi yarn they weave up really fast. I have never been a fan of rolling up long warps as I find I get much better tension control on shorter ones so I wove  three mug rugs on a one-yard warp. I find warping for the backstrap loom a pleasure as there is no cutting or threading involved so making multiple warps for these two sets of mug rugs really wasn’t a problem for me.

Here they are as they come off the loom………..

I sewed over the last wefts and between the fringes with an ”invisible” nylon thread to finish these off while they were still under tension on the loom.

So, if you would like to learn how to make these you can find my tutorial for ONE-WEFT DOUBLE WEAVE in the Backstrap weaving Group at Weavolution. Weavolution is a free gathering place for handweavers. You will need to join Weavolution first and  then join the Backstrap Group so you can access the tutorial.

South American motif mug rugs on the loom

Here is a sample pattern chart for these mug rugs using forty-one warp pairs.

Once you feel comfortable with this technique, you can move on to using finer yarns- on the right, 12 wpi; lower center, 35wpi; and upper center, plied sewing thread.

Double weave in various yarn weights

A LITTLE BACKGROUND……

I learned this technique in Potosi in Bolivia in 1996. I weave it now on my backstrap loom and, in terms of comfort, this is like flying First Class compared to the way I was taught this weave on a staked-out ground loom!

Weaving on the staked-out ground loom in Potosi

Julia and her sister Hilda allowed me to come to their home  to learn to weave crouched over the loom in their yard for six hours a day during three weeks. You can see from the bandaids that the bone tool that is used to beat the weft into place was taking a toll on my soft gringa hands! That was about ten years ago. I doubt I could maintain that position  for long now.  Here I am making a four-selvedge piece in the lively colors favored by my teachers which I later turned into a shoulder bag. The piece has bands of patterned double weave on plain weave.

This technique is put to many different uses in various regions here  in Bolivia. It is used to make the belts which form part of the typical woman’s outfit in the highland province of Potosi. Woven with several brightly colored stripes and covered with little figures, these belts are very sturdy and are woven just long enough to encircle the waist once. The weavers put a lot of effort into beating the weft in firmly and the quality of a finished piece and the skill of the weaver is judged by the belt’s stiffness.  I was surprised to see when I went to Ecuador that these belts are now much sought after and prized by women in Otavalo, who are themselves skilled weavers, and are being used by many together with their typical Otavalan costume.

Belts made in one-weft double weave technique in Potosi

I’ll leave you here as it is time for morning tea-there it is below! Remember, if you have any questions or if you just liked this post, I would be delighted to hear from you. Please leave a comment Laverne.

I GOT MAIL!

I did an equipment swap with  another weaver at Weavolution.com. When I went up into the highlands a few months ago, I bought a bunch of Bolivian drop spindles at the market and then offered them at Weavolution in return for stuff that I can’t get here in Bolivia.

An offer was made to adopt my last drop spindle and we negotiated the swap-cotton sliver in indigo, terracotta and natural. I learned to spin cotton in Ecuador a couple of years ago and have gone through my small quantity of raw material. Santa Cruz used to be an important cotton producing region in the old days but not a single boll to be found now. So I jumped at the chance to get this sliver in such gorgeous sounding colors!

My package arrived and this is what I found!

The contents of my spindle-swap package

Okay, now you can see why I am so excited! Yes, I got my gorgeous sliver. The white stuff in the middle is, in fact, tussah silk!  A teeny spindle was included and there below……..TWO RIGID HEDDLES!!

It is like she read my mind. I have been wanting to weave with a rigid heddle on my backstrap loom for a long time. WHY?-when I know all these wonderful intricate pick-up weave techniques? What I wanted to do was show knitters, spinners and other never-ever weavers that backstrap weaving is not only about warp-faced fabrics with pick up patterning. You can also weave balanced weave textiles and produce kitchen towels, scarves, table runners, placemats-all the things that we like to make on our rigid heddle looms. I was also aware that most of the ready-made backstrap kits available come with a rigid heddle- so I really wanted to try it out.

First project-a red table runner in plain weave

Second project-green placemat

Now, I have tried balanced weaves on my backstrap loom without a rigid heddle with success-a log cabin piece, a simple pin wheel and a twill using three heddles but it is really fussy. You have to be constantly watching the warps as they want to stray over into warp faced. You end up unweaving and adjusting as the width varies too. Yes, it is do-able but the word TENACITY springs to mind.

It was a breeze with the rigid heddle. I used 8/2 thread doubled in the 10dpi heddle and made two lovely cloths. I am stupidly excited about being able to make something that feels like ”cloth”!-as opposed to my complementary and supplementary warp-faced weaves which are more on the stiff side.

The two cloths off the loom

Yes, those fringes are a bit unruly but they will be trimmed. I have already found good use for these two projects.

A ''camba''/ ''gaucho'' breakfast

”Camba” is the name for people from Santa Cruz. The green cloth lines my basket of ”cunape”. These cheesy bread rolls are a typical breakfast or tea time snack. The ”gaucho” or, Argentinean, part of this set up is the ”yerba mate” . Yerba mate is a kind of tea typical of Argentina and Uruguay. You put the leaves in the small silver pot, add hot water and sugar and sip it through the wodden straw. There are many different ways to prepare it. I can take it or leave it but some Argentineans are totally addicted to it and go around everywhere with their pot and thermos. The pot is usually shared with a group-passed around with each person taking a sip.

And here is the red cloth in action………….

achachairu-every good ''camba's'' favorite fruit!

This fruit is in season now, but beware, they are very acid. My teeth ache for days after eating these!

So, if you are thinking of taking up weaving and are interested in trying the portable, inexpensive backstrap loom, you can add a rigid heddle for under $30 to your equipment and make these lovely balanced weave pieces.

Here’s a place that sells rigid heddle segments-just a few inches wide- for under $10 in three sizes-

http://www.villagespinweave.com/IBS/SimpleCat/Product/asp/hierarchy/060A/product-id/373082.html

Now to get back to the highlands, get more spindles and see what other goodies show up in the mail!