Category: backstrap weaving

Watery is now finished, the Guatemalan backstrap loom taken apart and rolled inside the weaving, with the maguey back strap and lasso resting on top. It was a real challenge in backstrap weaving as well as in ikat preparation, and a monster of a learning curve for a beginner like me, but I am a firm believer in the best teacher being experience. Even though I did make a proper sample “gauge swatch” and posted it in Watery Sample, I had no way to know how a larger variation would weave. I made mistakes, and had to figure out how to fix them as I progressed; the heddles had to be redone, tension problems were endless, at first I could not work the shed changes correctly, nor did I beat the weft evenly, and honestly, I was not sure even how to operate the loom. But I wove a 15.5″ x 46.5″ piece of canvas weight warp-faced fabric, and to me that is astonishing and amazing! Toward the end of my much-longer warp, as room was getting tight to lift the heddle rod, I thought I’d cleverly rearrange the shed rod, and wouldn’t you know it, I accidentally rendered it un-weavable from there forward, but I only lost about 12″ of weaving length left I figure, before I couldn’t weave anymore on it. Not bad for an ardent attempt to do a large piece!

Oh, and about the llama wandering about outside the tiny house? It is a member of a grazing herd which came down from the vineyard above us to sample the greenery, perhaps to participate in the Andean inspired backstrap weaving scene?

Here is how I warped for Watery . . .

1. I wound 10/2 mercerized weaving cotton, in a figure 8, around 2 warping pegs placed each end of the table at 72″ apart; 40 times, which is 80 ends per warp section when the loop around the loom bars is woven into a flat piece. The weave is completely warp-faced, with the weft hidden, and has 56 epi.  — If this were a balanced weave, there would be aprox. 28 epi, and the weaving would be twice as wide, at least 30″ — I did not understand this about backstrap weaving until after I learned balanced weaving!
2. Five warp sections were tied with ikat resist tape (I did not photograph this part) without measuring, but fully improvised. Six were left untied (except for the skein ties to keep the warp sections from getting tangled in the dye bath) so all 11 warp sections could be dyed together, and be the same color.
3. Five warp sections were tied with ikat resist tape (I did not photograph this part) without measuring, but fully improvised. Six were left untied (except for the skein ties to keep the warp sections from getting tangled in the dye bath) so all 11 warp sections could be dyed together, and be the same color.
4. After dyeing them, I transferred the warp sections to the loom bars which I had lashed on to the pegs, alternating five resist tied sections with six solid sections.
5. I spread out the warp to get ready to make the string heddles, and the sections all came together as one complete warp, tying ends together at the far-end loom bar, and lining up the cross in the middle of the length, ready to make heddles next.
6. But first, on each of the five tied ikat sections I pulled some of the threads either forward or backward by pinching some threads in the section and giving a little tug; this is called “shifting”,  and the threads moved around the loom bars so that the straight undyed (white) bands skewed a little to create a design. ( I did not influence the apparent stripe of the non-ikat tied warp sections, so they just ended up as soft squiggly lines across.)
7. I created string heddles with the same 10/2 cotton as the warp, but the warp and heddles were too close and got bound up, so later I reworked the heddles with fine nylon thread. 
8. In the photos I show how the shifting works; on top warp threads you see the V shape , but on the bottom threads you see the opposite direction as I parted a V shape on the top shed of the warp to reveal below, because the threads change direction when they go around the loom bar. This is most obvious at the two rods which hold the cross, where the bottom half of the warp comes to the top, and the top disappears below.
9. When at last the bottom and top of the shed is woven together, the interplay makes a lovely random design which looks like reflection of light on the surface of moving water…. thus “watery”.

Credit: I have enjoyed reading Lavern Waddington’s weaving blog Backstrap Weaving for years. Her experience is extensive, and her legacy is truly admirable as she lived for years in the Andes practicing the indigenous methods of backstrap weaving, as well as travelling the world to learn from other backstrap weaving cultures.  It is mostly from her helpful instructional videos which have brought me to this point, all which are easily navigated from her website.