Qispi Ayway

This is a brief log of my early incomplete weaving projects and what I think went wrong.

The Giant Napkin for Grandma

For my second project, with the new flush of confidence and enthusiasm, I attempted to weave a four selvedged napkin, about 16″ by 16″. This project remains incomplete and likely will for some time.

I don’t seem to have any of the in progress photos for this piece, but I will add a couple of images when I dig out the loom it’s on.

What I Did

I wound the wide warp an a set of 4 pipe clamps with the loom bars tied to them. This was fairly successful and there aren’t major tension issues that I’ve noticed so far, but it was really hard to set up because I’m not allowed to use the nice tables, and the pipe clamps warp and bend the plastic portable tables. So it worked, but it had its own issues. The warp was wound continuously, the piece is striped shades of blue to blue gray to blue green, and it is intended to be warp faced.

In order for a piece to be four selvedged, it must not be left on the loom bars. I hand made cord for the warp selvedges (I don’t remember what method I used, they are either braided or whip cord braided), passed it through the warp ends, and lashed it to the loom. When I first did it, it even looked like it was going to work properly.

I spent 10 hours of my first ever Pennsic setting up the heddle for this piece. I will never, ever forget how to do a continuous string heddle after this experience.

However, this is where the piece still stands. It is all set up, but I can’t weave it.

Lessons

Some of my issues with this piece have to do with order of operation. If you attempt a plain weave four selvedged piece, I highly recommend you set up your heddles while still on the loom bars. There is more space and less confusion. This was an enormous, but not insurmountable, mistake.

The way I lashed the piece to the warp just plain didn’t work. I am not sure why. I tried to use more winds than what I have seen on museum pieces and modern Andean weaver’s looms to make it more stable for my first time, and it pulls away from the loom bar in places. I’m at a loss, but will attempt the pattern and/or string weight used on period looms or modern indigenous looms next time to see if this was a case of me trying to fix something that wasn’t broken.

I cannot open the sheds. Not even a little bit. People have suggested spray on conditioner, which I will try when I feel ready to deal with the cord lashing and have successfully completed a project more than 10 inches wide. I suspect I bit off more than I could chew.

The Extremely Long, Horizontal Striped Strap

This project was where I started for the very first piece of a bag I still intend to make. I am probably going to make a new strap, though.

This was intended to be about 1.5 inches wide and either 85 or 95 inches long. It has red edges and horizontally red and white stripes.

What I Did

75522040_10159081222318957_8463227778253193216_o — Does this really look like anything but upcoming regret?

I wound my warp on tent stakes with loom bars tied to them. This was an attempt to make an easier to remove version of the pegged loom I have seen indigenous women use to wind their warps. I will also admit this took place on an irregular slope and that there were a ton of leaves on the ground. I believe the length of the unwoven warp was about 108 inches.

This is the first time I warped in two, a concept explained in The Andean Science of Weaving by Denise Y. Arnold and Elvira Espejo, where you wind two colors at once. It worked as expected, and then I put the piece away for several months.

102919185_10159843207868957_1076774407447145825_n — I really wasn’t sure I was going to be able to fix this when I started to heddle it

I heddled the piece in May or June after winding the warp in January. This was the first time I ever manipulated my sheds, which was exciting, but my warp was somewhat tangled (not nearly as bad as it could be, but still a mess). I managed it, and the loom worked when I was finished.

118231923_920411025151383_2097278819477918350_n — In retrospect, the size of the stick I put the heddle on? Also a mistake

I successful wove about 10 inches, the stripes worked properly, but the band was wider than I intended.

Why It’s Unfinished

I took the partially completed piece down to show a group during a class and did not immediately re-roll the warp on the loom. It’s now the biggest mess and I don’t think I want to fix it. It would take many hours.

Lessons

102884227_10159850964563957_9188670816497739827_n (2) — This lets you see all of the errors, even the ones I hadn’t figured out yet!

This is the project where I found out that you can accidentally place two sheds or two heddles next to each other and leave the line artifact that I also have in my first project. It is absolutely correctable at the heddle stage, but I attempted to heddle this piece three times and only found the error two thirds of the way through the third time, and I was not willing to restart again. The piece still wove fine, and I learned how the artifact occurred.

118200094_633857314206931_3304685439495761854_n — A properly rolled backstrap loom can be stored easily with little risk to the warp.

Everything about how I warped up was an absolutely mess, and tent stakes are not a good substitute. This warp should have been wound by two people throwing the ball back and forth, like the indigenous women do in the Andes today. It was too long to do alone and maintain a consistent tension. The leaves were also a serious pain that the throwing method would have mostly avoided. The tension on the fully heddled warp was an absolute mess, but I could still make the loom work. There is no way this piece could have been properly 4 selvedged, it was too irregular at the ends.

I also learned how to properly do horizontal stripes. It looks sharp, the rest of the warp is just a disaster.

117930414_323714115416672_8002562576015609201_n — And so dies a strap with nothing but potential

I will likely remake this piece and see if I can use the current warp piece by piece for other projects.

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My first weaving project was a back strap for my loom, as advised by Laverne Waddington on her blog Backstrap Weaving. Backstraps are absolutely essential for backstrap weaving for obvious reasons, and backstrap looms have been used in the Andes for thousands of years. Of course, I didn’t listen all the way through the instructions on Waddington’s blog, and I had never woven before, so there are a few things about it that aren’t quite right. However, over all it was a successful project.

What I Did

I used pipe clamps to wind my warp, and I did my wraps in either 5 or 10 figure eight bundles (where the last one ties back to the front end). I used a set 24 inch loom bars and created a modified string bundle heddle. It is plain, warp faced weave (red with blue edges), and terminates in fingerloop braids that have finished holes (switched methods to create eyelets).

Measurements

35″ Long
4″ Wide
3″ Average braid length

Good Points

• I finished it! I was super excited not only that I finished the piece, but that I finished the
first piece I had ever warped. The beginning of a pattern! (Ha, no, but we’ll talk about that elsewhere).
• The weave is fairly consistent. I have gotten a lot of comments about how even the weave is.
• I understand my errors. This feels really important to me. Some of them won’t be mentioned later, so I will cover them briefly here. (1) There are a couple of spots where I didn’t notice that a shed didn’t open all the way that left visible artifacts that have no effect on functionality. (2) I didn’t keep the weft tension as consistent as I should have (I figured this out on a later project and it is addressed there). (3) I think there is a neater way to finish the ends of the loop braids. (4) My warp tension could have been better (though in many ways the best tensioned piece I’ve done). These, and the issues listed in lessons, are all things that didn’t prevent project completion and I now know I need to look out for.

Lessons

• Warping methods
1. Bundles vs continuous warps: Apparently, the bundle method is supposed to be used to
rigid heddle systems where everything is going to be cut and tied to the loom, anyway. That’s not how backstrap works, and it caused a visible artifact in the finished project because I didn’t know. The artifact is a warp line that is the result of two heddles or two sheds being next to each other throughout the weaving. This can be avoided on a backstrap loom even using the bundle method, I think, but not if you don’t know it can happen. If you use a continuous warp, as advised by Waddington, this isn’t quite as likely to happen as long as you heddle immediately after you warp up (I found this out in a later project, when this project ended I thought my warping method was the sole possible culprit. Not so! You can accidentally do this anytime! Good to know!).
2. Pipe clamps and consistency of warp tension: my pipe clamps were somewhat bent. This was not good. The bundle method helped keep my tension fairly reliable anyway, but it’s not something I can rely on because I shouldn’t be using that method. This has so far been my best warp tensioned piece despite its issues, so I haven’t found a method that really works for me yet. For me, upright pipe clamps were hard to work with and less secured than I would like. Maybe they’ll work ok for you. Maybe the warp was too long for the method. At this point, your guess may be better than mine.

A green thread wraps around two bars in a figure 8 pattern, a red thread is tied to the end of the loose green end — I decided to use the bundle method because I changed warp colors to make a border, and it was quick and easy to do. This is what I should have done. Image is property of Laverne Warrington, used with permission

• Fingerloop braids
The biggest thing I learned is that fingerloop braiding is a legit choice for Peruvian projects. I don’t have a period source, but I have a modern technique source (The Art of Bolivian Highland Weaving by Marjorie Cason and Adele Cahlander), and the knowledge that SOMEONE at the Pennsic art’s display told me that fingerloop braiding may have been brought back to Europe from Latin America (she also gave me the information to acquire the above modern technique source, and one day, I will figure out who she is). Is it true? I don’t really know yet, but I am prone to believe the nice lady, and it’s something to look into.
In addition, making the holes in the middle of the cords was not as clever as I thought it was. Cool effect, not for a loom strap, because they’re not perfectly in the right position and it effects the ease of use and comfort of the strap.
• Heddles
Don’t ever try to cheat with your heddles. Waddington presented two methods: string bundle for narrow warps, continuous string heddle for wider warps. I tried to mix them and put a string bundle on a stick. It was a horrible idea, don’t do that to yourself, the strings kept falling off the stick which caused the artifacts I mentioned earlier when they sheds didn’t open properly. The continuous string heddle isn’t nearly as confusing as it looks, and it’s way more secure. I haven’t used a string bundle yet, but if you do it properly I’m sure it’s also just fine.
• Ends
My warp ends are just wrong. Waddington’s warp ends are totally braided, but they have a cord feeding through the very end that fits perfectly and looks like it spreads the loom tension more consistently. I don’t know how to do it, but I do know what it is I want to achieve.
• Usability
This is a wildly uncomfortable backstrap. It’s too narrow and probably too short for me. The warp ends are probably also part of the problem because it doesn’t pull evenly. So, I still use a piece of fabric to this day. Oops.

What I Would Change

The Design!!
This piece absolutely should be wider, longer, and with a different warp end method. My ideal isn’t a lot different (even though I listed just about everything), just usable for more than 30 minutes. Modest change hopefully leads to large returns.

Qispi Ayway

Unfinished Projects

The Humble Back Strap