research — weaving journal

In addition to the Katu style foot-tensioned weaving, I have recently started another Andean pickup piece.

This is a technique I first tried exactly two years ago, in January of 2011 (right).

The first pickup weaving was an exercise from Laverne Waddington's Andean Pebble Weave book, and I had used her excellent tutorials to learn how to set up a backstrap loom in the first place. Improvising with spools of thread to hold the cross, I made several narrow bands which became bookmarks or keyfobs.

When I became bold enough to go wider, I could weave phone covers, still using charts from Laverne's book.

So far, I was using cotton commercial yarn and following charts, not knowing the names of the designs. But my original introduction to this kind of weaving was still hovering in my mind and in a small unfinished bundle.

In 2010 at the Golden Gate Fiber Institute (GGFI) Summer Intensive Retreat, Abby Franquemont had warped up a spontaneous, late-night warp with 6 pairs of pattern threads, and had begun to teach a traditional weave pattern. It was late and I had to thread a loom for Judith's class the next morning, so I could not spend much time at the moment, but I took home the warp and worked on it once in a while.

Being very small-scale and silk, it was fussy, but I eventually learned that this is a crucial design, with which young Andean weavers begin. It gives them the basic concepts and principles on which their weaving will build. For this reason, I decided I'd better work one that I could finish. The pattern is tanka ch'oro.

On the left is the silk warp Abby made, with my attempts at weaving. On the right is an actual tanka ch'oro jakima (the quechua name for the narrow woven bands) from Chinchero village, Peru, made with handspun yarn. The Chinchero jakima was given to me by Laverne, and is one of my most prized textile possessions.

Over an embarrassingly long period of time, I worked on my own handspun tanka ch'oro, finally completing it in Laos last May.

But meanwhile, I had been working on other pickup bands, expanding my knowledge of the patterns and how they are learned and created. I wove a long strip of maya q'enko, a winding river design, in cotton.

I also learned and practiced the S curve, or kutij, which is in Laverne's lessons. When Abby noticed that I was trying to master designs, she suggested warping 16 pairs of pattern threads and doubling the mayo q'enko or kutij. This set me on a path of exploration that led to understanding what Ed Franquemont meant when he wrote about Andean weaving design as jazz.

So the current weaving is a return to this experiment and ongoing tutorial after a hiatus, this time with handspun yarn.

This is not easy.

I set out to try to reproduce the Katu style foot-tensioned backstrap loom I observed in Laos, and I'm weaving. But there's an awful lot that I'm not doing right. However, trying out a technique that's 2000+ years old is a thrill in itself.

Katu is the name of a group of people in southern Laos. The women traditionally weave on a foot-tensioned backstrap loom.

Evidence of this style of loom dates to the first or second century BC; figurines found in the Shizhaishan excavation in Yunnan show women working such looms.

There are contemporary foot-tensioned backstrap weavers in various parts of Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Hainan Island, and Taiwan.

I first saw this type of weaving in person in Luang Prabang, Laos, at the Ock Pop Tok Living Crafts Centre, where two sisters from Salavan Province, Keo and Mon, were visiting artists at the Living Crafts Centre, and were happy to share their traditional expertise with me and the many travelers who visit the centre.

Here is Keo working on a weaving. The length of the warp is rolled up on two warp beams (see below for their shape), and a cord straps these on, across her back. The tension of the loom is controlled by her feet and toes, flexing, releasing, and micro-adjusting. I spent hours watching, taking photos, and filming her in action as she wove in beads and warp float designs.

As a backstrap weaver, I was fascinated by every detail, and tried to keep track of her changing of sheds using three different shed sticks, a string heddle, and a supplementary string heddle. All those different sticks control the designs that emerge in the warp-faced stripes. And none of them has a safety line to hold the stick in the warp - it's all up to the weaver's control.

Here's some footage of the workings of Keo's loom.

The warp is circular, with only the upper half of the warp threads being woven. To rotate the warp and move her work, she opens it up and rolls it again, clamping the warp between the cloth bars. The tubular state of the weaving can be seen when she's finished.

When she opens it up to rotate the warp, we get a view of the cloth beams, which are bamboo bars cut lengthwise, with prongs on the ends for the backstrap cord.

I recently saw the same design in an article on this type of weaving, which was showing 19th century looms from Taiwan (Vollmer, J. E., 'Archaeological and Ethnological Considerations of the Foot-Braced Body-Tension Loom', in Studies in Textile History. V. Gervers, ed. Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 1977). This split bamboo bar with prongs on the ends is a highly specialized aspect of the loom, and I was struck by its consistency across cultures and time.

In order to make a circular warp,

Keo uses a horizontal warping frame that is half the length of the finished weaving, about 2 meters.

She walks the warp yarns back and forth on this frame, also creating the sheds and string heddle as she makes the warp.

I was able to watch and video one warping session, and when I got home I was determined to try the same kind of set-up. It wouldn't even work to use my typical 3 or 4 bar warping method, so I had to invent a different system.

Here's the warping frame in my apartment in Doha, two wicker bookshelves lashed together on top of two tables, end to end. This gives me 2 meters of warp. The cloth and loom bars are also lashed into place, and I arranged the shed sticks and heddle while referring to my photos and videos from Keo's warp.

There were a few things I didn't see in person, such as the warping of the pattern sheds for the warp float designs. For this reason, I did it completely wrong and had to abandon the idea of supplementary warp pattern in my first Katu-style weaving. I also made a mistake on one of three bands of alternating colors. Generally speaking, my warping improved as I moved across from right to left, and this is directly reflected in the weaving.

The heddle is made during warping, going under the appropriate warp yarns and over an extra-large bar that acts as a placeholder, so that the heddle strings will be long enough. This bar is removed before weaving, and a narrow one remains.

The finished warp is rolled up, with one end clamped between two bars (mine are square, while Keo's are two halves of a bamboo). This is how the warp is kept whenever it is not in use. To weave, it is unrolled on the legs, the backstrap is tied from the cloth beams around the back, and the feet tension the warp beam.

To begin weaving, Keo unrolls the warp, attaches the cord around her back, and positions her feet to hold the warp bars. Note the multiple shed sticks, which are used to create warp float patterns. This warp has not been woven at all yet - she's just setting it up. See also the traditional beaded Katu sarong laid across her legs as she works.