![]() I am fortunate to be currently living in Bolivia, a part of the world where this loom is still very much in use today. Small, portable, and inexpensive-the backstrap loom is ideal for those who lack the space for a table or floor loom, would like to be able to take their weaving "on the road" with them, or simply don't have the means to invest in more sophisticated equipment. I wonder how it is done.Basic, crude, primitive-these are all words that spring to mind when one thinks of the humble backstrap loom-a description that obscures the fact that some of history's most beautiful and complex textiles have been woven on this simple arrangement of sticks.Ī simple loom, yet mysterious.the most frequent comment I hear when I pull out my backstrap rods is, "All those sticks! Where do they go and what in the world do they do?" The puzzling collection of sticks and tangle of yarn miraculously springs to life and transforms itself into a loom when the weaver dons the backstrap, attaches the loom bar, tensions the warp, and starts to weave. The curious thing is the combination of brocade and card weaving. Diana looked it up in a book she has on Bhutanese textiles and confirmed that they are card woven. Card weaving can be done with a backstrap tensioning system. The brocade threads have no tie downs, they just float across the span of the motif the motifs are small.Īfter some discussion among the weavers at Thursday evening spinning, we suspected these sashes are card woven. The 3 motifs in the center have nice straight line so the turns of the brocading weft isin the straight line between the motifs. Some times the brocading thread makes it turns on the surface making little scallops you can see these scallops between the chevron and diamond motifs. First from the glimpses of the back of the textile, you can see that only the knots show up there. ![]() The brocading is fine, the three motifs in a row are each about 1″ square, and show a domination of the technique. The ground appears to be cotton and the inlayed thread silk or rayon, very shiny and contrasts nicely with the matte cotton not very visible in the photo. Part is densely brocaded and the rest has isolated motifs. ![]() Again stiff, made of fine threads and the ground surface has a knit stitch appearance. There are only two of these pink/green line, one near each end. I don’t know how the pink/green line was made or if it is in one of the indentations. You can just see one in the upper right of the picture. There are also straight line indentations at irregular intervals all the way across the width of the cloth. It also feels thick, like two layers of cloth yet the individual threads appear to be fine cotton.Each strand of the fringe has at least 8 threads.Ĭloser examination of the surface shows a twisted structure You can see that it is stiff enough to stand up on edge. Diana had seen a woman twisting the fringes and thought they were woven on a backstrap loom. ![]() They are 3-4″ wide and about 6′ long with fringes. These are sashes that the women wear for special occasions. Of the textiles Diana had, there were two curious ones when you touched them, they were very stiff. You can see pictures of women weaving in Bhutan here. She had videos of the women weaving on circular warps and doing the brocade. Most of these textiles, which have great value in their culture, are hand-woven– mostly backstrap weaving and heavily brocaded. ![]() She made a trip there about the time of the Royal Wedding, and took pictures of them weaving and brought back textiles. Diana Nelson, an active guild member, gave a program this month on weaving in Bhutan. ![]()
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