Backstrap Complimentary Pick Up

A week from today I leave with my friend, Kathleen, to attend a backstrap weaving workshop with Laverne Waddington. The workshop is taking place in Sonora, CA at a friends home. There will be 8 of us in the workshop. I can hardly wait.

The topic is Pebble Weave. This weave structure is a type of complimentary warp pick up technique. In preparation, I have been practicing my complimentary weaving.

This is the warp I started with. Plain weave is relaxing and easy to do. Pick up is very finicky. I had to really concentrate to get the pick up portion correct.

I was weaving at Kathleen's a couple of weeks ago and this is how I anchored my loom. I used cork and cardboard to protect her nearly antique window sill.

This is the end of the tape. It looks perfect. right?!? Well, in full disclosure, it took me about half an hour to do each hook motif! I had a lot of trouble picking up the warp yarns in order. Each motif is only 17 weft picks. I was very frustrated. Sometimes the weaving went smoothly with no errors, which was surprising. Then I would make about 10 errors and had to weave and unweave over and over until the motif came out correctly. Arrgh!

As challenging as pick up is, I can tell you it's even more impossible when the warp is upside down and backwards. Laverne tells us to start picking up with the light thread and then follow with the dark thread. Well, Of course I had it set up completely opposite. I had to start with the dark warp and follow with the light warp. I could not figure what I was doing until Kathleen pointed out the backward/upside down warp thing going on.

You can see the errors in the photo below. The top tape has clearly shaped hooks. The lower tape shows lots of twisted spots and specs with no clear definition. I almost gave up. But that is not allowed! With Kathleen's guidance the weaving got easier. Sort of. I still picked the wrong threads. But that's because the yarns wanted to fool me by squishing together and making it hard for my fingers to pick up the correct warp yarn.

I persevered though and finished the tape. I am happy with the results. AND I learned how to unweave on the backstrap. Always an upside. Right!?!

You can find my post on weaving my backstrap here.