Andean Pebble Weaving

 As many of you will know, one of my major hobbies (after traditional dance) is narrow band weaving.

I'm currently playing around with Andean Pebble Weaving.  This is the first pattern I've tried, but I'm quite pleased with it. You can see the small background dots that give the technique its name.

 

It took a while to work out how to do it.  The instructions for it in the book I've used for a lot of my weaving, Anne Dixon's 'Inkle Pattern Directory'

 which is absolutely fantastic for basic techniques and Baltic pickup weaving (the kind of patterns you expect to see on Scandinavian Xmas jumpers)- here's one of my favourites that I wove - completely failed me when it came to Andean Pebble Weaving...

Her instructions for this technique were incredibly clunky and time-consuming. (they pretty much involved manipulating every single warp thread by hand, all the time.  The whole point of using an inkle loom is that there are bits of string called 'heddles' attached to roughly half of the warp threads (typically all the threads of a particular colour), so that you can lift them all up as a group, or push them all down as a group.  Then you only have to change a few threads to get the pattern you want.

In addition to that, I eventually realised that her warping instructions were actually for a Mexican band weaving technique, which admittedly works very much like Andean Pebble Weaving, but looks different visually - in simple terms, you have thinner warp threads for the background, and thicker threads for the pattern.

I bought a book on doing Andean Pebble Weaving using tablet weaving, which is a technique I'm very familiar with.  Which turned out to be totally unsuitable for me, as it assumed you weren't using an inkle loom (see icon).

However, I'd paid for it (including overseas postage from the Netherlands) so I was damned if I wasn't going to get some use out of it!

It's a very dense book in an acedemic style, lacking in photos and warping diagrams, but with the aid of that and the video below, I was able to work out how pebble weaving is supposed to be done.  The lady in this videos is doing close to  the traditional way (albeit on an inkle loom rather than backstrap) (I'll tell you what backstrap is in a minute...)

 

Watch on YouTube

 

Backstrap weavers have  a belt round their back that the bottom of the loom is tied to.  See the set of string heddles.  For pebble weaving, add a second set of string heddles, and keep most of the rest of what she's got, including when the different colours of warp threads are separated by two sticks to keep them apart... See how pulling the heddles allows her to change colours.  Now imagine having to use two sets of those heddles, and having to do complicated stuff (as in the first video) separating the two sets of warps with sticks and picking up individual threads with a cocktail stick (or pick up stick of your choice).

My brain went Aragh....

There's complicated and there's complicated...

 

Watch on YouTube

 

I brain ached for days.  In the middle of one sleepless night (asthma medication side effect), I finally came up with something workable.  Well, it proved workable when I finally warped up my inkle loom to test it.  After a lot of starting mistakes and a rapid learning experience....

You couldn't use my method on a backstrap loom - it only works on an inkle loom ('inkle' just means 'narrow band') and I don't think it would work for pieces over a certain width, but it works for me.  And is definitely easier than the method the woman with the inkle loom was using!

I did all my early weaving on a backstrap loom, but I was doing tablet weaving rather then want the south American women use.  Backstrap works well, is portable, and cheap, and it's what I use to teach new weavers as an inkle loom is an investment.  But I find my back is more comfortable if I'm not looking down all the time.

I'll spare you the explanation (unless you're a weaver and actually want to know) of how I got it to work, but it was an 'interesting' experience...

I'll probably do a few more bands in this technique, but there are so many techniques to try. There are  weaving styles from so many counties, Europe, Africa, Latin American.  I'm sure there are ones I've still to discover.

Some differ in the type of patterns, others in the way the patterns are made. Sometimes patterns from one technique can woven with a different technique to get the same result (or something that looks the same)

I did a weave along here,  a few years ago.  If anyone wants to learn how to weave a simple belt with scarp yarn, a pencil, a plastic bag clip, scissors, a pack of old playing cards, a hole punch, a ruler and a belt - just ask!

It might be nice to do another one.