Design-A-Crow

Day 133: I'm quite taken with South America pebble weave. Not only is it fun to do on the inkle loom, I like the highly stylized designs. Birds are a common motif, but none of the patterns I've found thus far resemble a crow. The only logical course of action was to make my own, keeping within the strictures of the style. The "stitches" are long and narrow, so as a general rule, the traditional designs also appear somewhat elongated. Creating a shorter, stouter outline for my namesake bird was the primary goal in order to make it recognizable as a corvid. Several experiments with beak position had to be picked back and rejected, and although I was satisfied with the design on the left, I thought the beak looked like it belonged on a parrot rather than a crow or raven. Out of necessity, I reverted to the typical representation shown on the right: upturned, cawing to the sky. I also wanted to keep within the limits of 21 pattern threads, another factor which tends to stretch designs lengthwise. While my final draft might only be recognizable as a crow to someone who could make the association between the motif and my name, at least it doesn't look like a hummingbird. Now comes the second part of the challenge: reading the pattern the opposite direction to make the birds face right and left alternately. When I'm done, I'll have a custom strap for my ukulele/blues box guitar.

South American Pebble Weave

Day 127: A pebbled or speckled pattern in the background is characteristic of a number of different regional styles of weaving historically practiced in South America, and you will find it variously called "Guatemalan," "Bolivian," Peruvian" depending on the reference and usually with either adjective ("pebbled" or "speckled") preceding it. The geographic distinction seems to lie at least partly in the type and weight of the threads used to create the motifs, i.e., doubled threads of the same weight as used here, single threads of a heavier weight or ply and so on. In any case, the background, border and weft threads are functionally finer to allow the pattern (motif) threads to dominate the weaving. Typically, these motifs are highly stylized and elongated. The design on the left is "corn" (growing in a flower pot?) and the bird on the right appears to be a roadrunner or one of its kin. Both designs appear in "The Weaver's Inkle Pattern Directory" by Anne Dixon, a marvelous resource covering many different styles of inkle weaving.

Pebble is a heavily manipulated weave. On almost every row, the weaver must drop or lift pattern threads from one layer of the shed to the other. Warp floats in the motifs generally cross three weft passes, sometimes four or five (longer floats tend to snag, and are therefore not practical). The "pebbles" are picked up in the background on every other pass of the shuttle, staggered so that they do not occur one above the other in this particular style. Although this is rather time-consuming and requires the weaver's strict attention, I find it a very enjoyable process.