At 04:47 PM 2/6/2009, you wrote:
Hmm, I used one of these when visiting a workshop in Bali (and had to pay five
thousand rupia for the privelige of doing someone's work for five minutes. I
gotta say, my five minutes was equal to about twenty minutes of the regular
operator's.
The thing is called either a back-trap or back-strap loom (my memory and my
host's heavy accent mean it could be one or the other). It is operated
row-by-row with the aid of a foot pedal and a horizontal hand bar, all timber.
You work the lines of thread horizontally through the vertical
threads set onto
the loom. You can vary the thread for colour as you go but,
amazingly in Bali, I
saw thread pre-dyed at various points so as to create a regular
pattern. I would
give twenty zillion dollars for my brane to remember the term for
this technique
but it is 115 degrees here and I am not about to go thinking. Still,
the pattern
is fantastic, a little blurred at the edges due to the in-exact way
the pattern
comes out. I have a couple of shirts with it as a feature pattern around the
collar and splodges of the dye on the main part of the shirt -- they really
don't set dyes well thereabouts!
-C.
It is a backstap loom (the weaver's body provides the warp
tension). The "pre-dyed" thread you are referencing is called
ikat. You can have a warp-ikat, or a weft-ikat, or a double ikat
(both warp and weft are dyed). I love ikats.
Joan Jurancich
joa...@surewest.net
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