Backstrap Rag Weave Luxury.

Japanese back strap looms, Izaribata or Jibata are seductive in their simplicity and shape.

There are a few sitting around the house. It is time to get them functioning and create a room for them. There is a large room with a low beamed ceiling on the second floor at the back of the house. If the  old clay walls are pushed out and floor to ceiling windows put in it will be a comfortable place to weave on these looms. The side of the steep mountain is just out of reach. It is quiet and isolated place in the middle of the farmhouse.

The first step is to get the looms working. The second step is to build a few more looms and then start the house construction devil again. Then the next step is to have the looms operating and have people come and use them. There are plenty of locals who would love the chance to sit quietly in that hidden corner and weave. And a few who will get on an air plane to come and keep the looms company.

Backstop looms are especially suited for rag weave. (saki-ori.) You can bang the beater back with force creating a tight weave.



It is minus 5 Celsius outside and this backstop loom moved into the warm room. Renita & Suzi & I went to an antique store in the next town and bought old kimono from the 1930's and washed and ripped them to shreds and wove up the strips. The loom itself is simple. It is part of your body while you weave. Ripping up old precious silk textiles to create a new textile. The gentleness and strength needed to weave on one of these is musical. Melody and rhythm and bass lines. Choosing the colour silk strips add dimension. Some of the silk is shiny while others subtly lustrous. The blue skies in the day and the painfully cold clear stars and planets at night in the silent mountains are the weather parameters we weave in.

That dark blue silk warp wove up quickly. We set up another wrap of madder/persimmon dyed silk. I weave a few hours each evening listening to audio books with a few glasses of hot sake to keep motivated.

The ripped silk warp is a mixture of old ripped silk kimono and madder dyed silk. This will be sewn into zabuton tatami pillows.

There is an old loom museum not far away. No one ever goes there. I pop in once every few years to check out the construction of the old Japanese looms when one needs fixing at home. (My house is an orphanage for old dilapidated  looms.) The elders sitting around drinking tea amongst the antique loom carnage look up sleepily from their time slip stupor. 

The local variation of the back strap looms for the 18th century forward is just.....amazing.

A few years back.

Some old Meiji and Edo period rag weave indigo jackets I've had for years and never tire of examining and a recent purchase of a saki ori obi from early Showa period.

I should have a back strap loom course up and running in a few years time.  Around the third year of the Trump presidency. If the world hasn't slipped into Fascist chaos drop me a line and come to Japan and weave something.

A call out to Jean Betts. 

Jean, I love you.

Thank you.