Before my trip to Peru, Ezra and I began the design process for the scarves, shawls and blankets that Lucas agreed to weave for us. I guided her on technical aspects of this style of weaving, and she selected a color palette from a stock of alpaca yarn and then combined different colors for each design. Our knitters in Lima had sent the yarn to Lucas a few days before my arrival, so the stage was set to begin setting up the looms for weaving. I communicated the designs to the weavers using sketches which indicated the different warps, wefts and weaving patterns for each set of textiles. We wove twenty scarves, ten shawls and ten throws per warp. This was the easy part, as Lucas and I had been through this same process countless times during our many years of collaboration in Bolivia.
See Lucas and Felipe giving a demonstration on the warping tree. The cones of alpaca yarn are threaded onto the warping tree, which is rotated a certain number of times depending on the size and number of textiles you plan to weave. From here, the yarns are removed from the warping tree and threaded onto the loom as the warp. In the other photo, Lucas is seen sitting at his loom. The white yarn on the right is the warp, passing through the heddles and then the beater. He opens a shed by pressing the treadles with his feet and passing the weft through the shed. He tightens this "pick" with the beater (which is hinged to the base of the loom), and then proceeds to open the next shed for the next pick.
We are currently working on another round of handloom textiles with Lucas and Co.
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