Peruvian band weaving

I am often asked when I became interested in band weaving.  In 2007, we had a wonderful holiday in South America and visited Peru.  I found the Centre for Traditional Textiles of Cusco. This wonderful shop and museum was inspirational.
I had tried band weaving before but had been very unsuccessful.  I always show my very first attempt at band weaving when I am teaching workshops. It is a very uneven scrappy piece.  It has 17 pattern threads and is made of linen. I found it so hard that I gave up trying to learn band weaving.

After seeing the lovely work of the weavers, I decided to try band weaving again once I arrived home. Band weaving is an absorbing hobby.  The patterns seem infinite in variety.

Peruvian Woven Bands.

Here are a selection of bands that I bought in Peru. The bands that I bought in the Centre for Traditional Textiles had a card with the name of the weaver.  How wonderful!  So often weavers are anonymous and yet they are skilled artists.

This is a small back strap with the warp and some of the completed weaving.  It makes a pretty wall hanging.

A close up of the pattern.

Here are some more bands which are called chumpi.

close up of one of the motifs

Two beaded hat bands known as jokimas

by Nilda Callanaupa Alvarez

This book is published by Interweave Press and has lots of illustrations of the weaving of the highland people.  ISBN -13:978-1-59668-055-5   published 2007

These bands were a revelation for me.  I was intrigued by their complexity and wonderful  use of colour. I had forgotten that it was only nine years ago that I really began to study band weaving.  It feels as though I have been doing it as long as I have been weaving.

When I started to learn, most of the patterns that I found were from Scandinavia.  I had to find out more about them so we visited Sweden to explore museums and collections.  I had not realised that this was only the start of a long journey of discovery.

Susan J Foulkes  October 2015