Backstrap Dialogues

Lessons, Obsessions and a loom made of sticks

This 56 page comic is a chronicle of my love affair with a backstrap loom—an ancient minimalist and versatile tool that slipped into my life, awakened my inner Luminist, and changed my thinking about cloth.

Part story, part instruction, the comic moves from artist angst to loom construction, shedding mechanisms (string heddle, rigid heddle, and finger picking for tapestry), and even fabric finishing, describing how a bundle of sticks and a strap have opened me up to a world of rich, varied and versatile cloth-- from my familiar narrative weft-faced tapestry, to fluid, hand spun gauze--all while dismantling the boundaries of what I thought I knew about my work.

In short, this is the story of a weaving experiment:

what I did,

how I did it, 

what it felt like, 

and how you can do it too.