Weaving Update: Perception

My larger weavings take some time so it's time to celebrate that I'm past the half way point on my current word-based double weave. I have a lot of additional ideas for this one. It doesn't seem...chaotic enough. So I'm thinking about adding bead embroidery and sequins for additional texture on this piece. I haven't done true bead embroidery on my weavings so I'll have to weave a sample piece I can play with. This fabric is a little loose and airy and beads can get heavy quickly. It's just a thought right now.

The middle of this weaving is all orange and black.  It fades out into other colors on either end, but the orange is the central glow. I'm laughing at my younger self because orange wasn't really a color on my creative radar and I kind of hated that my high school colors were orange and black. Here I am staring at orange and black while I weave and it takes on a new brilliance for me. I'm surrounded by orange on a daily basis due to my day job and it's definitely ended up taking the front seat as a color I like to work with in my fiber art in this moment. 

This piece is "Perception" and it calls back to a time in my life where everything felt like it was spinning out of control and what someone else viewed was completely skewed from what was actually happening. I knew what the lies were but the gas-lighting and drinking had gone on for so long I had lost all trust in myself. I have my confidence back...along with some extra that I had never had before in my life. 10 years makes a big difference when you start going in the right direction. I used to joke that it takes me 10 years to get over something, but now I really think it's true. The dramas of my past and the artwork ideas sketched during that time have started to come into physical existence. The first being "Playing with Fire" last spring. Once these ideas become a finished piece of artwork I seem to just...let it go. 

Bruce "helping"

Perception feels timely for this year too. I'm delving into my artwork in the safety of home and friends because I feel on-guard out in the world. Some days I still expect to open my back door to go outside and see the world on fire. I'm working on accepting and moving on, or moving...got my passport updated and have found myself looking into how to immigrate to Canada or what it would cost to move a house of furniture to Europe (mainly for my looms)....I think between myself and my husband we finally have our studio/offices set how we want them and have our equipment upgraded to what we've been dreaming of (my looms, his gaming and music) so I'm not desperate enough to move. I love our house, property, Lansing and our cozy little kitty-filled home.

Gratitude is celebrated regularly here in our home, there was a brilliant full moon this month and I love how quiet and haunting the snow-covered night and shadows feel in our back yard. This giant tree casts the best shadows. 

Yes, And Sample 1

In November and December I went about dyeing new rayon for a church commission that I have agreed to do this year. I did a lot of playing with colors and had a meeting that included putting skeins of yarn that I had dyed up against the wall that the weaving will hang on. We (the committee at the church for this honorarium and I) agreed that saturated colors looked really wonderful and so I set about winding a warp and dressing Beatrice. 

Drafting the way I wanted to warp for this double weave pickup became an obsession. I was rolling it around in my head and sometimes waking up in the middle of the night thinking about what I needed to do to make it work.  This piece is the first where I have one warp threaded as plain weave (which is normal) and the second warp prepared for a twill weave option. The colored layer is plain weave with a striped color warp and the black is twill.  I thought it would be nice to make the more textured fabric in black and it's absolutely wonderful in person. 

One of the things about weaving something that's been in your head can be that you hope it works out in some sort of interesting if not exciting and perfect way, but it can end up being a flop. I was ready, I didn't have my hopes too high, I knew I'd probably have to go in and fix threading errors that would pop up and drive me nuts, or the 2 fabric structures wouldn't play nice together or...something.  It's a miracle. No threading errors and as I started to weave the design it just...worked. I'm still waiting for the shoe to drop on this but it's not, it's just perfect. 

I started with an 8 x 10 of the actual cartoon that I'm working on. The 32 in x 48 in cartoon is just being finalized and working a narrow section of  it gives me a good idea of how the spacing and font sizing is going to look.  After weaving one small portion of the warp (in case I couldn't find the time after a stint of multiple days off in a row) I decided that I wanted to have a long strip to weave and move from one color weft idea to the next. So I printed a 10 x 48 strip of cartoon to work with next. I didn't do too long of a warp because I knew I might want or need to change it up and I didn't want to get stuck with feeling like I had to weave all of it. I think its safe to say that most of us weavers hate to waste warp. So this warp ended up with a 10 x 8 sample and a 10 x 25 sample.

In the above photo I also have a 3rd sample. I tried one more warp with a little bit of color in the black warp.  Just to see how it reads. I didn't want to be weaving that idea on a later project and think "oh man, this would have been great in Stacey's weaving."  I'll talk more about that one in the next blog post.

I met with the church on Sunday. They had a lovely service and afterward an annual meeting that they were happy to have me at to introduce this commission piece in honor of Pastor Stacey. I was so glad to have samples that I could pass around so the church members that attended had something to touch and see as the project was explained. I held the pieces up against the wall. I was afraid to let the blue be too bright, but I need to dye the next batch brighter. I don't naturally tend towards really bright colors, I want more muted tones. This has been nice to get me out of my color-comfort-zone and it really brightens the studio! 

You can check out my YouTube, I post sometimes.
Here I am working on one of these samples.

Weaving off Extra Warp

When I prepare all of my large weavings I always put on extra warp and often have extra weft yarn. Most of my larger weavings take me up to 2 1/2 years to create and in that amount of time design choices I made early on can change or I might want to play with something at the end of the weaving.

Sometimes I get to that extra warp and just...play. When I weave in Double Weave Pick Up, it's a plain weave at base. Remembering what twill looks like when the loom is already tied up for it is nice. I do my double weave tie-up as any normal tie-up, 1, 2,3,4. This week I started a very simple twill and just kept going.

I was mesmerized, I had the time and quiet space, I had bobbins of weft to use up. I started day-dreaming of what the fabric was becoming and what I could make out if it. I have a thin strappy satin top that I love the shape of. I could start with something like that....Beaded or loomed straps....who knows. I forget how quickly straight-weaving goes. Still not fast by any means but much quicker than 1/4 of an inch per hour.

Or it could just sit in my stash for years like so many other fabrics. I'm trying not to add projects beyond my focus for new wall/installation pieces. I'm part of a group show this September 2023 and I'm really excited but nervous that I won't have much new work.  Either way it'll be fine, but having a deadline is really helpful for me to get work out of my brain, into the sketchbook and then into reality so I'm using it as a driving force.

*Bonus Content*

I did my first Instagram Live video cutting this piece off the loom. I didn't realize I was recording so I look dumb for the first few seconds 😂. You can find that HERE.