Perception

I doodled this idea 10 years ago and let it sit until it was no longer deeply personal but something that I was experiencing on a regular basis. Perceptions spin out of control. I was spiraling, and still can. We all can. Spiraling emotion and experiences are chaotic and fragile for me. The weaving alone was too clean, so I eventually decided to add sequins. I found these helped visualize what I was feeling, and were both chaotic and fragile to work with. This piece reminds me of where I was, but also that things get better with time and when I gently move through the chaos instead of sidestep or avoid it.  

I took this piece off of my loom last spring and it took me bout a year to decide and finish because:

1) what else needed to be done with it (adding sequins)
2) what sequins to order, it took me a while to narrow it down to not spending $300 on sequins, this has 5 different style.
3) should I or shouldn't I wash the weaving first?
4) How to sew the dang sequins on and in what way.
5) Finish/hanging work

I have to thank my friend Abigail for asking me if I could create hair pins for her wedding a few years ago. They were to match the beading on her dress which was very dimensional. I had never worked with sequins before or considered that they could do much more than lay flat. I had a lot of fun with that project and it added a new technique to my toolbox. Check out those hair pins here. When I wanted my weaving to feel messier, I eventually realized that sequins were the way to go. 

I did wash this piece. The black portion is woven in twill and the colored is woven in plain weave. Washing helped the twill weave fill in a bit for sewing the sequins on. We won't talk about the amount of width I lost when I washed this though. 

Sewing the dang sequins on. I thought I'd sprinkle the sequins and stitch them on in little sections as I sprinkled. Sequins don't "sprinkle." They are staticky and stick to everything but where you want them to be. Mostly your fingers. This was a process, I kind of shoved them together in sections trying to vary the different sizes, finishes and shapes. I really love how the sequins turned out, but this was not as fun as beading is for me. 

The finish work. I give a seminar talk on thinking ahead of time about how you'll hang/present your work and I did none of that prep work for myself on this piece! I was kicking myself when I got to this part and hadn't looked at the header or bottom in almost a year. What was I thinking? I was so focused on having clean selvages for this weaving that I got caught up in that instead. I was going to add a hanging mechanism for the top and bottom but decided it was fine if there's only one way to hang this. I just like to have options. I'm happy that Perception turned out about like what I had in my head. I'm also glad it's done and I can move on to finishing some smaller projects before getting back to my next weaving. 

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; Stacey Honorarium Commission

On Thursday, October 28th the First Baptist Church of Ann Arbor held an intimate service for the piece that they commissioned me to create in memorial of their pastor, Stacey Simpson Duke.  It's hard to put into words how honored I am to have gotten to create this piece for them. Being hired to design and weave a piece with this level of emotional and personal intention, yet, still have the freedom to create in the way that works best for me was truly a wonderful experience. 

I made it through the service without crying too much and was invited to speak.  A big thing for me with this piece it's the first of my word-based weaving that is not only a commission but will hang in a permanent home.  So far these types of pieces are publicly exhibited but then come back to me. Which has made sense as they relate directly to me and my emotions or how I'm handling (or not handling) something at that time in my life. This was a different level of emotional learning for me. The internet deep dive that I fell into researching Stacey's voice of hope and inclusivity made me feel connected to her without ever having the opportunity to meet her. Once I started learning about her, the ideas and inspiration for this piece came in droves. 

They presented this weaving in the church sanctuary at first and towards the end it was taken to be hung so we could witness it's initial hanging as a group. I was so surprised when I walked into the hallway and they had chosen to hang it from the ceiling in the center of the stairwell. Initially we had discussed hanging it against the wall, but when I had spoken about how my double weavings are visible from both sides at a church meeting back in February the way it was to hang changed, I just didn't realize that it had been confirmed. 

I stayed and answered questions and we spoke about Stacey, a number of people told me that she would have loved it and the other popular comment was that I reminded the attendees of Stacey, with my curly hair and large fuchsia cat eye glasses.

The other exciting thing (to me) about the way this weaving is hung is that the time of day will show off the two sides differently. In the evening the side facing the upstairs hall was in full color and the light shining on it lit lit it up but that light also shines through it. So from the back side, with the light shining through you don't see the colors as vibrantly but you do get the outlines of the words and shapes. I had just given a program about my work and was trying to explain that I weave a bit more open than most and when the light comes through my weavings the colors and often designs disappear making it look more like plain fabric.  This piece doesn't look "plain" by any means, but that effect was lovely to see in-person.  I usually end up with a favorite side of my weavings, but this one is really balanced and I like them both equally, so I'm glad it ended up being hung this way. 

The Service Handout

As much as I always say I don't take commissions, lately when I do they really are worth it, I feel confident that I've done a good job for the group the commission is for and I get a lot of joy out of doing it. And that's how they should feel. This piece actually pushed me to put the most amount of color I've ever included in a weaving before and also learn a vector based design program so I could add movement to the words. I'd never have thought when I was in art school that I would ever end up creating pieces that would be hanging in places of worship (or that I would need to use Illustrator/Inkscape). I didn't think it was out of the question either, I just...didn't know where I or my work was going back then.  

This weaving has so much going on with it that I did my best to narrow down all the detail shots, I hope whoever likes to look at my blog out there enjoys them at much as I do. 

Yes, And weaving update; Half Way

I am just about to the half way point on "Yes, And" which is in the the yellow weft, the brightest color in the middle of 9 different colors, against the black of this weaving. I was able to start weaving this at the beginning of March (I warped the loom and dyed additional rayon in February while waiting for final approval of the size/design). I wasn't sure how long this would take me to weave as I've never had a commission for this kind of piece before (and keeping track of timing can be a pain, so I don't do it on my personal pieces). Commissions take the front seat ahead of most personal projects because I don't like the feeling of someone waiting on me, so I've been weaving at least a half hour nearly every day, up to 5 hours some days. I am now remembering how I finished 3 pieces per semester in college, I wove a lot, I slept when I could and worked more. I have better balance these days. 

I originally quoted about a year to finish this piece but I think if I keep working along this steadily it'll be more like 2-3 more months. That being said, as it warms up I tend to want to start putzing around our gardens in the mornings instead of weaving.  Maybe I'll just start getting up earlier with the birds, that being said, this weather change kicked my butt and I've been too sick to do much but sleep the past 3 days, along with a medical thing I had to deal with last week I'm feeling a bit behind over these past 2 weeks. I haven't promised anything yet, but I'm sure I'll get it done before the projected dates on the agreement in the fall, I just need to see what my weaving pace is once it warms up. 

Hyperlapse x10 of 1 full circuit of the treadling

So far I have 60 hours of winding, warping and weaving on this final piece and about 30 hours of dyeing (I didn't do a great job of tracking that because some of it is just preparing a dye bucket and throwing the skein(s) in to soak for the day) and 8 hours into the design work (that's after I taught myself what I needed to know to work in Inkscape). These numbers do not include the time for the samples I wove to make sure the design was going to all work out. 

I'm really excited to see this piece in full, as I move from color to color I get to see glimpses, but my color sketch and samples are the best I have to go off of to envision the final piece. It's part of what's exciting about weaving, the work has a baseline but you never quite know what the final piece will look like until it's off the loom and up on a wall.

Yes, And: Second Sample and Checker Colors

Before I got going on the full-sized weaving for "Yes, And" I tried a second sample warp with a little bit of color in the black warp. I was curious as to how it might read. I didn't want to be weaving that idea later and think "oh man, this would have been great in Stacey's weaving." I got 6 inches of it done before my meeting with the church to take as a sample to pass around. 

Ultimately I think the color in the black warp is a little too distracting.  The color portions came out as dotted lines in the twill weave structure and I feel like it takes away from the design overall. I am glad I tried it out just to see what it did and so I could confirm that it wouldn't work how I wanted it to with curving text. 

Now this...

I had warp left over to just play and weave fabric. I decided to see how I might want the color to move in and out of each other for the final commission piece.  To keep things simple, a little quicker and not mess with another paper cartoon I went with my favorite pattern: checkers. I really love how this fabric turned out and it confirmed that the way I want to move the colors through the 48 inch long weaving; bright to dark to bright again...I don't want it to look like a rainbow but I still really want to use as many colors as I think will look good without being stripey feeling.   

With the checker pattern I don't feel like the dotted lines of color in the the black warp are as distracting. I suspect its because because the design is straight lines so the dotted lines of colors just sort of fit in. I really love this fabric and I'm torn between finishing it to make it into a little wall hanging or washing it to use as part of a clothing accent piece. One of the things I enjoy about being a fiber artist is I sometimes get to wear my work. 

I had created a smaller checker sample at the end of the warp for "Playing with Fire" so I could see how it washed up. I usually don't wash this fabric as it ends up as wall-hangings so, even though I know weaving has shrinkage, it definitely shrank more than I realized it would. 1 1/8 inches to be exact. The twill allows the fabric to get a little squishy with some stretch.  It washed up really nice though, which is what I was hoping for.

Playing with Fire (Small Weaving)

I doodled these matches back in 2015. I had gotten divorced, I was out a lot and "playing with fire" was feeling like the best description for me and my life at the time. I was either lighting a fire or burning everything to the ground. I liked the look of this small sketch that I had drawn one night and set it aside. I didn't forget about it like I usually do when I doodle, it resonated with me.

Fast forward to now, my life is rather calm and I no longer have to manage drama and chaos. No more "playing with fire" in the figurative sense, it's a reminder of what that part of my life was like. 

So here we are now, I started sampling for a new commission and it seemed to be the perfect warp setup for this image that's been hanging around in the back of my mind and in my computer files for 9 years. I blew it up and started weaving. I don't feel like I have had a ton of success with my hand drawn designs but this is making me think that maybe I'd been trying too hard. Maybe I simply need to doodle and then blow up the design.

Black side detail

I'm referring to the side with more color as the "front" and the black based side as the "back" on this work. I'm quite taken with both sides. Just when I think I like the black based side better, the stark "sketchy" black lines of the colored side rope me back in. 

Colored side detail

This is woven from rayon that I dyed myself, the colored warp is plain weave and the black is a 2-2 twill. The finished piece measures 8.75 in x 16 in.  
 

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.

"Is There a Thing to Which Brings Us Less Joy Yet We Devote More Time" the social media piece Final Post

I have blogged about the process of this piece but I'm just getting around to a final post about it.  I finished stitching the edging on this weaving just in time for the "Brave New World; Fiber Art in the 21st Century" Exhibit which went up in the second weekend in September. I really needed that extra push of having it going into a show to finish this before the subject matter became totally obsolete. That's how fast things seem to move on the internet and social media these days. When I began the draft for this weaving TikTok wasn't even on my radar and now it's just as popular (or more?) as Facebook and probably more popular than Twitter (now X?) is.  In 20 more years will these even be a thing? And what will they have morphed into?

I digress. I don't like social media. I'd delete my Facebook if I didn't have to use it for my art business and to keep up with my friends and fellow artist's event here and there. Ultimately I don't scroll through any of my social mediums much because I'd rather be enjoying time at home or doing my artwork. It has it's place, but I've worked to make it a very tiny place in my life for my sanity.  It's not healthy for me to be on it all the time and it's absolutely depressing how it sucks me in and I'll completely loose an hour that I'd rather be doing something I actually enjoy. Such as weaving this piece.

This weaving is called "Is There a Thing to Which Brings Us Less Joy Yet We Devote More Time" which is a quote from Chris Thile when he was hosting a favorite radio show of mine on NPR. He was talking about how he was alone at home and got on Twitter: Is there a thing to which brings us less joy yet we devote more time?  This sentence exactly describes how I feel about going down that social media rabbit hole. I think it was at a time that I had the Facebook app completely removed from my phone. I chose greys and blacks for the base colors because social media tends to make me feel dark and grey.  If you look closely there are threads of color in both warps representing the occasional good that can come from interacting with it. Now that I'm further removed from the making of this piece I'm remembering that I designed the edging with the "connected to Wi-Fi" symbol. During the weaving of this I cursed myself that I couldn't just stop weaving when I felt like I had had enough, I needed to get to the other end with the Wi-Fi edging to finish the piece. I really enjoy that little extra bit that I put into the design that at least I notice even if no one else does. 

The beaded edge took some sampling as I wanted to switch it up from my usual stitch. This bead stitch is a netting pattern instead of my usual St. Petersburg chain stitch. I haven't really had the time to think about whether I like it better than the other, I didn't have it up on my wall long enough to fully process this portion of the final piece before it was off to be hung. Possibly more on that later. 

I have my usual nit-picky things that I need to fix or wish I had done better but ultimately I was really happy how it turned out looking hung in the middle of the Adrian Center of the Arts gallery space. I also plan on never naming a piece with this long of a title again. 

(This photo was in my last post about the Brave New World 

exhibit but I think it s acute one of Bryan and I)

Brave New world; Fiber Art in the 21st Century with Jenny Schu

This past weekend was the Reception for a very cool fiber exhibit that I was honored to be part of: Brave New World; Fiber Art in the 21st Century at the Adrian Center for the Arts. 

There were over 100 people through and although it was to be from 2pm-4pm it was already getting busy in the gallery space at 1:50pm.  The day flew by fast and it was nice to meet artists that I've only known through social media or by name but never gotten to talk to before. I'm always so grateful to be part of this amazing fiber community.

Thank you to all who made it out to celebrate with us. This is the first time Uprooted 1, 2 and 3 have shown in the same space outside of my home. 

"Uprooted 1, 2 and 3"

It was also wonderful seeing "She Can't See the Forest Through the Trees" next to her sister piece "Leaf Me Alone" 

"She Can't See the Forest Through The Trees"

"Leaf Me Alone"

I have some tiny details to fix on "Is There a Thing to Which Brings Us Less Joy Yet We Devote More Time" but I love how it turn out hanging in the middle of this space.  Being able to tell how light and drapey my weavings are is important to me if it can be shown off. I finished this one just before I needed to drop it off for the show!

Bryan and I with 

"Is there a Thing to Which Brings Us Less Joy Yet We Devote More Time"

I posted a partial walk-about of the gallery when it finally died down which is kinda fun: 

Going from an amazing vacation at the Supernova International Ska Festival to this Fiber Art Reception has made my heart want to burst wide open with all the love I'm feeling packed into a mere 10 days. Plus Bryan and I just celebrated our first year of being married which felt like it went by really fast. September has been wonderful.

Sampling for the Anger Weaving

I don't often sample before I start in on a new large piece but I've decided to try to work with a "stash" yarn from a collection that I call "Sally's Mom's Stash." I started by making sure it would dye over the "hornet blue" color that it's label says it is. I had a lot of fun playing with dyeing again and had to keep reminding myself that it was just for a sample. Not that I wouldn't possibly be using excess weft yarn for the final piece, but I needed to not be too hard on myself about re-dyeing colors until they felt right.

I posted a lot of video of this process and my weaving, teaching myself how to use Instagram reels (with some help from WeaverBee) and encouragement from other colleagues and friends. I hate posting video but I'm getting more comfortable with it. Some of these videos even make it over to my YouTube Channel:

I have to admit, after finishing this sample piece, which doesn't look like much, I was no longer excited about having this warp on my loom. This is why I prefer to put on a fresh warp for every new piece. The colors aren't right for the final project and I've gotten what I need from the sample weaving. What to do now?  I fixed a warping error in the reed and decided to try creating a smaller piece with another idea I've been trying to work out.

I let this warp sit for a few days and then did a quick draft of this idea that I've been struggling to get the imagery on. It'll end up being a finished piece rather than another sample and I'm surprised at just how much I like how it's turning out. More to come on that piece. For now, I'll be weaving on this warp while I start to break down and print out the large cartoon for the anger weaving to be taped together. I'm still working on a final title which is why it's just called the anger weaving right now.