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. 

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.

Off the loom: Leaf Me Alone (Full Sized) Update

I posted to my social media on Tuesday that I was becoming entranced with the beauty of simple plain weaving with hand-dyed threads as I wove off the last couple feet of the Leaf Me Alone (full size) warp.  Usually plain weave seems boring to me at this point but I think I was jsut happy to be back to my weaving since mask-making has taken over my year.  Even though I had no intention of getting on to the finishing portion of this piece, I still chose to cut it off the loom. Cutting a weaving off the loom to get a good full look at the final product tends to be a big deal.  Tuesday I cut it off, fixed a threading error from the warp so it won't happen if I decide to use it to tie the next warp to it and I threw it over the front beam, walked out the studio and closed the door.  I opened up the draft of the next design I'm working on and spent the remainder of the day working on that between chores. 

It wasn't until the evening that I really realized I hadn't taken a good look at the weaving I had just cut off and left. I had no clue why I was so lack-luster about getting to see the double weave and why I had started dreaming of things to make with the plain weave portion instead of staying focused on Leaf Me Alone.  It's this:  I've already woven this piece, smaller versions, but the same colors, same words.  I'm so bored with the colors! I think I need to leave this one lie for a bit before I can get back to it.  It will have a leaf panel with beaded and stitched pieces, so I'm working on that too, but here I am, completely over a piece before it's even done.  

In the meantime, I'm really really excited about this next piece, I finally have an idea of colors which I may be needing to dye for it (yay!).  It's going to be a similar look or feel to my other work but it's more for the times so I have to get it done before certain things, such as logos, become obsolete. The title of it came to me on an episode of Live From Here with Chris Thile, it's called "Is There A Thing To Which Brings Us Less Joy" More about that to come later. 

Until then, I'm finalizing the next design and the cats are stacking up around here. :)

Lois and Clark, 2 of our 3 kitties