Mother Superior: Lake Superior Triple Weaving

Remember the weaving that I finished for the Porcupine Mountains Artist Residency?  Well I had some warp left over and decided to make myself another Lake Superior weaving from all of the wonderful photos that I took while I was there.  I cannot stop thinking of calling it "Mother Superior" so that's what it is.  Plus that Beatles song keeps popping in my head when I was working on both pieces.

This weaving is much smaller and far different in texture than it's sister piece.  I perused my dyed rayon stash and found most of the colors I needed.  The yellow-orange ball of hand dyed rayon is actually from my years at the University of Michigan Art School.  It was perfect for this piece and I'm glad it's sat waiting in my stash for this long. The green weft I did do some over-dyeing on the skein and up close it has some fantastic hues of blues and purple.

Some major edits were done to the reflection of the sun (round yellow thing in the water) after I pulled it off the loom. I actually snipped the loops of rayon (lets be honest, I wove it the wrong direction, the loops were meant for the back of the piece, but I always do tapestry from the back so it ended up all wonky).  This is the first time I have ever stitched into a weaving for a fix/detail.  I was nervous and wanted it very faint, so I used yellow sewing thread.

I just submitted this piece to it's first show, so fingers crossed on it jurying in! Until then, it has a place on my wall.

Reception for "She was Lost in the Woods and Followed the Sound of Your Waves"

I failed at getting photos while I was talking to people at the opening but it was really nice to see this piece hanging before I shipped it off.

Some of my family did make it! (Thanks mom for posting photos on Facebook).

Finishing and Hanging "She Was Lost in the Woods and Followed the Sound of Your Waves"

It's finished.  And even a little bit before it's being hung at Grove Gallery & Studios this coming weekend so I can enjoy it at home for a minute.  I was kicking around a lot of titles for this piece.  I don't like how long it is, but it's descriptive and means a lot to me.  

"She Was Lost in the Woods and Followed the Sound of Your Waves"

I've had a lot going on since August 2014...really since before then.  My residency with the Friends of the Porkies was very enlightening for my future.  This is why it was so important for me to put the work into this piece.  I did a lot of hiking while I was there, alone.  Sometimes I would feel lost, and then I'd hear Lake Superior and head that direction so I could take off my hiking boots and socks to dip my toes in her cold waters.

This piece is also very defining for me, I feel a lot less lost these days and I cannot wait to get back up to the U.P. this August to visit Lake Superior and the Porcupine Mountains again (I'm teaching a 3-day Beadweaving workshop August 19-21!!!)

Anyway, on to what I've been doing to finish this piece.  I hemmed the edges.  First machine stitching 3 rows in my header (something I learned in a Mary Sue Fenner Workshop)

I decided a blanket stitch would look nice for the actual stitching of the hem.

I had to fix this weaving error, which involved cutting, pulling two weft passes and re-weaving them with a needle.

Then on to measuring out the webbing..

Sewing the "loop" (fuzzy) side of the Velcro to the webbing. So if you need to roll the weaving it won't catch on it.

Pinning the webbing/Velcro to the weaving.

A "fix" for me, I wanted to extend these light blue waves a little more for aesthetics. 

And during critique it was decided that the above white area stood out too much, so I needed to tone it back. I pulled some of it and stitched dark blue through.

The "hook" side of the Velcro I connected to my strip of wood and I drilled 3 holes in wood panel for hanging purposes.  

Why the Velcro? It's much easier to hang.  The wood panel is either nailed or hung to the wall first. Then you can press the weaving up against it and slowly level it.

Porcupine Mountains Residency Weaving...Is off the loom and being finished!

Well, I'm at the final stretch of finishing my weaving for the Porcupine Mountains Artist Residency that I did back in August 2014.  I'm very very late on turning it in, but I'm extremely pleased with how its turning out and they're getting a great piece.  I hunkered down for 7 hours of weaving on Saturday so that I could have it to show at a small group critique on Sunday.

There are some areas that I need to stitch in more light blue and tone down one of the white patches on the right side.  Also, the beaded edging that I have been working on for it was vetoed.  Obviously, I still need to hem the sides and hang the weaving, but you get the jist.

One of the fun things about pulling this piece off the loom is the back side of it.  Since this is the first time I've ever woven triple weave pick-up, I was learning along the way as to what I could get away with on the back side of the piece as long as it the imagery was coming out properly on the front of the weaving. The strips and blocks in the above photo turned out really cool.

I'm still pulling thread to the back of the weaving, this is what the whole thing looked like at first (above photo).

The weaving is settling into itself and I think I have a good name for it finally, other than "the Porkies weaving"...I'll save it for the final blog post on it though.

Oh! I almost forgot, the official Lansing area viewing will be April 8-10 at Grove Gallery.
Artist's reception Friday evening, April 8.
I'll have my jewelry up as a trunk show also.

Edging for Porkies Weaving

If you follow me on social media, it looks like I'm slacking off on my Porkies weaving, the snow has been calling to me.  I have my season pass again this year, and that's where my happy place is in the winter.  I mean, who can resist this:

Anyway, I promise that I'm still working diligently on my Porkies weaving.  I decided to do a beaded edge for this weaving.  It's become a bit of a staple in some of my work, and I love the weight of the beads on my wall hangings.  So, I carry a little bin of beads around to work on the edges during ski breaks.  

I held it up to my weaving today and am very pleased with how the colors are turning out.  The center seed bead in this St. Petersburg chain stitch I actually picked up on my drive in to my residency at the Porcupine Mountains.  Marquette has this lovely bead shop called Bella Beads. They must have been meant to be.

Video: Double Weave Pick Up (in Porkies Triple Weaving)

A few times I have been asked to do an explanation of double weave pick up while I weave it from my previous video. I thought that I'd have to wait to do so until my next weaving (I don't do video editing), but there are actually some parts in my Triple Weave piece that I am currently working on that I only need to double weave.  So here you have it folks, double weave pick up with me talking.  Which I don't particularly like hearing my voice on video (and excuse the babbling, I can only handle so many takes of this), but I try to explain the weaving/draw portion as simply as possible,

I have also in the past asked about how I attach my cartoon to my weaving.  So I do touch on that.
Enjoy.

Porkies Weaving December Update

When I'm working on a weaving that's really long, one of the high-points is when the cartoon (image that I'm working off of from under the warp) starts draping down and I have to start rolling it to keep it off of the treadles. Above is a view from the underside of my loom!

I find I enjoy weaving the most first thing in the morning.  I'm getting on a more normal schedule (ok, not with the holidays, but getting back to it), where I do some yoga or work out while I wait for my coffee to brew. Then get to my weaving for an hour or two.  I work best and most-focused before I have showered or gotten dressed for the day.  It's my quiet down-time and I love it.

I usually try to weave until I start making mistakes.  Since this is triple-weave pick up I sometimes start to think about what else I need to do that day, getting to work, the house, emails start coming in and I can't keep a rhythm anymore.  I think if this was my usual double-weave pick up I wouldn't have the issue of making mistakes when my brain moves to other things, but three layers of fabric have been quite the new challenge for me.

Above is a detail, I'm loving how the background colors are popping through the blues of the water's open weave.  I wasn't sure how to get some of that depth that I'm experiencing from the panorama, and here it is happening naturally.

Porkies Weaving: Update 2

I've probably been getting about an hour a day in on this weaving.  The detail in it makes it hard to sit for much longer than this, but I'm pushing on. Usually pulling more hours over the weekend.

I got my header on.

I've been playing with texture of yarn and creating texture with the woven layers moving in and out of one another.

It started to get really difficult to see the cartoon underneath.  So I pulled it and added more sharpie marker lines.

I am VERY pleased that I finally got the triple weave system down. I was letting the warp that I wasn't using float at the back, but now we're all in!

Unwrapping and Warping Delilah

You may remember back in March I helped my friend and old college roommate, Amy, get her loom up and running again.  So, she came out to my house a few weeks ago to give me the kick in the pants I needed to unwrap my loom, Delilah, and start in on my weaving for the Friends of the Porkies donation.  Delilah has been hiding behind boxes in the mess that is currently my studio.  It helped just to have the deadline of Amy coming over to try to have some semblance of organization in my studio.

Amy wound off her warp and balled yarn for her next weaving. (Tencel from Forma)

I wound off my warp and realized that I needed to dye 

at least one of the three to get the color range I wanted.

3 warps, ready for triple weave

Through the reed.

I'm so thankful that my Macomber loom lets the back beam down so 

I can sit close to the heddles to thread them.

Warp all through the heddles.

Once the back is tied on, this is how I pull the warp through and get all the snags out.

Tied up nice and tight, it feels so good!

The test to make sure there's no threading errors. First try, no issues. Yay!

Also, this is my 300th blog post.  Seems crazy, I started blogging 7 years ago, I have received my one google check (ha ha), sold some pieces here and there after posting new work, and I use this as an archive of my own work which comes in handy all of the time. My life has flipped upside down and then right-side up again. I never planned on living back in Michigan after leaving for Colorado in 2004, but here I am, loving Lansing and all the friends I've made here, getting back to my art-focus after ditching it for a bad life-choice.