Weaving…and done!

The final textile

I made it through weaving class!

As I mentioned in a previous blog post and various twitter and facebook posts, I was taking a Weaving 101 class at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY. Last post I couldn’t help but express how insane setting up or dressing the the loom was but once I started actually weaving everything was so simple. It was calming and I’d zone out for a while just going through the motions.

Beginning to Weave

To kind of (but not really since that was kind of ranty) pick up from my last post…

The last thing you do when you’re dressing your loom is pull the warp through the heddles (metal wires with a circle for your yarn to go through), then through the reed combs (check out this loom diagram), and tightly tie the warp around a bar connected to the loom. Then you can start weaving! Your warp is the “structure,” in my images it is the dark gray yarn going through the loom. The yarn pulled through the warp is called the weft. Yes, kind of sounds like “left.” The weft is one way you can create patterns.

But there are also warp patterns which depend on what order you pulled your warp through the heddles. So for instance, I was working on a 4 harness loom, that means I had four sets of heddles to pull my warp through. When I began pulling my warp through the heddles I used a 1, 2, 3, 4 repeat pattern. In the middle of pulling the warp through the heddles I switched it up and used a 1, 2, 3, 4 – 2, 3 – 1, 2, 3, 4 repeat pattern. So if you look at my photographs you can see that the left side of the weave looks very different than the right side. Though I was using weft patterns through the entire warp, the warp pattern ultimately determined the overall outcome. That means that there are endless pattern possibilities while weaving and I found that out firsthand by experimenting.

2/2 Twill Weaving Pattern

And really the most challenging thing once I started weaving was remembering where I was in the pattern. In the image above you can see that I wrote the pattern out on a sheet of paper, however I would often get lost and forget which of those 8 lines I was working on! At the beginning of the class I just didn’t understand what was going on but everything started to come together and made sense in the end. The experience makes me want to purchase a loom for my studio even if it’s just for pleasure!

FYI: Our teacher let us flip through The Handweaver’s Pattern Directory by Anne Dixon, which is where my 2/2 Twill pattern came from. This is a fantastic resource of patterns and how to make them.

Experimenting

Might I mention that in the last post I was unable to recall hardly a single word from weaving, and look, I am retaining all sorts of things!

Bobbin Boat Shuttle

Taking the finished textile off of the loom

Well…what do you think?

I’m Weaving! Okay Not Yet…

Officially tonight was my second weaving class at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn. First of all let me just say that weaving is a bit more tedious then I had imagined. However, in all of it’s technicalities there’s just something really meditative about pulling 240 individual pieces of yarn through various contraptions which I cannot for the life of me remember the names of.

Why am I weaving? How do I justify this class to myself – or anyone else? Well I have a passion…a fascination with textiles. I went to school for Industrial Design…twice. Once in undergrad and once in grad school. Call me crazy (you’d be pretty spot on) but I love making things. A realization of my semi-irrational or at least unexplainable love of textiles began when I did a study abroad semester in Copenhagen, during grad school, where I learned the Scandinavia-style of screen printing; which to date is still fairly traditional. Even Marimekko emplyees pull each screen by hand. By hand people. I realized that I had been sewing and creating “soft” products throughout most of my undergraduate studies and it seemed like an obvious step, to an outsider at least. Too bad I didn’t realize that I loved textiles until about midway through my trip, maybe I would have gone to grad school for textile design (no regrets though). There is just something so comforting about working with fabric, yarn and thread. Furthermore, it feels like these materials have unlimited possibilities. So here I am, taking yet another class related to textiles.

dressing my loom - part 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My goal: to learn the process so I can design something…anything with all of the knowledge accumulated throughout my years of tinkering with the stuff.

Back to the class…

What is going on anyway? I have no idea really. My teacher tells me to do this and that, to pull this piece of yarn through that hole and that piece through a different hole and everything will come together real nice.

Huh? Alright, so I pull 240 pieces of yarn through this and that and viola I have created a structure or frame of sorts and now I can (supposedly) begin weaving. Hopefully (cross-fingers).

dressing my loom - part 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there are all these terms or words that I don’t quite “get” yet.

Like dressing the loom? Harness? And the tools! Someone needs to create better tools for these weaving souls. Everything seems too flexible, breakable almost. I feel like a bull in a china shop. Seriously. My rings get stuck on everything. My legs get in the way of the contraptions.

dressing my loom - part

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tools fall on the ground at every move. I feel like I need something to hold things in place. It’s frustrating, it’s tedious, it’s crazy…and I love it. And I cannot explain the why or how yet.

yarn crosses

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When you are dressing your loom one of the things to always be aware of is your “cross”. This is when your yarn pieces create crosses in between one another. You have no idea what I am talking about. Well in any case…my cross wasn’t really working out tonight so I decided to forget the cross. I took all the yarn in my hand, tool in other hand, and improvised. And somehow I made it through. I dressed my loom….Finally.

Next week I weave!!!