I know the tension between pursuing in depth and exploring everything ...............If you constantly jump around, you will never discover the depth of your own creative abilities.
Good point. Which makes me think that I’ve probably never verbalized my original goal for starting this weaving project. It is to familiarize myself with a variety of basic weave structures. A secondary goal is to understand how color effects them.
Basically I've just been a monkey-see-monkey-do sort of weaver. I can follow a draft and weave it accordingly, but I’ve never really understood what I was doing. I can’t tell you why summer and winter is what it was for example, nor huck, nor crackle, nor very many other weave structures. Of course, simply becoming familiar with them obviously isn’t the same as mastering them. And it won’t mean exhausting all the possibilities either. Not at this point anyway.
Part of my motivation to do this is because I still feel rather ignorant as a weaver, even after six years of weaving. I have a desire to weave well, but also to intellectually comprehend I‘m doing. I want to be able to ask intelligent questions about weaving and have intelligent conversations with other weavers. I want to stop feeling out in left field in regards to experience and terminology.
So hopefully I’m not jumping around so much as I am working my way toward a goal of generalized understanding. From there I will be able to approach both the familiar as well as the new with a depth of knowledge and experience which will open doors creativity for me.
From Jackie:
…… how about a painted light and solid dark, or using think and thin yarns. Think bunching and spacing.
This is interesting because actually, I think this is the general direction I've already been heading in. One thing about log cabin is that the technical definition is pretty narrow. My plan is to start exploring shadow weave, which seems a logical extension of log cabin. So perhaps I’m not leaving log cabin behind but rather moving into their larger color-and-weave category.
At some point I plan to weave that Oelsner log cabin variation, but I think I'll wait until I can apply it to a project. I find that when something like that really catches my attention, I mull it over and over in my mind until I finally have act on it. When that variation reaches this point, then it will materialize! (pun intended : )
But.......will I ever find an actual weaving niche???? I wonder.
© 2006 Leigh's Fiber Journal
4 comments:
Go for shadow weave. It's way more fun than log cabin.
There are so many variables to play with in weaving:
Starting with the yarn: grist, color, fiber, sett, beat.
Then there's the threading, the tie up, and the treadling.
One way to help learn the effects of manipulating variables is to invest in good weaving software. You can play with the light/dark thread options before investing the time in warping up the loom and weaving.
Also..when I took Bonnie Innouye's class on twills, it was the first time that I truly learned to 'read' a tie up. And I've been weaving 26 years!
Nice fabric...it should make lovely and comfortable outfit!
The other thing that you need to remember is that not everything that comes off the loom need be a finished piece. Samples are a good thing. It took me a long time to agree with this. Intelectually, I knew it to be true, but emotionally it just was to hard to cut my hard won weavings and put them in a book. Now I can sample with ease and confidence that the best of the samples will eventually end up as projects.
I took a workshop from Jack Lenor Larsen a few years back and he had us do about a dozen samples of two different structures. One a simple structure, I did a 8 harness huck and the other a complex structure either a false damask or a double weave with a 2:1 ratio in the layers ie. top layer set at 10 epi and bottom layer set at 20 epi. He was very big on having a balanced cloth. He was also very big on cutting and resleying in order to achieve a balanced cloth and a variety of samples. Some day I am going to post about those two weeks. It was a wonderful experience.
Hi Leigh, I find textiles and weaving so interesting that I've never really gone deeply into any one technique in 25 years of weaving! And yes this can be a problem but there are so many different aspects, histories and techniques in our world.
I like to experiment with new ideas, it keeps me continually fascinated with textiles.
Your log cabin weave looks wonderful...also shadow weave is a rewarding one to try.
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