Weaving

I have spent so much time at the fiber's studio these last few months, I thought I'd show you what all I've been doing--mostly weaving but some other things too.

Right now I am completely obsessed with a weaving structure called doubleweave. Every time I get to start a new project, I ask: could this be a doubleweave project?  I am not sure I'll ever not be obsessed with it.

I had this little stool in my house, nestled under my coffee table. I wanted to make a cushion for it. YES, this could be a doubleweave project!

I dyed some white yarn in indigo dye, and wound that into the warp along with some white and black. I didn't like the contrast of the white at all, so I decided to paint the warp once it got onto the loom. You can see in this photo that the warp is white on the left side of the photo and purple on the right side!

I dyed some weft yarn and this detail shows that there are actually two purples, one more burgundy and one a little bluer, which I love. This structure is called doubleweave block.

I didn't have enough woven cloth to make the entire cushion, so I used some luxurious purple corduroy that I'd gotten at a garage sale some time ago. Here is a late-night in-progress photo.

And, the final outcome!

Won't you sit down?

Next, I attended an amazing workshop through the Northern Colorado Weaver's Guild with the queen of doubleweave, Jennifer Moore, an artist based in Santa Fe. Here are a few photos of the workshop and my loom in progress. I still haven't done much more than this. The weaving workshop was so so fun! I left with new friends and tons of new knowledge and inspiration.

Here is a table full of doubleweave samples that Jennifer made:

The Queen of Doubleweave

 Showing us doubleweave pick-up:

The room we worked in (my loom is the one right in front)

My doubleweave rainbow work in progress:

Last but not least, I had to put my rainbow piece on the back burner because my next art school assignment took over my life!  I have long wanted to try to bring my love for figure drawing into my love for weaving. I had a grand plan that I wanted to do with a dynamic, crouching pose. So I dived in.

I turned photos of my model's pose into graphic 2- and 3-tone drawn pieces and used tracing paper to experiment with color:

I used the same motif in a 2 in. x 2 in. embroidery sample.

The larger drawing turned into a screen for screen printing, and I used thickened dye to print it onto an 18x24 in. piece of cloth I wove.

I used another version of the print to make this 2-tone print:

Here it is wrapped around a bolt:

The embroidered patch took many hours. Again, this is 2x2 inches!

 Here they all are together, variations on a theme.

I'm not done yet! Here is the current state of my loom, and I intend to use doubleweave pick-up to bring the motif into this. That may take some hours though. Stay tuned!