Why be inspired and motivated by the Saori aesthetic?

I have just written a post for Craftsy on Have you heard about Saori Weaving. It made me think again about why the Saori concept is so appealing to me.

Ten years ago I wrote about Saori weaving for the Complex Weavers in the US. Reading this again the other day made me feel invigorated anew about the possibilities of weaving with a freer and irregular approach. Unless you have a loom with many shafts or do tapestry weaving  it’s not that easy to develop curves, rounds and irregularity in loom determined patterning. Saori offers us the permission to weave outside the ordinary. And although the general rules and processes of handweaving apply, once we’re weaving through those warp threads we’re free to do what we like.

You know the Saori loom I bought many years ago actually sat doing nothing much for quite a while. I know its utterly embarrassing to admit. That’s because you need people with weaving. People weaving next to you and others working with their own quite different ways in colour and texture. That isn’t easy in Australia – finding like-minded weavers and the vast distances between us. But we’re here working underground and wanting to share our enthusiasm for the most ancient of human processes which continues with us today.

On Ravelry at the moment we are sharing a warp .  This is a great way to get inspired by using the basis of another weaver’s warp design and slotting your own wefts into it to create something a bit different. We all wound a 5m warp with a cross at each end and gave one half to our partner (2.5m) and the other to weave up ourselves. Gets a great comparison going with how you both weave up the same warp.

The warp from partner Jeanette was a pure wool one. Now I rarely ever weave with all wool in the warp. It all seemed so springy and forgiving, unlike cotton/silk, forcing me to feel differently when weaving it up. My complete piece is shown here with my wrapped warp ends for ‘pop’  and here is Jeanette’s cloth from the same warp.

For my part I’ve sent on a cotton warp with a mix of reds through to orange. Let’s see what we can both do with that one!