Posts by curiousweaver

Teal Weaves

This is my most recent experiment with shaping a lightweight jacket and adding sleeves. I wove almost 5 metres of fabric emphasising teals. The reason for this is I wanted the jacket to match my shoes! I know it’s pretty lame but was a good incentive.

The scarf type piece around the neck can come off or on as I like and I’m very happy with it all. There was virtually no waste and any shaping was added with darting which keeps the ‘waste’ on the garment and possibly adds to its durability.

I was reading this post by Weaving today on sewing with handwoven fabrics and I quote the advice in the article – “NEVER cut handwoven cloth doubled; ALWAYS cut a single layer; and IGNORE pattern instructions to cut a piece on the fold. Either flip the pattern over to cut the  other half or, better yet, transfer pattern halves to new pattern paper so you can lay out the entire piece. DOUBLE- and TRIPLE-CHECK the straight-of-grain. As for seam finishes, they are ESSENTIAL.” Pretty scary instructions especially with the yelling directives! Read more

Carmel from Studio Artes

Remarkably weaving the Saori way goes beyond an enjoyable activity and art in our lives. It can actually extend the senses and become a way of communicating with the world around you.

Carmel from Studio Artes in Sydney can be seen in this youtube video immersing herself in the cloth she weaves. Carmel, who is deaf and blind, uses the rhythm of the weave process and its tactile sensations to create beautiful art  cloth. Her world isn’t dependent on ‘seeing’ colours but on actually experiencing them. Sue Byatt and teachers at the studio use taste and experiences to provide her with her own unique colour palette. For example, the taste of a segment of orange communicates an orange colour, the smell of lavender – a gentle purple. I’ve often heard of people who identify musical tones with colours but this is another extraordinary human experience. In what must often be a lonely internal world for Carmel, it’s so heartening that the arts, and weaving particularly, can be a tool for assisting people to find not only meaning in their lives, but a real thread of connection to the world in some form.

Carmel’s work is published by Studio Arts at Blurb. It is an expressive collection of images of her work and you can view the book online before buying . Carmel is now to get her own Saori loom and I asked Sue what Carmel’s  favourite colour was expecting a colour from the rainbow. But it’s ‘ocean’. Congratulations Carmel. I don’t think I can look at blue again without seeing ‘ocean’.

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Saori Inventiveness

Image from Saori no Mori, Japan

Saori Japan is so inventive with its products and working methods. See how you can use the bobbin winder to ply interesting yarns for weaving. It’s not something that can be as easily achieved with a wheel or spindle. It plys the yarn with a s twist then its opposite the z twist. Very effective with light and dark yarns together creating patterns which differ from each other depending on the twist direction in the yarn. How easy it that!

Many people have inquired about the Saori clipping rod. How could such a’ low tech’ solution save so much time. You have to see this in operation to believe how expedient this tool is. As always Saori are about leaving the maximum time for creating weaves rather than dwelling in the set up – as enjoyable as the set up can be, these inventive approaches allowed me more weave time.

You can also see these videos from Saori Japan on the Saori Instruction page. So many ideas and not enough time!