Article in The Journal (UK)
I’m over the moon to have an article published in the prestigious Journal for Weavers, Spinners and Dyers (UK). The current Winter 2011 is listed here. It is Warp Painting and Easy Ikat – a Primer on page 24. What joy!
Posts by curiousweaver
Dec 9
2 Comments
Recuperative Changes
Well I’ve been slowed down by force and now recuperating after emergency surgery. So it’s crochet and knitting, with flower origami for my daughter’s bridal bouquet thrown in, while trying to heal up over six weeks!
It seems like lots of things happen all at once in life – events never seem to be pleasantly spaced so you can place all your energy into one thing. In the process of trying to get medical help in my health emergency, (which was very difficult and distressing) we also had the building of my new studio in progress. It is going well and I’m really looking forward to what will eventuate in the studio. You can see the great cupboard space to house all those yummy yarns and weave tools. I can’t wait until I’m well enough to unpack all those boxes I loaded up when I cleared out the space.
On another interesting note I received a link to a new Bhutanese textile pattern book on-line at
http://issuu.com/dkbbkk/docs/bhutan_textiles
It is a great overview of traditional and classical textile patterns from the Royal Kingdom of Bhutan. 250 designs collated in graphical format. Well worth downloading.
Saori Studio
Over the last few months I’ve been adding information about Saori weaving products to my site. I’m very happy to now be a Saori dealer for Australian customers. You can find out about Saori here. I have some looms in stock and lots of accessories and pre-wound warps, see more here, with more special ones on order.
Saori emphasises weaving, creativity and connections to others. It is based on weaving as an expression of our uniqueness and doesn’t seek to achieve uniform, industry looking cloth – although the looms can certainly do such textiles. Here is a lovely fresh example of a weave with a fluted edge from Saori no Mori (Saori HQ in Osaka)This edging is done using differential warp tension. But much easier than it sounds.
The newest stock addition under the books link is Shitate no hon. I hadn’t seen this before I ordered it and didn’t realise how great it was. It has 54 creative clothing patterns with zero waste. Although written in Japanese, it is easy to understand with the diagrams and references. It also lets you know how much fabric needs to be woven and how wide for every garment. These sizes work in nicely with the pre-wound warps too. For all inquiries please email me here.
The studio workshop aspect of my Saori studio is taking a bit longer to get going but it has started with a complete revamp of my studio now underway. We’ve stripped back everything and we are insulating and gyprocking, hoping for a new floor, cupboards, skylights and benches. Then I will house several Saori looms along with my 12 shaft Toika loom. I’m trying to get it all finished over the next month.
At the moment my lounge room is my only working area for my smaller looms and it’s kind of nice like that. I seemed to weave far more when I had young children and a large loom in the lounge room where I could always grab short stretches of time in amongst life. Being outside in my studio wasn’t quite the same. I had to make an appointment to get out there! I hope the Saori looms will bring it back to life with others sharing my ‘creating’ space.
Sketchbook Project and Silliness Galore
Sketching and design is on again for me and I spent a great two days in Parramatta – the city that’s the centre of Sydney - taking it all in this week. My current ‘point of view’ is typography and in particular signage. After reading Characters by Stephen Banham, a cultural history of Melbourne via typography, I started looking up at facades and found an new appreciation of an overlooked history of our changing suburbs. This was very apparent in Parramatta and it had some great examples of historic typography on buildings, including some old neon style signs.
Lovely 'theatre' style letters remaining on a building in Parramatta
I tried to gain a sense of the designs, incorporating architectural features, and placing these in my weaving filter. I was pretty surprised by what I came up with in my sketch book. I think I was motivated by the Art of Silliness Redux that I had just completed. I’m now just about to start with the photo Silly 2 Online Class to help me with my eye for drawing and I’ve joined up with the Sketchbook Project, just in case I run out of things to do…as if.
Teaching weaving – must be the best job on the planet
People are happening in my studio. Starting again with my 8 year old neice, Darby, now showing an accomplished weaving way with the Saori loom she started on when she was 4 years old here.
Her dexterity had increased so much that she even tried the clasped weft technique and kept asking me to show her more and more ways of weaving, more and more colours and textures, more and more of everything. A weavers dream I think! At least I’m sure that at least one little person on the planet, outside of a factory, will know what weaving is and how creative and relaxing it is.
She also went ‘wild’ with the Mt Fuji (I call it Sydney Harbour bridge) technique, interspersing it with the clasped weft. She made a beautiful scarf in a couple of days.
Next my studio is undergoing a facelift to allow more Saori looms to fit it without tripping over all my other loom accessories etc. It is a big job as I have a big collection of my weave history to move but once I started I felt better and it will be a more functional space for me.
Darby with the scarf she wove
Shibori Architecture – Sydney
Design…it’s all around us.
I’ve just spent last week walking around Sydney. The city is just full of sensory overload for me and I can hardly take it all it. It feels like I’m on drugs (although I’ve had limited experience on this one, I’ve got an imagination for the experience). When you live in the city, travelling day after day through the grime and people your sensory receptors get dulled, but when visiting they’re on high alert.
I was lucky to come across this amazing, almost ghostly apparition of chance architectural shibori patterning. It was taken on my iphone in filtered semi overcast light on the sandstone face of the building 46 Market street, opposite the Queen Victoria Building. The reflections of the glass building opposite it relayed the most beautiful patterning which looked like a naturally dyed shibori textile. When I came back past it in the afternoon it was gone. The photo is exactly as I took it with no photoshopping or editing. What a lucky experience. I’ll now always call that building the ‘Shibori building’. Ironically a bank seems to own the building or claims its heights with a sign. I doubt that anyone connected with the building would know about this great beauty or care! I hope I’m wrong though.
