As seen in the last post I’m going OK with my learning about complex drafting and using my software – In fact I’ve finally discovered something of a style and focus in design that I want to explore.

Getting Bonnie Inouye’s book, Exploring Multishaft Design, was also fantastic. I’ve just finished the first chapter which I now need to apply to the loom. Bonnie really makes understanding twill design easy. The first exercise allows you to connect the cloth design to the tie up so you can see easily how tie ups can be modified to create different designs. Most design books start with showing you the result of a drawdown but then shorthand the draft leaving it out…so the actual cloth design is not readily apparent. Bonnie was also very generous in her correspondence with me, giving me advice on how to gain the most from her tutorials in the book.

When I went to my statistics the other day I was delighted to find this pie chart of visitors and their countries around the world. How exciting! I wonder, though, where ‘Unknown Country’ is?? I was especially pleased to see that my Australian visitors have increased – thanks to my family and friends perhaps. I think I will work on getting a New Zealander next.

This protea flower is h u g e. It’s 22cms in diameter. A totally immodest flower. I bought it at our local market. What a great find.

It got me wondering about how I could create immodest and yet quietly self effacing textiles. This protea really doesn’t need to say anything more – it is just fantastic.Overdone, bold and yet exquisitely beautiful. There’s no need for it to explain itself or its existance, it’s just ‘out there’ in every way.

As I worked through Alice Schlein’s Network Drafting book I found myself understanding much more about drafting than I thought. Well I should know something after 27 years! It’s just that my knowledge is scattered, incomplete and a bit hit and miss style.

So I had a go at developing a network pattern that is out there! It’s based on a five end satin initial. I’m very happy with the pattern and its possiblities but I want the colours to be more subtle and richer withthe use of multiple painted warps – which are difficult to emulate in my weaving software. I am going to try Arahweave on a Linux platform to do this. I’m also going to add areas of plain warp faced weave and some traditional block areas of satin weave. Having 24 shafts allows – 16 for the network pattern, 5 for the block satin and 2 for the small amount of plain weave.

The protea reminds me that’s it is OK to be brave in my approach to colour, scale and texture at times. These can work together to create beauty. The protea gave me with courage to experiment.

Well the watermark design is now on the loom and weaving is progressing quite quickly except for a trip to Sydney halting its progress.

But it’s all for a good reason. My new nephew, Lewis, was born! So it was a packed weekend of holding him, and then holding him again and again. And also taking his sister Darby ice skating. That was great fun.

I’m overwhelmed by choice in shopping in Sydney so I didn’t manage to buy anything much – all I could think about was getting a double flyer for my single flyer spinning wheel.

This is not something you can walk into a shop and see….I always have to do mail order. A blog entry on Leigh’s site alerted me to different possible spinning ratios. I always knew this but just thought I had to adjust my hands and treadling feet in expert ways! Now I discover that wheel ratios are higher and more suited to the finer yarns I want to produce. No more treadling off my seat. And the further good news is the availability of a double drive flyer unit for my old single drive Ashford is available. Now that’s a good product. One that can be adapted years on.
Of Interest
Check out Miniature Earth.

Dave holding the baby and
Teresa and Darby on the ice

With the woven panels of the Thread Project being displayed at St. Pauls Chapel New York, I thought I would send a press release to the local paper, The Manning River Times. And what wonderful work they did. The story appeared in the next days edition and I was interviewed by ABC Radio.

So I was ‘famous’ for a few minutes!

One thing that has struck me as a weaver on the project is the great variety of looms that these cloths have been woven on. From the simplest frames and backstraps to a compu-dobby like mine they all require only skill to get wonderful cloth. Looms are irrelevant to skillful weaving – its the people that use them that create wonderful textiles. This is what I love about weaving, it’s a humbling craft. More about human ingenuity than specific technology.

If you go to the photo album on the Thread Project site you’ll see lots of photos of different looms used to produce the cloth.

I’ve included a photo of Terry Helwig the founder of the project surrounded by a sampling of 8 of the 49 cloths.

If you’ve been following my blog since last year you’ll perhaps remember the Thread Project cloths which I contributed to as a weaver of Lienzo
Luminoso The whole 49 cloths are currently being displayed in St Pauls Chapel New York, in commemoration of 9/11.

I just wish I could hop on a plane..or boat and go and see them. It’s a good feeling that we can do something, even a little, towards supporting people in grief and I wish this type of opportunity could somehow be extended to others in the world whose homes, lives and families are being torn apart.

Apparently people who have seen the panels in the Chapel have described them as ‘beautiful, awesome, and inspiring.’

Terry Helwig the founder of the project writes ‘St. Paul’s Chapel opened its doors and its heart to those seeking solace, hope and community during the eight-month relief effort at the World Trade Center site. A different color panel will hang on each of the six pillars; one panel of Sophia’s Mantle, woven with threads from four 9/11 families, will be on the main floor; and the other 42 panels will hang from the balcony.’

Warp for the Cloth of Light (Lienzo Luminoso)
See my
old blog for some more info

These are the renditions of the patterns I had planned for the blue and white warp. The first, an 8 shaft shadow weave (with a twist of asymmetry) I have woven before but this simulation doesn’t do it justice; you can’t see and feel its interplay of colour.

However I changed my mind and wanted to have a go at Sandra Rude’s wonderful pattern which I’ve modified slightly to have a different pattern in the dark blue stripes. I’ve also introduced a third colour to the weft which I think will give the WOW factor. This also meant I had to re-think the sett of the fabric. The shadow weave required 26epi on the 2/20 silk but the 24 shaft pattern in a twill form will require 30epi.

Having more than 8 shafts is wonderful, but I think the extra shafts are never used as efficiently or with the ingenuity of only 4 or 8.

I’ve finished the threading, now sleying the reed ready to start.

I really need to drive my compu-dobby loom better….so I’m reading and re-reading everything I have on Pattern Drafting. Starting with a thorough read of my Fiberworks PCW manual which makes me more efficient at the software. Then going over the Complete Book of Drafting for Handweavers by Madelyn van der Hoogt, and Network Drafting by Alice Schlein.

An why! To create textiles that provoke deep feelings of well being, harmony and beauty in another. I think this is always my aim. And although this is not only found in complex weaving it is where I want to explore it in some form.

I have always thought that beauty is subjective, how else can I explain ugly buildings etc., but according to architect, Christopher Alexander, it is objective. He maps out 15 (see them here as a review) properties of beauty, which include alternating repetition, positive space, boundaries and local symmetries. All of which can apply to a textile, its design, texture and function. He also doesn’t focus on the architectual blueprint as a plan which cannot be deviated from when the building is being created. [Sample Chapter 3 from the Nature of Order 3]

So I think it’s OK to change my mind about that shadow weave from my last entry. I changed tac and will now do a networked twill derived from Sandra Rude’s wonderful pattern WIF file at Complex Weavers.

Weaving calculations are not that difficult….buy why am I continually making mistakes?

On my new shadow weave warp, I thought I counted manually and on my computer weaving program (pcw Fiberworks) 82 ends to a shadow weave pattern, but somehow I made an error in the threading pattern (it was supposed to be 84 ends) and was two light ends short AFTER warping.

The only sensible solution was to insert those extra two ends within each of the five shadow weave repeats, which I managed to do.

This silk warp will be for two blue/white shadow weave drapes which will have shells and pom poms added as embellishments. I’ve made the pattern before, for a commission, in a rich purple/yellow which turned out beautifully. The two colours mixed visually from a distance to make a lovely natural brown tone.

I’m using 20/2 mulberry silk, sett at 26 epi. which has been hand dyed in two tones of blue and a selvedge of purple.I intend the pom poms to be yellow and purple, and perhaps some green.