Aug 20 2010
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At last…I’ve finished the Pics to Picks project. I completed two scarves and dyed each a differerent shade of purple/violet. Very different from the loom look here.
The bamboo is lovely, providing a ‘grab’ in the fabric which suits a wrapping scarf. |
Jun 04 2010
You may have noticed how most of my posts are up on the same day! This is because of extreme lack of time and lack of confidence. I’ve found this in others post’s too, which is a comfort.
Anyway, how do you design from an image when loom weaving has so many restraints and restrictions to imagery and placement. It’s these limitations that are part the creative aspect in this challenge. The designs going on in our heads are mixed with our technical knowlege of what is possible on our looms without setting out to create a full imagery in tapestry weave.
So I’d like to quote a couple of paragraphs from the great American writer – Annie Dillard in her book ‘The Writing Life’. Writing about writing she offers this as a comfort to others discouraged by their writing or thinking they just haven’t got it. Her brilliant style of writing strikes at my very core. Let me know what you think…
It takes years to write a book – between two and ten years. Less is so rare as to be statistically insignificant. One American writer has writen a dozen major books over six decades. He wrote one of those books, a perfect novel, in three months. He speaks of it, still, with awe, almost whispering. Who wants to offend the spirit that hands out such books?
Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks; he claimed he knocked it off in his spare time from a twelve-hour-a-day job performing manual labour. There are other examples from other continents and centuries, just as albinos, assassins, saints, big people, and little people show up from time to time in large populations. Out of a human population on earth of four and a half billion, perhaps twenty people can write a serious book in a year. Some people lift cars, too. Some people enter week-long sled-dog races, go over Niagara Falls in barrels, fly planes through the Arc de Triomphe. Some people feel no pain in childbirth. Some people eat cars. There is no call to take human extremes as norms.
Hope this makes you feel braver, as it did me.
Jun 04 2010
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Well here is the images of my bamboo experimentation with more to come. I’ve started with the sampling on the warp and will probably go with the fine bamboo weft which has a silky handle and soft ribbing effect. I don’t seem to be able to weave white successfully. I know it’s needed and we can’t do without it on the web and in our blank journal books but it’s an unfulfilling colour for me – it has an uncomfortable yearning about it. So into the dyebath all these will go. I’m looking into stencilling with dye or stencil resist if there is such a thing. |
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Jun 04 2010
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Stylised bamboo images are well known in textiles and wallpaper. I found these and liked the incorporation of the bamboo ’seams’ and leaves together. My image for pics to picks didn’t have the leaves but they offer another dimension to the patterning. I also experimented with a peg plan possibility. But my experiments didn’t go too smoothly but I will try again. I need to get the scale and proportions correct for the small pixel size of the peg plan. |
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 The pegplan experiment |
Jun 04 2010
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Although I’ve decided to go with the bamboo image for my Pic to Picks weave challenge I’m still fiddling with all the other images that Meg gave me. The more I look, the more I see.Notice the blue image in the corner of this image. It was very interesting because it was on a curve and I was able to draw several various versions of this.
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Apr 18 2010
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Progessing with the Pics to Picks challenge I’ve managed to wind a long 9 metre warp onto my loom ready to test out some ideas and yarns in the weft. I know the warp is long (at least for me) and I promised myself that I wouldn’t put on long warps anymore because I get a bit bored sometimes… but here I go again. I must admit that it is totally fun now winding and beaming warps with my new AVL warping wheel, so maybe it’s all an excuse to use my new tools.Using the bamboo image I’ve isolated the actual bamboo from the photo and used this as a basis for a ribbed weave with 3/1 and 1/3 twill stripes in 2/20 silk. Meg’s explaination about the use of bamboo in Japan and China in connection to food has challenged me to look again at the project. Either I create a piece that can be used in conjuction with food such as a table runner…or should I just eat nice food (or health food such as chocolate) as I’m weaving it. I was going to weave collapse style scarves but I could easily include a non-collapse table textile on the same warp, perhaps allaying any boredom with the long warp if it creeps in.
Look at the ’seams’ on the bamboo photo. These are more interesting than the bamboo itself for weave design. So I’m trying to include lots of these in an intermittent way. This possibility is only achievable with lots of shafts. I have 4 shafts devoted to the basic ribbed weave structure. The other 20 shafts offer another 5 arrangements of bamboo ’seams’. By changing the tie up again I can also combine arrangement to create more ’seams’. The ’seams’ are simply an exchange of the 1/3 twill with the 3/1 twill in small areas. Here is a design showing the front and back view of the structure, followed by photos of the warping process. See all my Pic to Picks entries so far. |
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Mar 30 2010
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The bamboo photo is the most ‘ordinary’ one to my thinking and presents the greatest challenge for exploring ideas for textiles. Trying to relax into enjoying.. perhaps impossibilities, unreasonable weaves and perspectives.Encouraged by Amanda, to develop weave structure based on the photos I’ve now started looking beyond the inital and superficial stripes implied in the photo. What other ideas could be drawn from behind the bamboo curtaining.
Building a digital mind map below with freemind pointed to more explorations. |
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| I also wanted to try using a technique from Edward de Bono to create new pathways of thinking. This technique involves having a selection of any words – nouns or verbs – and selecting one to start thinking entirely differently and unexpectantly about a topic. Sort of breaking out of my normal patterning in my thinking.The word ‘chair’ came up. How is chair connected to the design problem with the bamboo photo?…comfortable, functional, sturdy, western, collective – gather in groups. The chair as furniture defining how a people use their bodies for comfort and relaxation and also determining the clothing development of a culture. What clothes are imagined with bamboo or an intermitent covering. A translucent weave with areas of opaque weave/fibre. A partial cloth allowing air between….it goes on…..I think I’ll have to come up with another less boring word! | |
Mar 14 2010
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| After receiving my design photos for Pics to Picks from Meg, I started having a play around, happily selecting from my new big box of prisma pencils grabbed at an Eckersley’s sale. They’ re so beautiful to use, I can feel the pencils gliding over the paper inside my heart. That sounds funny, but it’s the same feeling I get when weaving or even touching some textiles.I guess the design process is easier when the images I’ve received are so luscious. A mix of colour, form, and perpective. I’ve made a few initial, and obvious, observations on the images. | |
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| I love coffee ….and cake, but it’s the mix of rich, maybe Moroccan feel of the colours which make this image. | The distinctive and leafless branches remind me of lace or needleweaving possibilities. Or ways of using an inlay weave or brocade to create the shapes. |
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| Movement, children, colours blurred and not quite tangable. Ikat blurring? | A three dimensional form, with subtlety built in one hue. |
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Bamboo….my favourite plant for humans besides the coconut tree. It can be used for everything including yarn for weaving/knitting. Behind the bamboo is perhaps someone working or cooking…..doing…. The bamboo could be represented as striping on cloth or somesort of double weave base.Just some cursory ideas on the photos. I’m going to work in a scribble book first then may use photoshop…..not sure…very undecided really. I found this most interesting site though through Alice Schlein. The textile blog reviewed the textile designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.I like seeing design work in progess or unfinished. It looks untidy and sort of possible and gives me some confidence that I may be on the right track with my playing…
Note: Mackintosh used different grids as a basis for his geometical designs, Pattern Design by Lewis F Day is a good place to start for this.
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Feb 28 2010
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| I’m in for Meg Nakagwa’s 2010 Weave Challenge.Above are the weave sense images I will be sending to another weaver, as yet undetermined. It doesn’t really matter why I choose these particular images as idea developers as the recipient will receive them in their own way based on their own living experiences….and how they relate this to their weave structures.They are are mixture of feelings for me and structures I am drawn to;
Mandalas or circle drawings, and even the circle in general has always interested me. The way a centre radiates an energy bubbling with growth and reaching out like a web, but sometimes contained within the line with no beginning and no end. Even when the centre is merely a point or dot, it holds an enormous potential energy. There is so much to circles. The plant is a banksia. This is an Australian plant species which combines whaky, edgy elements with elegance and sophistication. A pretty difficult act to pull off. Serrated leaves, sometimes huge powerful brush like flowers and seed pods that look like eyes…hence the story of the Banksia men. The charcoal drawing by Kathe Kollwitz I find enormously emotional. See some more drawings here. The charcoal medium lends itself to sensual and emotional responsiveness but here the subject matter does too… mother and child. It’s so wonderful and I’ve not seen any other drawings by anyone of such powerful heart expression. In my view art, and music, create a shared human language to make a physical representation of what we can’t explain in ourselves. Post update 12 March: WOOPS – apparently this isn’t motherly love at all but vampire love! who would have though. Please excuse my ignorance as I thought it was a mourning photo. How wrong can you be. Lastly, Starry Night by van Gogh. A famous and very well known painting but one that uses a very limited colour range but achieves a mood very strongly. Our challenge is to examine an image provided by another and create the design brief for a weave textile.I’m excitied about the challenge. |
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