Let’s Play!

I love having extra inches left in a project! It represents time to simply try stuff! The pressure is off. There are no wrong answers. Just throw it in. And weave. Woohoo!!!

Here comes the rag shuttle!!

Up to this point, my focus had been on distributing the colors of the neckties in a pleasing fashion. Not too many reds or blues together. Sprinkle in the bright yellow tie sparingly, etc.

Now? Now I am left with the colors of the warp yarns and nothing else. In this case, I have blues and purples. So, I started off using a series of blues and teals. Nothing crazy. I threw this lovely metallic yarn into the mix that made it all sparkle just a bit!

Why Not?

Then, I started to get a little bolder! How about a green? It’s still in the family of cool colors. After that, I did some real stretching.

I found this fuzzy, variegated yarn in ALL the cool colors! Blue, turquoise, purple, green – it had it all! I’m not sure if it was a true eyelash yarn, but it was soft and fuzzy just like it. So, I incorporated it into the project. Bingo! So much fun! It created an intense block of color with an incredibly soft hand. You couldn’t really see the rest of the yarns in the shuttle, since the fuzz blocked it all out. But, talk about a fabulous overall effect!

Check out the fuzz!!

I only had one ball of this fuzzy phenom. So, it didn’t go very far. But I definitely need to give that some thought for future projects! Yum!

After the soft, fuzzy star of the show ran out, I added in a fine, handspun yarn with interesting slubs in different colors. (Slubs are thick spots in a typically thin thread or yarn.) They pop out of the fabric in random places, which is pretty exciting!

See the cool slubs?

All Good Things…

And then, suddenly, I was at the end of the warp. This project was a fabulous exercise for my creative side. As a weaver with a weaving business, there are plenty of occasions when I have fairly strict parameters I need to follow. I have to create “x” amount of inches, or match a specific color, or evenly sprinkle in these (2) neckties.

But every so often, the joy of simply listening to my gut is the perfect palette cleanser. To have no concern for anyone else’s expectations is an incredible gift. This bolt of fabric? Just what I needed!

The fabric’s free!

If you find yourself doing your art to other people’s specifications for too long, I highly recommend setting aside time to just do you! It will be time really well spent! Happy weaving, friends!

The whole bolt!

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Why a recipe? Here’s the back story. Growing up, I was surrounded by creative, crafty people – who, in turn, always encouraged me to be creative! But one of the arts that never stuck was cooking. I simply wasn’t interested. I could handle the basics – boiling water, scrambling eggs, baking cookies (not good ones, mind you), etc. That was it! I recall my uncle coming to visit and he was horrified that I didn’t have any CorningWare, which he promptly remedied by buying me a full set. (Thanks, Uncle Bert!)

When I moved to the Chicago suburbs in 1998, I didn’t have cable tv. And not much was on Saturday afternoons if you weren’t a sports fanatic. So, I ended up watching cooking shows on PBS. Did this spurn me on to invent amazing culinary delights? Absolutely not. But, it did begin my love of watching cooking shows. I was mesmerized! Fast forward to much more recently and little by little, I’ve been intentionally going into the kitchen! I’ve learned that while I still have very weak cooking intuition, I can follow a recipe like a champ! And I’m starting to get into it! Who knew?

Woven fabric hot off the loom!

I kind of love the idea of a recipe and they’ve been on the brain lately (along with a few intriguing pumpkin-flavored sweets!). So, here is my personal recipe for a weaver. Amounts may vary. Take it all with a grain of salt.

To create a weaver, you must have the following ingredients –

Patience – this is huge! Weaving is a long process and you have to possess the ability to take a big breath when things are going sideways and carry on. (This takes up a huge portion of a weaver’s makeup! I’d say 52%.)

Problem-Solving Mojo – oh boy! Because there are a million steps, there are also a million possible pit falls! Being able to look at a problem from a different angle is wildly beneficial! (This one is also pretty important! It’s a solid 23%.)

I snapped this guy just the other day! You have to be part engineer, I’m telling you!

Linear thinking – what comes next? It’s all about taking the next step and determining what is important when you get there. (Definitely key! About 18%.)

Big picture thinking – seems odd that you need to have both skills (linear & big picture). But, when you have been threading heddles for almost 3 hours, it is a good thing to remember the finished product and what you are working towards. (We’ll say this one’s almost as important as it’s linear fraternal twin – 17.3%.)

Persistence – ah, yes. Working on a loom is a lot like life. You put in many hours setting up the loom and getting into the project. If you hate it, you can’t just cut it off and give up. You have to change directions, change the end result, change your expectations. Use a different yarn, tweak the tie-ups, throw in a weird color. But, you MUST KEEP WEAVING! (Just a note – technically, you can cut it off. But, the weaving fairies get very disgruntled when you do! I highly advise against it.) (Oooh, persistence… it’s like the backbone of a weaver. A solid 40%.)

Creativity – duh! This seems obvious, right? But hear me out. Weaving is a ridiculously old craft, and honestly, it’s all been done before… or has it? Because it is such a big process, there are opportunities at every step to dance a little variation from what was done before. Techniques, equipment, materials, colors, patterns – it’s endless and thrilling! (You need about 15% creativity, but it needs to be a fierce 15%!)

Curiosity – what if? Anything is possible! Go for it! (This is a fun one! It’s a twirly little 10.9542%!)

A Touch of the Crazy – weaving is nuts! Why in the world would someone create their own fabric when you can easily and cheaply buy it at JoAnn’s? Or better yet, buy it finished and ready to go at Target! Well, my friends, weaving is magic – that’s why! And I’m fairly convinced that only those who are a bit touched can see it. (You only need a tiny bit – maybe 1/2%?)

A million trillion heddles, all waiting for a single yarn to fulfill their destiny!

I do believe my percentages don’t get remotely close to adding up to 100%. But, they portray the relative importance of each ingredient when making up an entire weaver. Weavers aren’t avocado toast (even though I do appreciate a fancy piece of toast!). Instead, they are the pot roast in the crock pot simmering the entire day, making the entire house smell delicious. They are steady and true, with just a pinch of something mystical.

This is my personal salute to the weavers in the world. I can’t imaging being a member of a cooler group of artists! You are my heroes & my inspiration! Happy cooking weaving!

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So, while I was working away, my mind took a little trip down memory lane to the very first time I did anything with neckties, or any recycled material for that matter. And here’s my quaint little story!

Once upon a time (I don’t know the year, but I’m sure it was longer ago that I think since time gets away from me so quickly!), I was in a group called the Creativity Continuum. This was a set of ladies who all met once a month at the TLD Design Center in Westmont, IL with the purpose of supporting and stretching ourselves as artists. We did all sorts of fun, crazy activities meant to make you think, challenge you to be brave, and mostly trigger the need to keep creating!

Well, each year, we would put on a small exhibit to show what we have been working on and for a couple of years, we decided to give the exhibit a theme. One of those years, we settled on the theme of “A Woman’s Wardrobe”. Now, there were no other restrictions beyond the theme. You could take that as literally or philosophically as you wanted to. So that very broad topic, combined with the fact that each of us worked in different mediums and possessed very different strengths, always guaranteed a wildly diverse and fascinating collection!

While I was mulling over the theme, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to do a play on stereotypical gender roles. Now, keep in mind that this was LONG before it was commonplace to discuss gender identities at the kitchen table. I was aiming for something much more simplistic than that. So, I settled on the fact that I wanted to create an item that was very feminine, woven with very masculine materials. And when it all came together, I had a pencil skirt constructed using hand-woven fabric made of men’s neckties!

The end result was clunky and stiff and you couldn’t really walk in it (never mind that I couldn’t fit into it now by a long shot even if I wanted to!). But, I remember marveling at how unique the fabric was! Blending all those patterns and colors together gave it a completely different look from anything I could achieve using traditional yarns! And it wasn’t until a few years after that that I connected the dots and started using recycled materials to make fabric for handbags. But, it is so wonderful to look back through my history to ponder the seemingly random, wonderful starting point for an idea I really love!

So, here’s to pencil skirts, the Creativity Continuum, and the family members who gave me their neckties knowing I was going to chop them up into who knows what! Thank you!!! 

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