Spun silk: doesn’t that conjure up something luxuriously soft and lovely? It sure doesn’t make me think of something likely to slice my hands as I make it, but I have come so close to doing just that as I learn how to handle this delightfully soft but fearsomely strong cloud of fibre. The finer…
Category: Fine Art Textiles
Red Thread
At the beginning of the school year I traced the word ‘Desire’ on my studio wall in red thread and pins. It felt important at the time. But now it’s time to take it off. As I pulled out the pins the thread made these wonderful crazy lines unravelling across the surface. I couldn’t resist…
Weaving a Web
But hopefully not a tangled one…. First three lines of weft going in! Many technical hitches are emerging and the usefulness of doing prior research into technique is made very very clear…. But I am still glad I chose to do little research into the practicalities of weaving, but rather to let the materials inform…
Red
The red shed strand has worked wonderfully in the visual sense. The contrast between wood, wool and cotton is visually poetic and satisfying. But – from a technical point of view it’s not doing its job. The shed doesn’t shift smoothly and it’s not possible to operate the loom as one person alone. Yet. I…
Time
Sometimes you have to I do enjoy yogi tea. Most times the tags have a gentle loving message on them, always an added bonus. Not this time! Face it: deadlines are rapidly approaching. Face it: you get out what you put in. Face it: do the hard things before they become impossible.
Red Thread
‘All we love deeply becomes part of us.’ This is one of my Red Threads: the interlacing and entwining of the fabric of my jeans with the fabric of my self. Every stitch taken in the darning of my jeans involves the fabric more deeply and irreversibly with the beingness of my self. I am…
Weighting a Warp
For several years I have habitually chucked my coppers into an old vase as I like to be able to close my purse easily and never can be doing with footering about with coppers in a queue at a till. I remembered that if one takes coins to the bank to exchange for notes then…
Gathering pace
Warp weighted loom I am moving! The hours and hours of spinning have gathered my thoughts into a strong thread that I can trace out in my studio practice. I want to weave a length of fabric with text in it I think… Text in Textile. Both words share the root Texere: to weave. I…
Fibre Alchemy 