Japan Debrief 1 of 3: Making

I made a bunch of collaged postcards.  Some were pretty, some not; none contained any "intention" while I made them, which turned out to be a great way to switch off and I can imagine continuing to use collage for this reason. I wondered if it would contribute in improving my weaving, and Kaz seems to think there is. I must investigate the Saori philosophy at some point, but I'm not weaving plain weave at this time.

I wove a commission piece.

I wove a small show piece; this I left with Mom. The more I looked at it, the more I liked it; Mom found the distortions intriguing; she's woven a few tapestries so she doesn't get curves, while I just let the wefts go every which way they liked.

Then I made my first ever bag with leftover warp; this one is hanging on the stash room door knobs; I like it.

I dyed some fabric scraps and then moved on to two larger pieces of planned shibori dyeing. I dyed them once in "olive", according to the label on the tin, but it turned out to be obnoxious tea ceremony tea green. Yikes. But I always intended to apply at least three colors on these, so I will post as I progress.

I wove four merchandise scarves. The first two were on a warp with an extremely dodgy tension; the second two slightly better. I'm not happy with the overall look of all but the white one. The Ashford table looms do not allow me to weave under the high tension I prefer, so they look loose and lazy. However, they all have the most luxurious hand I never get when woven/finished at home; if what I make in Nelson are wonderfully polite meringues, these are cotton candies, and guess what I consider to be the most desirable quality in cashmere? I think I'll experiment with a) looser drafts/longer floats, and b) not-as-rigorous wet-finishing and pressing.

I was besotted by the colors in a piece of Indian silk that wasn't Laharya but shibori-dyed, so I made a warp "after" it. From the start I oscillated whether I should buy saturated orange and dark pink yarns to make the warp look more like the fabric, but desisted and used yarns from Mom's stash and a small amount I brought. It's just been wound on the loom, though I don't have a draft yet. It's not as yellow as in this pic.

Something new I've ended up doing is I didn't take gazillion pictures of the original fabric, my modus operandi. In fact the linked one is the only one I have. I think this was the influences of Mr Kanamori of the Cubism class and what I've read about van Gogh. Mr Kanamori reminded us we were not recreating the objects in front of us, but aiming to produce charming lines inspired by them; Vince "copied" works by many artists, but he never exactly copied them but reworked/modified them in his unique ways.

I've always felt my designs are... er, circumscribed; inside my head the "final" work is never too far from the original objects/inspirations and so are "not developed enough". Fingers crossed, having looked at the fabric every day for nearly five months but having only one picture will help in regurgitating the idea of the piece of cloth and move beyond it. 

I drew some naked ladies, (two afternoon classes) and spent an awfully lot of time and energy on the Cubism class; this last is a whole other post.

What I didn't do are: 1) I didn't sew a sun dress and I wished I had sewn something, because though Mom will tell you otherwise, she knows a lot about dress-making and I wanted to pick up some tips, and ; 2) I wanted to dye yarns with Mom as she knows a lot about dyeing.