Segue

Something our mutual Letter Journal friend Fran did, paper weaving, got Tess and me thinking about... me talking about one of my favorite things, warped paper weaving, last night. That's weaving plain weave with paper strips, but not in regular, rectangular strip in my case, and how it's hard to maintain shapes-with-intentions, (either the shape/dimensions of the finished piece as a whole or some shape/outline I want to highlight,) in the finished piece. It's easier to show you rather than describe in words.

I drew/traced more or less the same heart on four sheets of extremely thin origami paper.

I cut two sheets in straight-edged strips from one edge to the other, one horizontally and one vertically, and wove them. With this example I laid out all the horizontal strips and inserted the vertical strips starting with the left edge. Afterwards, I tried to make the right and top edges as straight as  possible, and ran out of vertical strips to fit last vertical at the right end. The resultant whole is not the same square size/dimension as the original, and the heart outlines don't match; the more strips I weave, towards the right, the more wobbly the outline becomes.

Here I cut two sheets in curvy lines, some cuts not going all the way from across the paper. Again, horizontal strips were laid out and vertical inserted starting at the left end, and tried to make the top and left edges straight. With these wobbly weaves, I often concentrate on the outline/shapes, worrying less about the whole piece's shape. It's the same with the naked ladies, the sixth picture down, where I focused on a few points like elbows, knees, and tried to match them. I may have even trimmed the edges where particular strips were way out of line, as it were.

With thicker/harder paper, the wobbles get worse, as it gets harder to fit the strips closer when allowing for the thickness. Although the distortions are also intriguing, surprising and in cases quite pleasing.

You can create wonderful movements/moods/intentions with the curvy lines. If shapes/outlines-with-intentions are key to your piece, using thinner paper and fewer, thicker strips work better, but for me, the whole movement is what makes these interesting. Some of the bottom pics from Clare Plug workshop illustrate this. 

It's another cold day here, and when/if the wind dies down, I expect some garden time coming. It looks pretty good already, but first, Ben has a cheesecake cooling in the kitchen. Good day!

PS. Fran has a fantastic, collaborative "pamphlet" project. Per contributor the workload is light, and I hope I get my act together so I can post about it in case some of you can take part.