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| "The Weaver (La Tisserande)," Francois Bonvin, 1861. Courtesy of the National Gallery Art Open Access Program. |
Hello friends,
As you may have gathered by now, I love fabric. Not sewing so much, not crafting garments, but making fabric itself. I love all things tactile and textile. I started off as a knitter, when I was still in elementary school. Convinced that all grandmothers *must* know how to knit, I asked my grandmother to teach me. She had no idea, so she bought a book, some knitting needles, and some cheap pink yarn, and sat me down on the love seat in her condo in Florida. She consulted the book, performed a step, and then handed the needles to me to instruct me on what to do, so on and so forth.
Later on I decided it would be helpful to learn a little crochet to supplement my knitting with lace edges. Crochet allows for a much more freestyle, sculptural approach and isn't confined to lines and rows of stitches the way that knitting is.
These skills taught me an appreciation for fabric. Colors, fiber types, density, tension. I found myself caring less about what the end product would be and much more fascinated by the process and the minutia. What happens when I blend these two yarns together? These two colors? Using this stitch, or that one? What if I use this needle size, does that change the texture and drape of the fabric?
I think this fascination comes through in my finished work. You'll note that my pieces themselves tend to be simply constructed with few bells and whistles, mostly flat rectangular shawls. But the fabrics themselves are highly detailed, with lots of focus on texture and the play of the different colors and fibers.
The above piece, for instance (which happens to be available for sale in my Etsy shop) features three different yarns - two different colors of super fine silk and cashmere blend yarn, and a hand-painted pure silk that alternates between many different colors. I alternated the different fibers and selected a slip stitch pattern that causes the different rows of stitches to peak and trough into one another. But quite frankly, I couldn't have cared less about the length or shape of the shawl. That was totally eyeballed.
As I grow as an artist I find myself fascinated by more and more fabric techniques. I have learned to dye with natural indigo, using the ancient Japanese art of shibori. This technique allows me to focus less on the construction of the fabric itself, relying on pre-finished silks and other fabrics, and to instead turn my attention to the color and surface design of the piece.
These scarves are also available on Etsy and are also for sale at my favorite Washington area boutique, Proper Topper (where they've been selling like hotcakes!).
Even when I'm not planning to apply a new technique I've picked up to fabric at the offset, I end up thinking about ways to apply it to fabric. I took a block printing class many moons ago so that I can learn to carve my own designs to apply to my cards and journals instead of using pre-made stamps (See my mother's day cards I made using my own carved "Mom" block here). My instructor mentioned that the inks we were working with could be used on fabric, and that notion has been stuck in the back of my mind ever since. What if I were to block print designs on top of my shibori designs? And then add a little embroidery on top of that, maybe to outline the designs or add details? What kind of fabric would that create and would it actually be a fabric that anyone would want to use for something functional?
Most recently, however, I turned to the ultimate fabric-making craft: weaving. I have been curious about weaving for years, especially after I learned about the existence of "knitter's looms" designed specifically for use with knitting yarns. As serious knitters are wont to do, I have accumulated an impressive yarn stash that is taking up a dramatic amount of space in my home. Knitter's looms are touted as the ultimate stash-buster. These looms are tiny versions of the big fancy whoosh whoosh looms that have the uppy downy things (known as "heddles"), made to accommodate standard thickness knitting yarns.
But I have also noticed that another form of artistic tapestry weaving has become all the rage among the crafting community recently:
These pieces are made on a frame loom, which forgoes the heddle and instead relies on the weaver herself to interlace the weft fiber (the horizontal fiber) through the vertical fibers of the warp manually with her hands. It's much more rustic and slower going, but offers so much more flexibility in terms of shape and experimentation. It's basically freestyling it.
Well lo and behold, I found myself a loom by an independent businesswoman on Etsy that converts from frame to heddle loom and works with regular knitting yarn.
And here's my first project! I'm starting off with the frame loom and working my way up to the
heddle.
What has been really interesting about this adventure in textiles is the degree to which all these crafts are similar and yet also different. My one day fantasy is to synthesize them into one big project or personal artistic style that incorporates a multimedia garment or wall hanging made up of my own woven fabric, knitted embellishments, and my block printed and/or embroidered shibori.
A synthesis:
In many ways, it has been easier to pick up each new craft than the previous one, kind of like learning new languages. Certain building-block skills are the same. Understanding color and how fibers of different colors blend together. Understanding the structure of different fiber types, for instance the fact that silk is always going to drape differently than wool. Understanding the concept of "tension" (how tightly you hold your yarn or thread), which is a near universal factor in all fiber crafts. Too much tension and your thread will snap or your fabric will pucker. Not enough and things will be too loose and your piece will fall apart. Just having a natural feel for running fibers and strings over my fingers, feeling comfortable pulling yarn from a ball without getting it tangled, holding a needle. The crochet hooks and tapestry needles I already use to finish off certain aspects of my knitting have come in very handy as I use them to add fringe to a woven piece or pull the weft back and forth between the warp strings respectively.
And yet so much is new. And those new challenges that I have to handle like a beginner really throw me off because I have come to develop a certain expectation about the ease with which I'll be able to tackle a textile-related project. Shibori is messy. Learning to deal with indigo dye splatter all over the floor (and walls) was a real challenge, since I don't have a yard. With the weaving, getting a sense of exactly how much yarn I need to complete a shape is totally new because weaving uses totally different amounts of yarn, plus I'm struggling to keep my loom from dipping in on the sides where I pull too tightly. You would think this wouldn't be an issue for me since I mastered the art of evenness with my knitting long ago.
But perhaps the greatest thing about this is the differences on my physical body. I have carpal tunnel syndrome, and my hands go painfully numb sometimes when I'm knitting. Weaving doesn't do that at all! But it hurts my back. So I can switch back and forth between the two, giving my hands and wrists a break when I weave and my back a break when I knit. Block printing I do standing up. Indigo dyeing - with all the different steps that involve dunking the fabrics in different buckets, rinsing, hanging, blocking, stirring - is a full body exercise.
I really do feel like I'm at a place in my artistic non-career where every new skill I learn is with an eye to integrating it into my existing work style, improving the things I'm already working on. I'm very excited about the idea of watching all these different elements coalesce until I've woven (haha see what I did there) them all into a single, uniquely personal artform.
How about you readers? Have you ever synthesized multiple skills/crafts/art forms together to create one, singular type of project? What new skills would you like to learn that you feel could improve upon artistic activities you're already doing? Do you also find that you tend to gravitate to crafts or other hobbies that share a lot in common or are you more inclined to go after something totally new because that itch has already been scratched? Discuss in the comments.
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