I always thought that weave would never be something that I enjoyed. But after enjoying wrappings so much, I went into the workshop with an open mind.
Not going to lie, I didn’t enjoy day 1. Day 1 consisted of threading the looms which was a really boring and tedious task. But I later learnt that it’s actually really important the loom is threaded correctly otherwise the design produced will be very different to the one you had planned.
Day 2 was probably the hardest day: this is when we actually started weaving. Plain weave was simple and easy but when it came to twills and herringbones and diamonds, it became a lot more difficult and challenging. But I found it easiest to understand if I coloured in the squares to achieve the pattern I desired, and then re-writing the squares as numbers. Once I had tried these out, some more successful than others, I became a lot more confident on the loom.
The following days consisted of playing and experimenting with different materials, yarns, loom set-ups and warps. I really enjoyed working with the coloured warps as I think it really added to the design: it changed the way your yarn looked and produced some really interesting patterns, colours and effects, especially when the warp was made with multiple colours. I also enjoyed playing with the thinner and thicker yarns and how they work together to produce interesting patterns and textures.
When I was just experimenting, I hadn’t given proportion much thought, but now it was time to develop this. After my tutorial, I decided to base my proportions on one of my wrappings and essentially, recreate the wrapping as a weave. I think it was by far, my strongest work as the weave looked so much better now that I had considered the proportions. What I thought might be interesting would be to repeat the same (similar) design on different warps and looms. By the end, I had turned the original wrapping into three different weaves, each one looking completely different. For me, comparing the three weaves and the original wrapping was really fascinating because I never expected them to look that completely different. But these were my favourite pieces from the weave block and my most successful.
