motley

Dahlias, zinnias, rudbeckia and friends from a local farm stand.

I’ve come to accept that I always have a motley collection of intentions, a patchwork of projects, each inching along at its own pace.

Warp-faced strip of two handspun merino/bamboo/silk yarns who have long awaited being woven together to see what happens.

The slow pace can sometimes drain the excitement, so that by the time I share or finish something, it’s already old to me.

Handspun cotton accumulating in the to-be-washed pile.

But maybe the slow pace is the excitement, or the importance of the thing.
Not rushing can be a subversive, significant act.

Linen shift stitching in progress - felling a seam.

Valuing flashes of brilliance over steady accumulation of skill and knowledge is part of the prevailing illness today —- why not glory in taking a long time to slowly make a thing?

Which I do. In several different directions, all at once.

Twisting some fine cordage from long leaves. Love the fineness, but the fingers get tired, and my joins need work.

Closeup of backstrap woven bath mat in progress, with weft of cotton t-shirt strips and carved Allen Berry sword beater.

I wanted to share an update on my 18th century-style petticoat skirt, mentioned at the end of this post. The fabric is so light that the skirt simply crawled up my legs when I walked in it, so something needed to be done. I thought of adding a handwoven hem band, probably getting the idea from Lao skirts and the separate hems they often add to the main skirt fabric. Looking at the photos, I realize now that even when a separate hem is not sewn on, the additional woven decoration at the bottom adds weight (as in the second photo below.)

Lao tube skirt (pha sinh) - the ikat upper part is the main skirt, the brocade weaving below is a separately woven hem section.

These pha sinh are woven in one piece, but the borders are decorated with supplementary (brocade) patterning.

One of my narrow woven wool bands looked good against the skirt fabric, but I wanted the hem band wider. So I scaled up the pattern using my handy Inkle Visualizer app, and wound a warp in the same colors, closer to 2”/5 cm wide. As often happens, I miscalculated length because I don’t have a good sense of takeup percentage (how much length is lost in the weaving), so I ended up with a nice hem band that was about a handspan and a half too short.

Backstrap-woven, handspun wool hem on petticoat.

What to do? Standing in my studio, the stacks of folded fabric catch the eye, and in my life “patchwork” is more than just a metaphor. The solution was obvious.

Patchwork fabric infill, at the back of the skirt hem where the woven band did not reach.

I actually padded the patchwork strip with batting, and put in some quilting stitches along the seams for strength, since the patchwork needed to be equal to warp-faced woven wool. Solving these little problems of durability, weight, and behavior in garments teaches so much about how and why people made clothes in various ways, throughout time and place!

And the tiny bit of quilting sparked something else, the memory of my love for that act, that set of skills and motions. As it happens, I had a fully assembled, partially quilted project handy to get back into the joy of hand quilting. This is a 20-year-old piece with its own story, which I will feature at another time. Suffice to say it has a theme of colonization, refugees, and war, which unfortunately never ceases to be relevant. Meanwhile, I also find it beautiful and highly evocative, with memories of Dharamsala, India, where it began.

Patchwork quilt in hoop and on the floor below, big basting stitches and quilting stitches shown in the hoop.

Hand quilting in progress, red thread on cotton and Tibetan silk fabric patches.

Even these photos are already a few months old, because I somehow got distracted from working on this, as well….. As I said, it’s a constant, swirling dance of discovery, my inching along with each project as the mood strikes. But the stitching here may have fed into the stitching on the linen shift, which is nearing completion. It’s all moving, deepening and spreading like water filling a dry, rutted patch of earth. Something will grow here, surely.

Self in linen shift, showing finished neckline and cuffs, in nice afternoon light.

weaving and weaving and weaving

My double weave and supplementary weft samples, surrounded by Laverne's beautiful palette of tencel yarns.

I probably overuse the word "whirlwind" to describe periods of time in my life, so let's say that the last several weeks have been a blur of weaving and textile-related stimulation.

It started with a visit to Kansas City.

Well, it actually started over a year ago when I plotted and schemed to bring Laverne Waddington to Port Townsend for a class. She visits Seattle regularly, but I hadn't managed to bring her to my home yet, so I drummed up interest in my weaving guild (not difficult at all) and scheduled a day of weaving in April 2018. Getting this all organized had been my focus, as well as family issues, and so when I prepared to go to KC for phase one of family stuff, I was not thinking of fun fiber events or weaving opportunities.

But of course, Kansas City is the new home, for three years running, of Ply Away, and I soon became aware that fate, the universe, and/or the weaving gods had conspired to place me in the perfect position to photobomb Abby's intermediate backstrap weaving class and assist her with a warp-winding method I've been eager to learn for YEARS! I mean, really. I can't express how great this was, particularly for being so unexpected and unsought.

Being Abby's warping partner!! Peak moment, right here.

Watching Abby go through the basics of backstrap was edifying - although this was an intermediate class, she reviewed things like winding two-color warp and making heddles, for the benefit of the newer weavers (those 5-6 year-olds on the Chinchero weaver scale.) I had been advised and coached by Abby over the last 8 years, but had never actually watched her handle a warp, so just seeing how she did pickup, opened sheds, and used her hands and tools was a special treat.

It was also remarkable to weave with Abby and then Laverne, almost back-to-back. I've learned to weave from these two people, but I'd never sat in a class where they showed beginners the basics before, and in both cases I got to see the teaching method in action and directly compare the styles. Abby is admittedly Chinchero-chauvinist, teaching The Way she grew up learning, while Laverne has amalgamated methods from a variety of traditional weavers in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador, from whom she has learned different techniques. Both of them have experience as educators, and so their teaching is deliberate and skillful, developed from an understanding of progressive levels of learning. This means I got to observe not only how to weave from the student's perspective, but also how to teach, which interests me because I have taught backstrap once or twice, and hope to have more opportunities.

Laverne demonstrates supplementary weft patterning.

Being around newer students, I also saw how the teaching translated into their understanding of how to weave. Abby's students are comfortable with Quechua terms like illawa and sonqopa (heddles and shed stick, which are the only system they use for opening sheds,) while Laverne's students adopt the clever "twisty sticks" (an extra cross held on two bound sticks that is used to help open both sheds), and heddle the alternating "pebble" sheds when using such patterns. The terminology and vocabulary of movement that each set of students picks up is different, but they're all learning traditional backstrap weaving and it's brilliant to see weavers growing up.

I've felt pride in being able to weave in this way, since I began in 2010, and having my skills confirmed by my teachers gives me a thrill of confidence, and motivation to keep growing. It has been intense, having so much exposure to my weaving people. This is a precious community we're creating, and I hope to nurture it.

So that's the overview. Then, there was the stuff I actually learned, and the whole process of absorbing the information. I got a lightning-fast demo of supplementary warp patterning in Abby's class (fast because I had to keep leaving because family,) and was glad that Laverne made me show her later, which helped me remember what the heck we did. It's kind of like learning a language: I can repeat things perfectly, in the moment, but ask me the word later and unless I wrote it down, it's gone. I made this warp immediately after Abby, which was fine and easy, but I very nearly forgot how it was done when asked to explain a week later. But I did figure it out. It's easy. I just have to write it down (or show Laverne, who is way more meticulous in sampling and nailing down techniques - she'll remember it!)

The two-person warp winding method (shown above) with a header cord was my Holy Grail of things I wanted to learn, so I was crazy excited for that. Only thing is, it takes two people, so until I see Abby again, I can't exactly practice.

Supplementary warp, showing two sheds - easy, once you know how.

From Laverne, I got to learn two techniques I've been curious about for a long time: double weave and supplementary weft patterning. Both were completely new to me, so I had to focus and work to get a grip on the mechanics. They make a nice pairing because the patterns follow the same math, or logic, meaning they can be charted in the same way. So if I come up with a design in double weave, I could weave it with supplementary weft - although there are some considerations that make design choices more suited to one or the other. At any rate, my head and hands have been fully occupied with continuing to reinforce the type of thing shown below. I've followed through with my samples better than I usually do, being determined to keep these techniques in my tool kit.

My supplementary weft and double weave samples, after continuing at home.

on not knowing much, continued

Latest Andean pickup handwoven band, made with handspun yarns.

To clarify, because some may say that spinning and weaving with extremely fine, strong yarn is not about 'knowing' but rather the acquisition of skill: I see the acquisition of traditional skills as a way of knowing, and my own work shows me the extent to which I live and learn outside of any particular way. My efforts are self-motivated, not integral to my culture or the expectations of my community, and I have only for very brief moments learned from anyone in person.

A lesson in Lao supplementary weft weaving at Ock Pop Tok, Luang Prabang.

So in this sense, I really know almost nothing, set against any given way of knowing. Because a way of knowing is an immersion, a living-through, an acquisition of technique that goes beyond technique to the understanding of how it fits in with one's role in life, to one's purpose as a human being. This is the ineffable quality one sees or senses in the master's work, the craftsperson who is so completely at home with the work that every stage of the process looks like fulfillment.

It is also the quality of a living textile making tradition, that each skill and facet of knowledge is essential and integral to the person and the community. It is a belonging, and the reason I'm talking about it is because I feel the lack and the longing for it in my own explorations. I have the freedom of the unattached. Not locked into any tradition or community, I can play the dilettante, exploring Bedouin ground loom weaving here, and Katu foot-tensioned weaving there, but I miss the sense of home, the grounded identity that comes with being a weaver in a weaving culture, and the connection of my community with my work.

My Tibetan style pile weaving in progress, at the Tibetan Handicrafts Cooperative, McLeod Ganj.

At work in Mc Leod Ganj, Dharamsala, India, 1994

The state of not knowing is quite welcome to me, because it means I am open to learn. The first time I sat down as a weaving student, in a Tibetan handicrafts cooperative workshop in McLeod Ganj above Dharamsala, India, my teacher and I had only a few words in common, in Hindi. I imitated the Tibetan way of looping a double strand of wool yarn around the metal bar and the cotton warp threads on the vertical loom, and she would watch me and periodically say, "Aisa nahi... Aisa," which means "Not like that.... Like this." Often I would feel the explanations rise to my mind, the reasons why I was doing it 'like that,' because I thought blah-blah-blah..... Since we couldn't speak, I could never explain, and it was just as well, because I was stripped of my American defensiveness and the wish to prove that I understood, and could only ever prove it by doing it right.

So when I experience the truth of how little I know, it means that I'm fit to learn, and it often means I'm actually faced with a teacher, in which case it is even more welcome. Acknowledging my own ignorance is a way of appreciating the wealth of knowledge carried by so many textile cultures, and it is this ignorance that motivates me. I don't weave and spin in order to keep creating something I know, but in order to keep learning about what I don't know. As long as I have the freedom that comes with technical ignorance and cultural homelessness, I should exercise that freedom by learning as much as I can, anywhere I can find it.