I learned how to make a real piece of cloth on a tabletop loom last semester, and let me tell you- I have a new found appreciation for the industry I work in, fashion. I never knew the intricacies of producing textiles, and how each type of weave will produce a different fabric strength. Not to mention the thinner the string, the longer it will take to produce a piece of cloth.
First, you have to organize your thread by wrapping it around a peg board, then bundling the threads in groups of 10. This is so that when you take your materials off of the board it won’t get tangled up and you scream in hysteria, making it easier to transfer to your loom.
The joke with tabletop looms is that you can only weave as wide as your loom, but the length can be whatever you determine, so you end up with a super long, finely woven scarf. Not bad for gift giving season I say…
After taking what seemed like an eternity stringing each individual thread through the heddles (note to self: everybody gets a Very thin scarf during the holidays….), I was able to start weaving my weft in. This can be as thick as you want, speeding up the weaving process and making your scarf feel as warm and fuzzy as you want.
Unfortunately, I’m not a very practical person, so the idea of a scarf never crossed my mind. Instead, I was “inspired” by the colours of a sunset on my long commute home everynight on the train, so I instead tried to mimic the evening sky.
The finished piece (sucked) didn’t look right in the white cube of a gallery space. This baby needed to be in the great outdoors to really express itself, solidifying in me that my process and practice of weaving will always be in the moment, exploring the space between objects somewhere along a dirty road, under a bridge, or stuck in between branches; where my work belongs.
graffitiweave 