....a place of vulnerability and discovery

To end this term our print project was followed by a month of weaving. I instantly felt more settled and relaxed amongst the lines of looms with a cup of tea sat next to me. 

I decided that i wanted to give natural dyeing a shot, so i set about dying my warp a selection of colours. I made life much harder for myself, and because of the 'unknown' chemicals, i had to do it at home on our little hob.... we still have a bottle of 'blackberry juice'. 

My original plan was to use indigo to make a blue. But indigo is tricky as it requires a chemical reaction to occur, and after 4 attempts i still couldn't get it to work, so i decided to replace it with blackberries. Which produced this AMAZING pink, when it came out (i was a little scared), but then formed a beautiful silvery lilac, when it dried! Success! 

I Tried picking buckthorn berries whilst i went back home to wales, but realised that id need 20 x the amount. I decided to use a linen warp, which i loved, it creates a real brittle texture but holds the colour really well. 

The easiest was onion skins, I mixed it with a bit of madder and got 2 amazing shades of a golden yellow/ brown. Yum! 

So these are my finished hanks, 6 in total, ready to be wound the threaded into my loom. I was so happy with the results, but it took such a long time. You need to begin where you wish to continue at some point! 

Now to the loom...

Threading is a long long process, it takes about a day just to pull all the threads through in the right sequence. As you can see i have 2 warps, a striped one and a plain one of linen,silk & cotton mix. This allows me to add the stripes when i want to, or create pleats or a frayed effect. 

We spend the first few days discovering what our warp can do, and produce test strips which we refer to later on for our final samples.

These are my final samples...

They were inspired by my trip to Sri Lanka in the summer, the dry heat & the worn state of buildings, plus the stripes of some traditional textiles i brought out there. 

I really enjoyed it and i felt like i was achieving what i wanted to. It is such a slow process - and i think thats what draws me to it, you can't make it much quicker and thats so counter cultural. In the world of fashion that moves so quickly, the weavers move at the speed the yarn drys.

I've decided to specialise in weave, so from now untill the end of my degree, that is what i'll be doing! YIPPY! xx