Final Weaving – Julia Nishizaki
Intention
After completing my sample weaving, I knew that I wanted to create something with more intention, and to make something that was more personal to me. While spending time at Creative Reuse to get supplies and looking at all of the materials and the colors of yarn that they had, I started to think a lot about home, my family, being homesick, and how my perceptions of home often change to be more positive and almost “sugar-coated” the longer I’m away from the Bay Area and my family. Although I had a more concrete idea for my weaving, I still took a more experimental approach. For example, I knew that I wanted to incorporate specific elements, such as my house, nature, kodachrome slides, and the sky, but besides that, I felt that it would be more effective and that I would create a better representation of what home means to me if decisions about color or stitches were made in the moment, rather than carefully planned out ahead of time. Thus, when approaching this project, I wanted it to almost be like a journal, or a way to document something that’s very special and meaningful to me.
Process
Knowing that I wanted to portray my home, I found it difficult to start this project, because there were so many things that I wanted to do and to represent just right. Initially, I wanted to play into the grid that was naturally set up by my warp threads. Due to the four different colors of warp I used, my weaving naturally has four “columns” running throughout. Although I definitely stuck to this grid more at the beginning, as I realized that it was very time consuming to switch yarn two or three times during a line, I still tried to choose colors and stitches in such a way as to make sure everything blended fairly well. In addition, I kept some elements, like the use of rya knots, both as puff balls and as strands of yarn sprouting out from the weaving, fairly consistent throughout this work. Because this was supposed to be a representation of my home, I wanted it to be eclectic, so I tried to experiment with different stitches that I hadn’t tried before, such as tweed and Danish Medallions, and to incorporate different materials, so I cut up some strips of fabric to weave with, I used some of my handspun yarn, and I added in a couple of buttons and four kodachrome slides.
Learning
I really enjoyed working on this project, as I was able to experiment with different stitches and to explore a medium that I had never tried before. It was really interesting to see what other people had done, and how they took their weavings in more abstract directions. During the critique on my project, people gave some of the elements of my weaving symbolic meaning, such as the kodachrome slides acting as windows or representations of nostalgia and scenes back home, aspects that I hadn’t really thought of that way before, and that pleasantly surprised me. If I were to continue, I would like to try weaving on a larger scale, whether that be on a larger loom, or creating a larger piece of fabric by sewing several panels together. During this project, I struggled a little with keeping the tension in the weft consistent, so the edges of my weaving are a little jagged, and it bows out at certain sections. I think that if I were to continue working, I’d be able to practice more and to get the edges a little straighter. I also would like to try something a little more abstract and symbolic.
Final weaving:
Close ups of final weaving:
Sample weaving:
Close ups of sample weaving:
