rachell@andrew.cmu.edu – Page 2 – 62-150A: Introduction to Textile Media

Textile Traditions – Jogakbo

'Jogak Sangbo' (patchwork tablecloth) from the 19th century / Courtesy of the Museum of Korean Embroidery — “Myeongju Jogak Otbo” (silk patchwork wrapping cloth for storing clothes)

Sources: https://koreancentersf.org/merchandise/

“A jogakbo is a style of patchwork, traditionally used to create domestic wrapping cloths (known as bojagi) from scraps of left-over fabrics. The art of making wrapping cloths has enjoyed a long history in Korea. During the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910), women, living in a male-dominated society and excluded from formal education, concentrated on domestic tasks such as weaving and embroidery. They produced costumes, beddings, and wrapping cloths for the whole household. Following the ideas of frugality and simplicity advocated during the dynasty, the left-over fabrics were not discarded, but would be used to create a jogakbo by patching those scraps together into larger squares or rectangles.

A jogakbo is comprised of scraps of one type of fabric, such as cotton, silk or ramie (a plant fibre native to eastern Asia which has a particularly lustrous appearance), hemp or even paper. The scraps are sewn together using a triple-stitched seaming technique known as gekki, which results in a sealed, flat seam and gives the jogakbo their distinctive ‘window pane’ appearance. Patches are joined into squares and extended in an irregular, improvisatory fashion until a cloth reaches the required size. The jogakbo can include several colours composing a modern abstract pattern, or be made of one single-colour…”
Source: Victoria & Albert Museum, London (https://www.vam.ac.uk)

https://daramji.co/2017/03/20/jogakbo/

Jogakbo is Korean traditional patchwork known for its beauty in composition and colour balance – all from leftover bits of fabric. Jogak means piece and bo means wrapping cloth; it’s wrapping cloth made from fabric pieces.

Just like quilting traditions in other cultures, jogakbo was born out of the frugal hands of women who were able to find beauty in just about everything they touched.

Many Koreans reminisce about the times when their mothers and grandmothers would get together for an evening of patchwork which would flow into the small hours of the night with endless chatter about all matters of heart. The fruit of their labour, with their sighs and laughters in every stitch, was then passed down from mothers to daughters like a family heirloom.

South Korea - Traveler view | Travelers' Health | CDC

“Beauty of ‘jogakbo’ rediscovered” by Kown Mee-yoo

Huh Dong-hwa exhibited his collection at the Museum of Korean Embroidery. He calls jogakbo the equivalent to a family portrait before photography was invented, containing the life of the woman who stitched it- the red and yellow scraps from the dress she wore for her wedding, blue pieces from her husband’s official uniform, and multicolored pieces might come from her children’s clothes.

“I think jogakbo is similar to geometric abstract art by Piet Mondrian or Paul Klee. Bojagi is a part of daily life in Korea and it is difficult for us to discover artistic values in it, but when exhibited overseas, foreigners easily find the aesthetic beauty of jogakbo. Maybe that is why those jogakbo are exhibited among my collection mostly overseas.” -Huh Dong-hwa

https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/jogakbo-traditional-korean-patchwork

**Wrapping cloth (bojagi), unknown, about 1940, Korea. Museum no. FE.303-2011. © Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Given by Anna Jackson.**

Woman’s ensemble (with detail), Chunghie Lee, about 1993, Korea. Museum no. FE.281:2-1995. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London/Chunghie Lee

Above is a hanbok, the traditional Korean clothing, with jogakbo style applied to it.

I chose this tradition because I really admire the upcycling of textiles to create new ones, and the beauty of using scraps to make something that is different but still beautiful by hand. You look at it and you know that there is a story behind it, where each piece of fabric came from. As someone who loves to make things by hand, it makes me want to start patching together all of my old clothes, to make textiles like this.

Mending – Rachel

For this mending assignment, I chose to mend my boyfriend’s old Stanford sweater that he wore a lot in high school. When he came to CMU, he ended up roughly tearing off the letters with an x-acto knife, and left holes and a ghost remnant of what used to be. I like how there now exists a lineage of alterations to this sweater with time and attitude.

I did a horizontal running stitch along where the word used to be, filling in a lot of small holes that were there. It made the sweater feel a lot sturdier than before. Then I did vertical ones to fill in letters to spell out “SAD,” as well as filling in some larger holes. It is actually quite hard to see what it spells out, unless you look for a long time. But I like that it is quite subtle.

However, I do regret doing such a large piece, that I was unable to experiment as much as, and ran out of time. I have started adding embroidery such as french knots and lazy daisies, but I will work more on this after!

Mending Progress – Rachel

For this mending assignment, I chose to mend my boyfriend’s old Stanford sweater that he wore a lot in high school. When he came to CMU, he ended up roughly tearing off the letters with an x-acto knife, and left holes and a ghost remnant of what used to be. (He said it was because he liked the sweater but he did not want to represent Stanford while here.)

He hasn’t worn it in a while, so I thought maybe if I mend it and give it new meaning, it might be worthwhile. Instead of restoring the letters from before, what if I filled in some to spell out something else- I am leaning towards “SAD” right now, but maybe I could put in new letters.

It took me a while to figure out what to do, but I decided to just take the pattern across the whole word horizontally, and only make vertical lines for the letters I want. I haven’t gotten there yet. It took around 4 hours just to lay the horizontal part across and I am still missing a little! (I ran out of that color of embroidery floss.) However, I am pretty happy with how it’s turning out, and how there now exists a lineage of alterations to this sweater with time and attitude.

Tapestry Weaving – Rachel

Here is the finished tapestry weaving taken off of the loom. In general, I was trying all of the warp techniques from the glossary that I could figure out. In the beginning, I stuck to four colors, and just tried to keep it interesting by not using large blocks of one color, but patterning instead. It seemed quite stiff and technical.

However, after class last week and seeing more curved and textured examples, I started going in that direction. For me, I was just trying to compose something that was spontaneous and free. In architecture, we rarely do that – everything must be planned and the stakes are high with mistakes. So I wanted to use this project as a way to just relax and go where the yarn takes me. I ended up including more colors, and thicker yarn. The more wavy/curvy look takes your eye up and through the piece better than the base does. Given the colors and the techniques, it seems like a storm is coming on top of a calmer base.

I have noticed that the pulling of the hourglass shape of the weave is not as bad when you take it off the loom, something I was worried about before. To finish after taking it off the loom, I used a Damascus Edge on each side, and then a Bound Warp Protector for the bottom part.

For the last weft on the top, I used the scraps after I cleaned up the edges of the weave. I left tails of around 6 inches each when weaving, and I did not want to just discard them, so I tied them together and braided them to use as a weft.

Tapestry Weaving – 4 inches – Rachel Lu

I have been really just experimenting with all of the weft techniques I saw on the glossary- trying vertical lines, diagonal lines, the Swedish knot, rya knots, leno, and interlocking normal weave. What ties the whole thing together right now is just the colors I have been using. I like the Swedish knot because it makes the yarn pop out more, and introduce more texture and dimension. I also thought it was fun to do the leno weave.

I did spend a lot of time just figuring out what to do next to keep a good composition, so I have spent around 6-7 hours on this so far. There have been times when I make slits and they get too big, so I have to bring it back together with a base of normal weave next, or when I did the leno and I had to try to make the spacing of the warp even again.

“Doubts” By Faig Ahmed

A Staggering Sculptural Rug by Artist Faig Ahmed Pours into an Amorphous Puddle

“There are no more doubts in this carpet, destroying the geometric intelligible boundaries of the patterns – overflowing they geal on the floor – this is the limit of doubts.”

I am very intrigued by this rug by Faig Ahmed that shows a traditional-looking rug transform into a puddle of its colors. I find it incredibly dynamic and playful. When you look at it at first you think it is just your conventional rug, but then it turns out to be something unexpected.

It is also interesting to see their process, in the the third photo, to see the loom they are working on as well as a pattern reference to keep track of their work.

Improvisational Weaving – Deeper Dive

For the Deeper Dive assignment, I decided to go for 3 medium sized weaves. They all use found materials that respond to a greater motif of reuse of common or unwanted materials to make something beautiful.

Materials: Old takeout container, baker’s twine, white twine, somen noodles, linguine pasta

This first one is about noodles- the loom is an old plastic take out container that I grabbed out of our recycling pile. I chose baker’s twine as the warp, which I had trouble with trying to stay because of the slippery nature of the plastic container. So I made little incisions on the container for the warp to stay in, every 1/4″. For the weft, I used uncooked somen noodles, a string that was the same color, and uncooked linguine pasta. I wanted it to look like I used both uncooked and cooked noodles, but through string. I also tried to weave a more triangular shape instead of always weaving completely across.

Materials: old egg carton, fishing wire, dried baby’s breath, weeds, white twine

This second weave is about using old unwanted materials. The loom is an old egg carton I grabbed from my house’s recycling pile, and I cut into it to keep the warp in place. The warp is fishing wire I had from an old project, and it is supposed to be reminiscent of plastic recycling. As for the warp, I used dried flowers, something that people pick as beautiful but in turn kills the flowers and they eventually wilt and dry, and you throw them out, as well as weeds I found outside, and off-white string. But I wanted to show how you can make something beautiful out of things whose functions you no longer have a need for.

Materials: first aid kit container, old disposable mask, cotton swabs

For my last weave, I used a medical theme. The box itself is the container for my first aid kit, which usually holds bandages and ointments, I am using as the loom. I used red string as the warp, red usually being the color of emergency or first aid. For the weft, I pulled the ear loops off of a used disposable face mask, and then also cut it up into strips. In addition, I also used cotton swabs, which is used for aid.

In general, I tried to use a mix of soft and hard materials as warps in all of the weaves. In previous explorations, I noticed that hard materials leave a large spacing in between each warp, so I mixed in the soft materials between them to keep the gaps from being too big. I was pretty happy with how they turned out in the end, including the color schemes that came out of it!

Improvisational Weavings — Rachel Lu

For my first weave, I used the handle of an old take out box as the loom, and following the food theme, I used baker’s twine for the warp, and linguini pasta as the weft. Due to the thickness of the pasta, this was the tightest I could get the pasta next to each other. The more pasta I added, the more taut it got. At some point, one in the middle broke, so I had to pull it out, but it was too tight to put back in, so I had to take the rest out and redo it. In retrospect, I think it would be more interesting if I also used like spaghetti as well and alternated them. (I had to throw this out though because it turns out there was still rice in the box..)

For my second weave, I used a small picture frame as the loom, baker’s twine as the warp, and paint brushes as the weft. Due to the thickness of the paint brushes and the tightness of the warp, this weave ended up very spaced out as well. I was also trying to get the warping technique down. I wrapped it five times in the top, and then spaced it out to 7 towards the bottom.

For my third weave, I wanted to try a circular weave. I used a cup as the loom, embroidery floss for the warp, and a cloth head wrap as the weft. It was hard at first because the string kept moving around, and it made it hard to see which one was next, but after the first round, it got easier! I really like how this one is not spaced out like the last two because I used a soft weft, and the last two were hard ones. The cloth also puffed up slightly to cover the embroidery floss in most cases. It seems almost flowery, like a hydrangea?