Category: Gallery

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.

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.

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.

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!

For my deeper dive, I chose to complete one large weaving. For part 2 of the assignment last week, I was able to explore using colors, different types of threads, and different types of looms. I decided to take it a step further this week in terms of color choices, fabric choices, texture, and composition.

In this weaving, I chose colors that would go well together. Since the frame was a light tan, I chose the cream lace to complement it. I also included the woven mint twine and linen ribbons to incorporate more texture. There was a nice contrast between the looser weave of the twine, and the tight weave of the linen ribbon. The white satin ribbon was also chosen to brighten up the colors of this piece, with the smooth, shiny texture of it intentionally contrasting against the rougher, natural materials. The satin helped marry the more natural strips of fabric with the synthetic tulle that was used as the underlying structure. Tulle, seeming delicate but deceivingly strong, was use to tie the ends of the strips with one another. The places where they were knotted were left uncut, to allow the viewer to see more of the process within the piece.

Opacity was also something I explored in this piece. In certain areas, I would use more tulle. On the other side, I would use rougher, opaque materials. As I switched this up, row by row, it created a nice pattern where light would shine through in different parts.

The materials used in this piece all have a backstory to them. I bought the tulle when I was first learning to sew, and it was used in the first thing I made. The lace was taken off a shirt passed down by my aunt, and the various ribbons were given by a friend of my mom’s who passed them on when she heard about my interests.

Something I would like to work on after this piece, is to better explore the different ways I can keep a warp on a loom. I would have loved for this piece to seem unattached to the frame on all four sides, with the only strands keeping it on in the four corners.

Materials: 20×16 canvas (wooden frame only), white tulle, gray tulle, white satin ribbon, mint woven twine, beige linen ribbon, cream cotton lace

I made my first weaving using two extra photographs that didn’t make my photo wall. I picked these two in particular to weave together because they were both images of the sky just taken at different times of the day. The first is a photo of the stars that I took at an astronomy village, and the second is a photo of a sunset at the beach.

When I cut the photos into strips, I became more aware of the different textures and colors found throughout the scenes. After noticing these differences, I decided to weave the photos “out of order.” The middle strip features the rougher water texture from the sunset picture, and I think it provides a nice contrast with the smoother clouds in the starry night image. I was surprised to notice more characteristics of my photos as I converted them into my warp and weft materials.

I had the idea of weaving natural and synthetic objects together, so I went outside to grab a branch as a loom. I cut a strand of fake ivy to use as the weft, and I chose twine as the warp because it was easy to maneuver the plastic leaves through it.

I was surprised by the flexibility of the branch, but it was actually helpful in wrapping the warp and weaving the weft. The leaves made it difficult to avoid weaving through the back side of the warp, but overall they provided a fun extra element to the piece.

I think it would be interesting to hang this particular weaving like a mobile. That would provide a unique way of viewing the piece, give a little bit of movement, and help to accentuate the natural forms of the branch. The process of making this piece has further sparked ideas for how to alter weavings after their construction.

This piece was really fun to make! My friend responded to my last letter to her from this past summer, and I was able to weave our conversation together. There were differences between the paper types that made the strips uneven, so this weaving is not as compact as the one made with photographs, but the unevenness has grown on me. I debated cutting the excess letter weft to start new strips below the one prior like I did with the photographs, but I instead decided to fold the strip on the end to make it feel more continuous. This decision contributed more to the gaps in my weaving, but I still like the way it flows.

I struggled with getting my letter to stay in place evenly as the warp, so I switched from using regular tape to duct tape . I was also hoping that some of our sentences would perfectly align, but that wasn’t really the case. Still, our different handwriting, ink color, and paper texture made the final product really interesting as a whole. I think the weaving captures the exchange and our voices well, and it gave me an opportunity to play with more conceptual ideas.

In each project I tried to use different tools in order to play with weaving softer and different textured materials.

My first project was with yarn, a cup and twine to weft in a circular pattern. This was more traditional than the other with the exception of the cup as a loom. It was difficult to get my hand through the tiny spaces, which I again found to be challenge when I was weaving my scarves through my pencil in the later project. However I think It was pretty successful because my twine didn’t really slip after utilizing tape.

• 

The easiest project was with the paper and for that one I tried to play with different widths of paper to see if it added a visual affect to the project. The paper weaving project was alot easier to accomplish and took the least amount of time gathering and setting up. I at first did try to use Olivia’s method with the ruler to place the paper, but that didnt work too well so I opted for taping the paper down to my desk.

My third project used scarves, pencils and tape to create the loom, warp and weft. The biggest challenges were weaving the scarves through the pencils and also spacing the pencils out evenly while making sure they don’t move. I think the scarves I used were too big for the spacing I left in between the pencils. I wanted to play with different patterns on a very similar fabric but it did not work well with the use of pencils and tape.

• 

When working on the three weavings, I decided to utilize the tissue box, pen-holder, twine, and thread I had originally discovered in my scavenger hunt. In addition, along with a few other warping and wefting materials, I later discovered a miniature statue of a figure with a raised arm and a lowered arm, so I wanted to see if I could exploit the space between the arms to create a loom.

The easiest weaving to create was the tissue box cloth weaving. I first tried experimenting with wefting with a taped-together paper towel strip, however, given how tight the strings were on the loom, I discovered that it was not ideal to do so as the taped-sections kept getting caught as I was sliding the strip through the strings. I then decided to use a large strip of cloth as it was consistently thin at all points, making it very easy to slide through the strings. I’d used twine for the warping as well. This weaving took about an hour to do, including the experimentation, and below is the final result.

A slightly harder weaving to create was the pen-holder weaving. When looking at the pen-holder, I had the idea to warp it using elastic hair ties, which I stretched taut over the hole of the pencil holder. As for wefting, I knew I had to use an extremely thin material, as the hole was very small, so I chose white thread, and used a needle to push the thread through the warp elastics. This was tricky because the thread was so fine that I had to pay extra attention to make sure I wasn’t making a mistake with wefting, and I had to pull a large amount of thread through the ends of the loom because I wasn’t sure how much I’d ultimately need, making it easy to tangle the thread. Below is the final result after 20-30 minutes.

Finally, the most difficult weaving, and the most interesting one, was my statue weaving. I spent about 45 minutes figuring out how to warp across the arms of the statue, and I’d first attempted to cover just the left shoulder portion. However, since I wanted to use the hair tie elastics for warping because of the tautness they brought to the loom, the elastics kept sliding off when I tried wrapping them around just the bent arm. In addition, I discovered that thread wasn’t an ideal wefting material for this loom because there was so much space between the elastics, and I would need too much thread to cover a relatively large space, making it easy to make a mistake. After much trial and error, I discovered that I should stretch the elastics over the right portion of the statue and pinpointed individual places where I knew they wouldn’t slip, and I used twine for wefting. Below is my finished result.

Overall, I discovered that the ‘ideal’ thickness for a weft material and warp material are relative to the size of the “hole” or space in the loom, and that the weft material should be equivalent to or thinner than the thickness of the warp material so that it can more easily be wefted and errors can be spotted easier. I also discovered twine to be a versatile item for both warping and wefting, and I discovered I enjoy working with finer materials on smaller weavings, rather than with thicker or larger materials on a larger loom.

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?

From my pile of found materials, I decided to choose three different kinds of looms. I ended up using a square box lid, a toilet paper tube, and a pringles can lid. For my warp, I ended up using white thread because my objects were pretty small in size. For my weft, I used found yarn, plastic string, polyester thread, and embroidery floss. I also attempted to use wire, but found that it kept bending undesirably because it had been curled into a spool for so long.

Intended Effects/Challenges: I wanted to have a grid of different colors overlaying each other, but it was extremely hard to keep the threads in place and perpendicular form each other.

Surprises: The smooth polyester thread refused to stay in place so I had to constantly keep pushing the weft down. When I let it stay loose and cut back on the tension, it created nice repetitive curving patterns.

Intended Effects/Challenges: I had the idea of poking holes in the lid so the warp threads would stay where they were supposed to go. I had the intention of creating a mandala-like weaving.

Surprises: The embroidery floss piled up on each other as I wove and had thickness to it. I ended up with a thick weaving with a soft texture than the 2d pattern I expected.

Intended Effects/Challenges: The white thread was hard to keep in place, so spacings had to be fixed at the end (when the weaving was more stable). I intended to create a plaid pattern, but as the spaces become tighter, it became harder and harder to insert the weft.

Surprises: The colors worked together better than I expected.