Weaving

September 30th 2020

This week was the first week of class and we learned about weaving. Robin Kang a fibers artist gave us a talk about the history of weaving and the different types of looms. She then showed us how to create patterns on graph paper. After that we got to try weaving on a cricket loom which is a personal loom. I don’t really have any experience weaving. When I was young maybe nine possibly younger, my mom made my sister and I hand looms and we did a little bit of weaving, but it was really basic and. I don’t really remember much.

My roommate and I warped our looms the night before and it took us about 2.5 hours. It was a lot of work, possibly more work than weaving itself. I messed mine up and had to fix it which took up even more time.

Then in class we learned how to create patterns using a grid system. You can’t create most of these on the loom we have because it only has one heddle but it was useful.

I was really surprised to learn that the punch card system used in the Jacquard loom was the same system adapted for early computers. I was also surprised that early circus use a woven wire system. I had not idea weaving had such strong influences on modern technology.

After the lecture we started weaving. I started simple with a basic basket weave, then I decided to try and put a pattern into it and I made an arrow. You can see pictures of my first weaving and the process below.

I want to experiment more with weaving in the future and hopefully add some more details and fun patterns into the one I started above.