What have you achieved?
Posted by Agnes Iley , Monday, July 23, 2012 8:15 AM
Did you have enough variety in your collection of yarns and other materials?
I do believe I have, at least enough to give me a good idea what the different textures do.
Which kind of yarns did you use most?
I mostly used thin wool and a wool/linen mix (Venne), because more than creating texture through the material used I wanted to see what I could achieve by using varying techniques.
How do their characteristics affect the look and feel of each sample.
The thinness of the wool allowed me work very precise the feel changed with the weaving technique. When woven loosely it looks and feels soft and fluffy, but when tightly woven it looks solid and feels quite rough.
How did you find weaving in comparison to the other techniques you have tried? Did you find it to slow or too limiting?
I must admit that probably about 15 years ago I tried weaving on a 4 shaft table loom. I made some fabric but found the process very repetitive and rather boring. Weaving on the tapestry loom, although in theory far more limited, I found much more exciting. Weaving with the thin wool is obviously a very slow process (hence the half vase), but it never got boring. I enjoyed myself. In comparison to the other techniques I will always go back to sewing and soft sculpture, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a tapestry or two in my future…
How did you feel about the finished sample? Are you happy with the relationship of textures, proportions and colour and pattern to the finished size? Is there any part you would change? If so why would you change it.
I feel I finished quite a few samples, but don’t feel like I have got a “resolved” sample. Every piece I finished gave me the idea of “next time I must do this, or change that, or has given me more ideas to experiment. So I am quite happy with my samples as experiments, but there is not a finished, faultless piece there. I purposely chose very thin wool to work in, to try and see how detailed I could work. I also didn’t go for textured yarns, because it was too obvious to me what they would do. I really wanted to try and create pattern and texture by trying various techniques. Which has been fun, I learned a lot and it has been very time consuming. On one hand I am annoyed because I feel I should have finished this lesson with an amazing piece, on the other hand this has given me a new outlook on weaving. I like the process of tapestry weaving. Even if you have worked out your design on paper, you are still making design decisions, quite literally, on every turn. That keeps it engaging and interesting, even if the process is slow. I’ve got a lot more to learn about this. And that feeling made it difficult for me to decide when to stop. There are more experiments that are bugging me to be made. (For example, what would happen if you set up a double warp? Weaving the warp partially as one and partially single, I think interesting textures could be created that way.) But then I figured tapestry weaving is probably the most “alien” technique to me out of all the assignments (despite having woven before) and it takes more practice to get it perfect. As far as the proportions of the last sample with regards to colour and pattern I do think it works quite well. The pattern reminds of a grey autumn day in Holland, when you see the reeds sway in the wind.
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