Tag Archives: Design

Look It Up!

25 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in creating, Designing

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“I don’t think that means what you think that means.”

Like Inigo Montoya, (“The Princess Bride”) I’ve found myself muttering that phrase lately. And it reminds me of my Mother’s answer whenever we asked what something meant—look it up!

We use a lot of words that are specific to our interests, but do they really mean what we think they mean?  If we have to explain a term, can we do it without Google?

I’ve come across some design terms lately that I thought I knew – until I tried to define them. For example, what is the Golden Proportion?

What I learned when I looked it up (Mom would be so proud!) is that if you divide a line unequally into two sections, the ratio of the smaller section to the larger section should be the same as the ratio of the larger section to the whole. That’s the Golden Proportion (or Golden Section, or Golden Ratio). The same with a rectangle and any other shape or space. Our brains like the balance of that proportion.

Then there are design elements — line, shape, pattern, texture, color – and design principles — focal point, contrast, repetition, balance, movement, order.

These didn’t figure in my college courses, so at first glance, they seem sort of esoteric. (Did I use that word right?!) I mean, what exactly do designers mean by unity? Balance? Rhythm? Do I need to go to the deep end of the design pool?

Planning in the works

Yes, I do.

In the weaving process, the hardest part for me sometimes is the designing. Why is that? Decision-making mostly, along with lack of confidence. I go back and forth about colors and placement, stripe sequences and where to put borders. It can take the better part of an afternoon to pull together a towel warp. If I can make these design principles a part of my planning, maybe the process will go more smoothly.

If I place a border on a towel using the Golden Ratio, I can trust that it will look good.

If I blend colors from one shade to another using a Fibonacci series — each number the sum of the two previous numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on) – the transition will balance. In weaving, that could be the number of threads or the size of the stripe. Knowing how the system works should make designing less of a guessing game.

So now whenever I come across a design term that is a little vague to me, I will think of Mom and look it up. It will be worth it.

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Weaver, Know Thyself

05 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by in Designing, Weaving Inspiration

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One of my former weaving teachers, Madelyn Van der Hoogt, used to say there are two kinds of weavers: color/texture weavers and structure/pattern weavers.

The color/texture people are drawn to – well, color and texture. Their projects bump and bubble with shades and hues, delighting the eyes with a virtual flower garden on the loom.

The structure/pattern weavers gravitate towards those intricate interlacements that take the yarn in elaborate diamonds and laces. How do you get the strict grid on the loom to softly curve in the design?

Like all generalizations, these show opposite ends of the weaving spectrum. Most of us fall somewhere in between the extremes, but may drift toward one end or the other. At one point in a guild meeting, we were discussing this and a friend told me “Oh you’re definitely structure/pattern!”

Hmmm. I hadn’t thought of myself as being so far to that end. But as I scrolled through my weaving pictures, it’s obvious. While I do dabble in color blending and like a bit of texture in my towels, those fancy diamonds and stars show up over and over again.

The lemon napkins with a green twill border.

Lemon and Jade Cotton Napkins

A similar pattern shows up in some red and blue towels.

Cotton and Linen Kitchen Towel in Royal and Natural

Red Cotton Towel woven "as drawn in."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are the double weave placemats with repeating blocks and ovals.

Marsala and Cream Doubleweave Placemats

And then there are the small table cloths sporting diamonds, stars, and blocks overall.

Weaver, know thyself.

Right now I have a towel warp on the small loom and my mind wanders while I’m throwing the shuttle.  What can I put on the drawloom that will be more than an exercise in sampling? How can I adapt the elaborate fancy twills from the 18th century Snavely manuscript into something delightful for the 21st century? Is there room in our clear-the-clutter culture for decorative textiles?

So my mind wanders. I think a point twill on the 12-shaft loom is beginning to take shape.

“Plays Well With Others”

26 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by in Color, Uncategorized

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dsc_1061a111At a recent guild meeting we watched a portion of Laura Bryant’s DVD “A Fiber Artist’s Guide to Color.” She discusses how to arrange colors so that they don’t “fight” against each other. That reminded me of elementary school report card behavior comments:

  • Follows directions
  • Completes assignments
  • Expresses ideas clearly
  • Does neat thorough work
  • Plays well with others

Do the colors I pick for any given project follow my mental directions in the warp and weft? Do they express my ideas of what that fabric should look like? Do they “play well with others”?

dsc_1055a111

Laura took the audience through several exercises demonstrating how our perception of colors is affected by all the other colors around them. Putting a purple patch over a white background or a blue background affects how that purple looks. Our eyes will “see” it as different when it is actually the same.

Watching her exercises, I recalled a “problem child” cone of yarn I have that doesn’t play well with others. It’s called “Bluebird” and by itself, is a delightful purple which leans toward blue. But just try to blend it with other purples or even with reds and it becomes either a bully by standing out like a neon light or is itself bullied into a non-descript gray.

I can blame some of this on my camera or my lighting, but this cone of yarn is often the culprit when I can’t get a towel to photograph well. It’s a case of the background color either highlighting the accent or pulling all the color out of it. What I need to figure out is the happy medium.

I do a lot of color-blending in my warp and it’s fun to see which cones work together and which ones I have to save for another project. That’s what makes each project unique, each towel “expressing ideas clearly” and “playing well with others.”

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Learning Experiences

04 Friday May 2018

Posted by in creating, Designing

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We’ve all had them—challenges that derail the day, slow down the process, defy expectations. It’s the picture that turned out squashed. Or the warp that wasn’t quite long enough for that last towel. Or the blanket that came off the loom in a flourish only to reveal a treadling error in the middle.

Twill Gamp Blanket

Twill Gamp Blanket

As I was growing up, I heard more than once — much more than I wanted to hear — “Chalk it up as a learning experience.”

It’s a “glass half full vs. glass half empty” way of looking at things but without those learning experiences, we’d miss so many serendipities!

This spring I’m experimenting with some structures and experiments are all about seeing “what if…?” It’s a learning experience on purpose.

For the first time that I can remember, I actually wove a “gamp.” My dictionary defines gamp as a large baggy umbrella, used humorously. In weaving terms, a gamp is a sampler: thread 4 or 5 different threadings and colors, treadling as drawn in. It’s a fun way to try out different looks. My baby blankets sported 5 different colors in 5 different 8-shaft twill threadings and treadlings. Fun!

Except for that pesky treadling error right in the middle of the middle block! Learning experience. Perhaps that blanket will be cut up into bibs. Perhaps I’ll keep it as a twill reference.

On the drawloom, the barn picture went through several variations. The proportions of first one off the loom seemed off to me. Back to the digital “drawing board.”

I’ve read in Alice Schlein and Bhakti Ziek’s The Woven Pixel (2006 Bridgewater Press, available on Handweaving.net) that to get the woven picture to truly reflect the graphed design, you have to adjust the size of those little squares to the proportion of your weave structure. While their discussion was aimed at computerized weaving, I adapted their advice to my simple sketchpad drawing, making the squares – well, less square. After all, how many woven fabrics are perfectly balanced warp to weft?

After three or four more tries, I’m closer to the proportions I envisioned. And along the way, I played with different elements in the actual design. Slight differences, but all adding to the whole.

Barn in Progress

Barn in Progress

I’m learning to slow down on my assessments. So what if I ran out of warp for a towel? Can it still be woven up into something else—a napkin? A table mat? A wash cloth? It’s a fallacy to expect a project to turn out perfect on the first try.

I share this because I don’t think I’m alone here. As makers, we have this ideal we aim for and if it doesn’t turn out like that ideal, we feel like it’s a failure. Not so! Sometimes we have to walk away from it for a while in order to look at it with different eyes.

I’m learning to walk away for a bit. Give the warp time to tell me what it should be.

Try it with your next challenge. And enjoy the learning experience!

Pleasant Thought

19 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by in Designing

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“Proper ornamentation…is pleasant thought expressed in the speech of the tool.”

Detail of opphämta borders

Detail of opphämta borders

Pleasant thought, the speech of the tool. What a lovely way to describe design well-conceived, craft well-done. Authors from earlier generations certainly had a way with words!

The editor who wrote that line, W. R. Lethaby, is referring to good design. He penned his view in the late Arts and Crafts period in his Editor’s Preface to Hand-Loom Weaving Plain and Ornamental by Luther Hooper (Pitman and Sons, 1925 available on Handweaving.net). It reflects the value of traditional craftsmanship but his premise is still well worth considering.

“Workmanship when separated by too wide a gulf from fresh thought—that is, from design—inevitably decays, and, on the other hand, ornamentation, divorced from workmanship, is necessarily unreal, and quickly falls into affectation.”

Various towel designs

Various towel designs

I can weave warp after warp and be technically sound in the weaving, but if I don’t put some thought into the design—color, structure, presentation—it will inevitably become tired. It’s no longer “pleasant thought.” My weaving has to grow.

On the other hand, if I push experimentation too far, making the “ornamentation” the focus, the fabric won’t serve its intended purpose and sounds a sour note. It is trying too hard to be what it’s not. It becomes “divorced from workmanship.”

There are many definitions of good design. What I consider good design may differ from your perspective, but across the spectrum of definition, something that is well-conceived, well-executed stands out.  The tools we use may differ, but they all express our sense of design.

This concept goes way beyond what to put on the loom next or what to offer in a sale line. This can – and should — inform our whole design process.

My weaving springs from what I find pleasant. My tool is the loom. What tool do you use to express your pleasant thought?

Design Through the Back Door

28 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Designing, Weaving Inspiration

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Through the Back Door

Recently someone asked me to design an apron for his business. After some back and forth, I had a clearer idea of what he wanted and started thinking. I pored over graphed motifs from Medieval textiles, paging through for something to start with. Then I worked on adapting the figures to what the customer wanted and what my equipment can weave. All this designing before a thread is woven.

Design is a loaded word.

Design is a verb, “to conceive, to contrive, to invent…to have as a goal or purpose.”

Design is also a noun, “a decorative or artistic work…a visual composition or pattern.”

A design can be a conspiratorial plot or a figure on a business card or a pattern for a dress. Design encompasses every art and craft form, every building plan, every graphic representation. There are whole college programs built around design–none of which I’ve taken.

Planning in the works

Planning in the works

To be honest, design can be intimidating. That’s why I approach it through the back door.

The back door is the service door. It’s the one used to bring in the groceries. It’s the door from the garden, the lawn chair, the grill. It’s the door the dog uses.

Pulling inspiration from the library

Pulling inspiration from the library

The back-door path to design uses what is available and builds on that. It reads whatever books are on the shelf, takes whatever classes or workshops come up, researches techniques that might come in handy.

Then when a challenge comes up, all the bits and pieces of design inspiration quietly come in through that back door, sit down at the kitchen table, and whisper that concept into reality. Design through the back door.

How do you approach your design challenges?

Books, Books, Glorious Books!

29 Wednesday Jun 2016

Posted by in Weaving Inspiration

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You can tell a lot about a person by looking at her bookshelf.

My mother loved books. She was a writer after all. She had shelves of histories. She had shelves of dictionaries (biographical, quotation, geographical, biblical, your standard Webster, and more). She had shelves – and shelves! – of cookbooks, because as a food writer, she researched – a lot! She had so many books that the auctioneer was overwhelmed—literally.

I have inherited my mother’s love of books. I look around me and I have shelves of histories, an interest my husband also shares. I have shelves of books by Wisconsin authors, some friends of my mother’s, some I know by reputation only. But my favorite shelves are those of fiber books!DSCN3998a

I still have my green-covered A Handweaver’s Pattern Book by Marguerite P. Davison, a classic I bought when I first started weaving. Right up there next to that is my copy of A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns ed. by Carol Strickler. I did pass along my Learning to Weave by Deborah Chandler to a friend who was just starting and I hope she got as much out of it as I did.

There are books on coverlets,DSCN3997a

books on design,DSCN3996a

and books on linen.DSCN3995a

Beside these sit books on early weaving manuscripts, and yes, more histories of weaving.DSCN3990a

Sometimes I buy books on techniques that intrigue me, but I have yet to go beyond reading the book. Tapestry is one of those. I have two books called Tapestry Weaving, one by Kirsten Glasbrook and one by Nancy Harvey, both of which I have pored over and dreamed through. Someday…DSCN3993a

Then there is Weaving as an Art Form: A Personal Statement by Theo Moorman—another classic—and More on Moreman by Heather Winslow. Both very inspiring and worthy of a reread.

And these are just some of the weaving books! There are also books on spinning, books on knitting, and a few on book-making. Handmade art books are so amazing!

Inspiration is right there in front of me. All I have to do is pull a book off the shelf and fall in!

What does your bookshelf say about you?

(For those of you who are interested, I’ve included a bibliography. Some of the books are out of print but you may be able to find them in your local library or on line. There are many other books on my shelf that I didn’t mention.  Explore your shelves and see what you can find!)

Bibliography:

Davison, Marguerite Porter (1944) A Handweaver’s Pattern Book. Swarthmore, PA: Marguerite P. Davison, Inc.

Glasbrook, Kirsten (2002) Tapestry Weaving. Turnbridge Wells, Kent, England: Search Press

Gordon, Judith (1995) American Star Work Coverlets. New York, NY: Design Books

Harvey, Nancy (1991) Tapestry Weaving: A Comprehensive Study Guide. Loveland, CO: Interweave Press

Heinrich, Linda (2010) Linen: From Flax Seed to Woven Cloth. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd.

Hersh, Tandy and Charles (2001) Rural Pennsylvania German Weaving 1833-1857. Carlisle, PA: Tandy and Charles Hersh

Jarvis, Helen N. (1989) Weaving a Traditional Coverlet. Loveland, CO: Interweave Press

Kurtz, Carol S. (1981) Designing for Weaving. Loveland, CO: Interweave Press

Lamb, Sara (2013) Spin to Weave: A Weaver’s Guide to Making Yarn. Loveland, CO: Interweave Press

Meek, Kati Reeder (2000) Reflections From a Flaxen Past: For Love of Lituanian Weaving. Alpena, MI: Penannular Press International

Moorman, Theo (1975) Weaving as an Art Form: A Personal Statement. West Chester, PA: Schiffer Publishing Ltd.

Oelsner, G.H. (1952) A Handbook of Weaves. New York, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.

Safner, Isadora M. (1985) The Weaving Roses of Rhode Island. Loveland, CO: Interweave Press

Strickler, Carol (1987)  American Woven Coverlets. Loveland, CO: Interweave Press

Strickler, Carol, editor (1991) A Weaver’s Book of 8-Shaft Patterns. Loveland, CO: Interweave Press

Thompson, Marjie, Kathleen L. Grant, and Alan G. Keyser. Forgotten Pennsylvania Textiles of the 18th and 19th Centuries.  Cumberland, ME: The Linen Press

Wertenberger, Kathryn (1988) 8, 12…20: An Introduction to Multishaft Weaving. Loveland, CO: Interweave Press

Winslow, Heather Lyn (1994) More on Moorman: Theo Moorman Inlay Adapted to Clothing. Sugar Grove, IL: Heather Winslow