Woven Constructions

These Woven Constructions are a series of mock-ups for a larger project in the making. They are based on house framing techniques, made of stained spruce and cotton carpet warp. Their ultimate purpose will be to define previously unmarked space. For me, weaving is pure structure: miniature architectures playing with scale. I am working on getting these out of the 2D, into a more successful 3D existence. It will take a lot more thinking, sketching, reading, researching. (I have a long list of books requested at the library!)



This last image is a shot of all the elements together- still too 2-dimensional for me, but getting there. I love the overlapping threads and wooden shapes, and how it breaks out of the house framing standards. It's certainly food for thought.

Loom Work

I have a piece that has been brewing for over a year now, and I'm finally ready to get started on it. It requires a tapestry loom, so I bought some 1x2s and got started building. It is a very simple, rudimentary design, but it will be functional, and is as much as I could accomplish as the wood shop in my studio isn't accessible at the moment. I drilled the boards together so it will be able to be dismantled when moving. Another project I am working on will be stained, so I used the tapestry loom to do a test of the stain color. The color will work for the other project, so I have a bit of wood protection and test staining done in one go! I warped the loom in two sections so that I can do some tests, but I still need to get the shed stick and heddle bars set up and then twine the warp ends to set the spacing. This has been on my list of things to do for some time now and it feels amazing to have this physical loom after all of this planning!


Another item on my to-do list was unsticking the 8th shaft on my Baby Wolf. When the loom arrived, the 8th shaft would raise and then stick halfway when the treadle was released. My guess was that either the shaft or the metal track was a bit warped. As I can do nothing for the metal track, I sanded down the top left side of the shaft and was able to fix the stickiness! What a relief, as it made for very messy sheds and my needing to manually push the shaft back down into place. Now onto the rest of my never ending to-do list!

sanding on the top left edge

You can see extra space around each of the shafts, except the 8th shaft (furthest to the left).

shawl test warp

First weaving done! It's good to be back! Time flew while weaving- only took about an hour to weave off 1.5 yds... Note to self: buy a threading hook. I have a brass reed hook that came with the loom, but failed to remember that I would also need a heddle threading hook. Luckily there were only 30 ends that I hand threaded like needles. However, I would love one before I have to thread the 208 ends for the actual shawl.

I used WeaveDesign on my work PC to create five treadlings based on a straight draw and 1-8-1 draw. (looking into mac weaving software... quite a difficult decision, as I only have experience with Fiberworks PCW, which I love, but is only available in PC format)


I started with some leftover golden wool from Halcyon, woven tightly. It was lovely. I wish I could have made a blanket this way. I'll have to file that idea away for the future. After weaving, I washed it with woolite and let it dry. There was not much shrinkage, maybe 2%. I've decided on a threading and treadling pattern, and now just need to construct a rattle! The yarn's age (and probably dye saturation) have made parts of it VERY fragile- I had three yarns break during weaving- not from tension.. the construction of the yarn must be so compromised that the fibers just pulled apart. Common sense tells me to take a hint and use other yarn, but I insist on being stubborn and trying to make it through with a back to front warping and careful attention.