Personal Development | Weave

Another technique we got to try our hand at recently was weaving - particularly using the table loom. Weaving is something I've never done before but something I've wanted to try out for a long time so it was exciting to finally have the opportunity!
Firstly we had to choose our yarns for our sample and since I've been focusing on the market, I decided to choose bright colours that reflected the vibrancy and all of the different colours found in the Birmingham markets.

Having never used the loom before, I found it pretty easy to get the hang of  - we had 16 shaft levers that we could alternate as we pleased that would lift up the warp threads and aid us in creating our patterns. I wanted to create a simple striped pattern just to get me used to the machine, but decided to create different blocks of colours to make my sample look a little more interesting. I chose yarns made out of different fibres, with varying thicknesses and colours to experiment with and see which ones worked best and what the finished results would be.

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Since I want to work into plastic bags as some part of my final outcome, I would be interested to see if I could weave with strips of plastic bags of use a combination of plastic bags and yarns and see what outcomes I could create from this. I've been researching Josh Blackwell and seeing how he combines plastic bags and different embroidery and textile techniques, and following on from this, I think it would interesting to try and manipulate plastic bags in the weave room, to then work onto further in either print or embroidery and bring all of my new found skills together.

I'm really happy with the final sample I've created. I love the colour palette I chose and think the colours reflect the markets well. As shown by Sheila during the demonstration at the start of the session, we can manipulate the weft threads we are weaving so that they interlock, and instead of creating one block colour, we can start to create a pattern through our weave - something I'd like to experiment with further and try and recreate some of the shapes seen in the markets, like the fruit and vegetables for example!