Woven Threads Project

Last week my new umbrella swift arrived and a hank of natural silk that I'm going to use for my next warp. I have begun to wind the next warp on the warping mill. This will be about two inches wide and so will be more like the width of a ribbon. Also, this week more coloured silks that I plan to use in the weft arrived. I used images from my sketchbook to choose the colours.

I've also tried printing some images onto fabric using special paper backed fabric that goes into an ink jet printer. The prints were fairly successful so I am thinking of ways to incorporate them into my work.

Since my last blog I have finished the piece incorporating ribbons I was working on on the loom. This warp is almost finished now, I will try to get at least one more sample idea from it though. I have begun to plan the next warp, it will be about 2 inches wide, about the width of the Coventry ribbons from the early 1800s that I have been looking at. I plan to use white silk for the warp so that I can vary the colours through the weft yarns. I have been thinking about trying to weave purl edges, as was very popular from 1813 to 1815. The original technique apparently involved using horsehair to edge the warp, I thought I would use a different yarn for the selvedge, that I could remove after weaving to make the scalloped edge effect.

I ordered more yarns, more silks of different colours for the wefts, and some white silk for my next warp. I've also ordered an umbrella swift, which is a device to organise yarns into hanks. I also condidered buying a finer dent reed, so that I can weave more ends per inch, which might be neccessary to weave the fine silks into something like a ribbon. But I've decided to see how I get on for now.

In my sketchbook I've been trying to organise my ideas, especially to develop a clearer idea about which items from the historical collections I want to display with my work at the exhibition. I've also been trying out different colour combinations of yarns, based on the photographs of the items from the collections, to use for designs on the next warp.

This week I've been weaving a lot. Firstly trying out different structures and working out different variations and working through in a quite logical way. I've been using one of the pages from the Coventry Ribbon samples book as inspiration for structures and colours. The piece I'm currently working on is really simple in terms of structure, I've experimented with including pieces of ribbon into the fabric. It's quite different from the small delicate structures of the sample ribbons. I've added some photographs to the work in progress section on the Gallery page.

I thought this week that it would help me to think more about the human and historical aspect of the ribbons and the lives of the ribbon weavers. So I've included in my sketchbook, images and photographs from my original research into the history. Also, I have information about some of my 'Wiberley' ancestors who lived mainly in the Foleshill area in the 1800s. Some of them were ribbon weavers and silk winders, as many people living in the area were at that time.

I have spoken to the exhibitions officer at Nuneaton Art Gallery and Museum this week. She would like me to put together a list of items from their collection and from the Herbert, that I want to include in my exhibition. This is so that she can begin to organise how they will be displayed and lit, because of their senitivity to light. I've got to give this some serious thought of the next couple of weeks, because it has to correspond with the work that I produce for the exhibition.

I have been trying out a few ideas on the loom, firstly incorporating pieces of ribbons into a plain weave background. I also thought it might be a nice idea to weave in label tags, the idea coming from the labels from the Nuneaton collection. From there I moved onto looking more closely at the pattern structures of some of the original ribbons, in particular looking at the Coventry ribbons. I chose a page from my photographs that I really likes and focused on one ribbon. It's very pink with some very basic pattern in dark blue and white. So taking this as my starting point I began to experiment with similar structures and colours. The structures don't translate directly because of the current warp threading I've got on my loom. The warp is from a previous project but I thought it would work well as an experimental place to start with, also creating some unusual colour combinations. I'm thinking that I would like to put on a new warp, probably of silk and something quite narrow to allow me to weave something of similar dimensions to the original ribbons. I also need to really start thinking towards the exhibition and what it will actually include. My next move for the moment though is to continue to try things out on the loom, moving onto another ribbon from the page I've been working on and trying out some more colour combinations and structures.

You can see the experiemental pieces I've been working on, on the gallery page titled, 'Work in Progress...'

Sorry about the late update this week. So the yarns have arrived, not all quite what I expected but I will make use of them. Next thing is to make a few windings and test out colour combinations and proportions. I have started to experiment on the loom, picture included on the gallery page. At the moment I'm just experimenting to see what happens and what ideas come to me whilst also developing something more structured in my sketchbook.