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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

And We're Weaving!

This morning I finished lashing onto the cloth apron:



The rest of the week will be extremely busy, so I wanted to start weaving quickly. On Wednesday, I'm presenting a program at Designing Weavers in Los Angeles. On Thursday, we are attending a wine event in San Francisco. On Friday, we're having a belated holiday dinner in Petaluma with my sister, her significant other, and a family friend. (Lots of miles going on here...)

I had hoped to get the loom running in good order in time to weave small hangings for my sister and for our friend. My sister collects lions, and I'll weave her a much more high-def version of the lion I posted about a few days (weeks?) ago. I won't have time to finish it, so she'll get an IOU for now and the finished weaving later.

The family friend collects chickens. I went online, found the website of a Dutch artist who began raising chickens. From the time they were little chicks, she made pencil or charcoal drawings of the chickens every day. One of the drawings really called out to me that it wanted to be woven, so I downloaded the drawing:



Since I can't show the whole weaving in one go, here's part A:



And part B:



The ground is 1/7 satin, the pattern 7/1 satin. I love the contrast, and am thrilled with the way the 3x2 basket selvedges are turning out. They may draw up more than the body of the weaving (by a tiny fraction) but I'll be cutting off the first 2 pieces and re-tying, so it's No Big Deal.

I love being able to weave small pieces that are tailored exactly for the recipient. This is SO much fun!

I think I need to find out the contact info for the artist, and send her a copy. What do you think?

7 comments:

neki desu said...

i can feel your excitement over here!
have one on me at the wine event :)

Lyn said...

Your weaving is a constant source of amazement & inspiration for me!
I do think you need to contact the artist, there could be some copyright issues?

Alice said...

A very successful interpretation. About contacting the artist: I once did the very same thing, used another artist's drawing to weave a hanging as a gift for a family member. I wove two copies, and offered to send one to the artist, who declined the offer! If you're not selling the work, I don't see that it's a copyright infringement, IMO.

Cate Rose said...

Fantastic woven chicken! Enjoy your busy week!

Julia Lines said...

this is such a beautiful chicken! i'm amazed at what jacquards can do- dreaming of using one one day! i vote for citing and notifying the artist in all forms, here online as well as a notation on the back of the weaving... this has been an increasing issue for discussion in this new world of internet saturation. with the likes of shepard fairey vs. the AP, (and while these circumstances are entirely different from this example i still find legitimacy in the main argument) i think it's important that our collaborations be consensual and recorded, for ourselves and the history books so to speak.

DEEP END OF THE LOOM said...

WOW that looks fantastic!

Anonymous said...

Tom in IL says:

Wow! Now that is real art and function combined! Beautiful.