In Progress

In my initial thinking about how to illustrate The Book, I had naturally(?) assumed that all of the textiles ought to be brand spanking new.  To this end several friends stepped forward to contribute projects, winning my undying gratitude!

But as I thought about the whole project I realized that I didn't have to make absolutely new examples for every single thing.  In fact, a single project wouldn't necessarily show some of the depth and breadth of the weave structures under examination.

Ruth, able book midwife, agreed that mining my collection of textiles I use for teaching would be a fine thing to do.

As I dug through my boxes and bins, it suddenly occurred to me that the perfect suite of samples already existed, in large part - the samples I did for the master weaver certificate.

So much of what informs me as a weaver and a teacher is the work I did towards achieving the certificate.  The program is broad in its approach to understanding woven structure and in order to obtain certification, I was forced to weave things that I wouldn't have willingly done on my own.

Things requiring two shuttles, for instance.  (Because weaving with two shuttles pick and pick is three times slower than weaving with one.  Trust me on this.)

So I wove overshot, crackle, summer and winter, double weave, etc.  Since none of those samples was for sale, not being able to execute them as quickly as I was used to didn't matter so much.  They weren't production pieces, they were not (and never will be) for sale.  (Some have been gifted, but that's a different thing altogether!)

This morning I dragged the boxes with my GCW samples out and left Ruth to dig through them while I attended to some personal maintenance.

Now I need to press the creases out of them so good photos can be taken.

I knew I hung on to those samples for a reason.  I just had no idea at all, at all, that I would be attempting to write another book for which those samples would be, in a word, perfect.