Matrix Series

 

#1 in the Matrix series

2 and 3 in the Matrix series - the gold is #2, the blue on green is #3 - neither are wet finished yet

Since this is a learning adventure for me, I thought I would document it here under the label 'matrix series'.

So, I started reading Elaine Igoe's book Textile Design Theory in the Making, and it stirred up all sorts of thoughts.  That, on top of my stated desire to several friends that once I retired I wanted to pursue a more intellectual approach to weaving, resulted in all sorts of ideas suddenly finding their way out of the woodwork.

The concept for this series is not exactly new, I had used a similar approach to weaving with Summer and Winter, and twill diagonals, based on a double two tie unit threading.

But I wanted to explore twill blocks further.  I had, by October 2022, been playing with fancy twill and twill blocks for the better part of 3 years, and to be honest I was getting a bit tired of trying to come up with something 'new' and 'fresh'.

Add in the book which pushed me to break free of my usual way of thinking about designing for weaving, fold in the 'shifted block' idea that I'd used ages ago with other weave structures, and suddenly it clicked.

It took a while for me to wrap my brain around the concept (having constant brain fog from pain/pain killers isn't great for inventive thinking, just saying) and in the end the only way I could work my way through the details of getting something weaveable was to go back to point/graph paper and pencil and start laying out charts.

Since I felt less than stellar in terms of thinking power, I began with a very simple progression (top photo) just to make sure I had grasped the concept and could weave cloth that would hang together and even make good tea towels.  Being able to combine unmercerized and mercerized cotton in the same cloth meant I could play with the mat and shine of the two yarns for added depth.

It seemed like a really good idea to change one thing at a time until I felt more confident in what I was doing, so the tie up was the same for 1 and 2 and 3, but I changed the threading between 1 and 2, then to get to 3 there were several iterations of threading.  The treadling changed between 1 and 2, but stayed almost the same (with a small tweak to make the design line look tidier) for 3.

#4 has been designed and again, the major change has been to the threading, the tie up is the same, and the treadling has been adjusted.  The leap between 3 and 4 took more steps as I rejected a number of options until I finally saw #4 and *almost* rejected it because it didn't look the way I thought it was going to.

But a little voice in the back of my mind said, wait, take another look.  And I did.  And thought, well, it's not what I expected, but I kind of like it, it's really quite different.

The next few days I'm not going to make it to the loom much, but I managed one towel this morning, then cleared up a few minor 'jobs' in the studio that were nagging me.  Getting those off my work table has cleared up space to do other things.

Tomorrow I won't get much done because the furnace guy is coming with the new motor and circuit board and we ought to have reliable heat by dinner time.  But I've got a guild executive meeting in the afternoon, so I'm just going to pack up my hemming bin, make a lunch and head to the guild room to tackle the hemming heap - because more are coming down the pipeline soon.  And be there for the meeting after lunch.

Saturday is all day at guild for the weaving class, then Sunday afternoon drop in so I can assist the students, if any come.  And keep hemming.