I've been taking weaving classes at my local museum, which have been offered in conjunction with their current Sheila Hicks exhibit. Sheila Hicks was born in Hastings, Nebraska but has been living in Paris for the last forty years or so. She began as a painter but has been working with fiber and thread in her art and it is really amazing--visually stunning pieces that are so gorgeous and tactile you wish you could reach out your hands and run them over the work.
The museum offers classes to enhance their exhibits, so when I heard they were offering weaving classes I had to sign up. I have long wanted to work more directly with textiles and weaving has been sort of off-limits as it seems hard to learn and requires equipment that is expensive and must need proper instruction to use.
I am learning a type of weaving which is done on a backstrap loom, which you can see above as practiced by my teacher who is of an ethnic group known as Karen, now living in the refugee community here in Omaha. She is originally from Myanmar (Burma) where the longest civil war is still going on. The museum paired with the Refugee Empowerment Center in Omaha to help spread the women's skills offering them the opportunity to teach and interact with the larger Omaha community. Many Karen women get together on Saturdays at the center to weave and hopefully will be able to sell their work and make a profit eventually. Their work is beautiful and they are so very skilled that even with the challenge of communicating we are all learning to weave despite language obstacles. She and the other ladies can just look at a student's work and fix problems and help with the warping and show us the weaving process. It has been a wonderful experience and I have enjoyed it so much I am now taking a second session and hope perhaps to be able to spend some Saturdays at the center working on other weaving projects. In addition to learning something I have long been interested in (a natural progression from needlework) I think it is also really good for the brain to learn something new like this--no doubt all those neural connections (or whatever happens in the brain when you use it in a new and different way) surely must be firing up every time I work on my weaving.
Here I am. The loom consists of wooden rods that hold the warp and you tie them around your back (hence backstrap loom) and use your body to adjust tension while weaving. It seems like such a simplified loom, but it works quite efficiently and you can create really beautiful work. Sheila Hicks learned backstrap weaving in South America (this type of weaving is also done in Guatemala and you may well be familiar with those designs and patterns). Rods or the plastic tubing as you see above are used to separate the threads, so you can shift back and forth and weave your thread through creating the weft.
I must admit it really took some time for me to wrap my head around the process and I am doing on the very, very basic type of weaving as I learn. One color and no designs, which you can see (a simplified design) on my teacher's loom. Many of the works woven by the ladies were shown to us when we started the class. Maybe someday I might be able to branch out to more detailed work. To be honest when I was first learning I was almost ready to give up as I just could not "see" how those threads were separating and how I had to move my shaft through to weave. I could understand and mimic, but I had no clue what was happening and feared I would never be able to just do it on my own without someone guiding me at first. I am still a complete and total newbie, but I feel like it is slowly making more and more sense and am hoping to keep learning new skills.
For now, however, just the basics. This is my first piece of woven cloth. You can see the separation of threads and where the shaft is pulled through. I ran out of black (I just used the thread that was at hand--this is mercerized cotton thread used for crochet) and so had to pick up some royal blue to continue. It is really all very intricate and there is so much to learn and think about. Not only the weaving process but the choice of materials and color and how they all work together.
This is me weaving away. I have since finished the length of cloth--we'll call it a scarf . . . And now I am working on making the tassles at the end. Photos to come of the finished piece.
These are two in progress photos of the weaving. Can you believe I made this? It kind of stuns me to think about and this is really, really basic weaving. I want to do more and learn more patterns and try my hand at more vibrant color combinations or textures. Now I have to find someone to help me construct the loom. The museum had a carpenter make the looms we are working with now and they will be donated to the empowerment center when we finish to give the women more looms to work with.
And how cool is this? That is my weaving all rolled up and tied into the backstrap. Not only a simple loom but entirely portable, too.
I am now working on my second project, which I have taken photos of--so I can share the whole process now that it is starting to actually click in my mind. The warping is a tricky business but almost the most important part since it creates the structure of your weaving. So, that will be part two, which I will share later.
I also have invested in a pin loom, which is a tiny loom, which is even more portable and is worked in hand. Remember those tin looms that we used to make pot holders on? I had one, or rather my grandmother did and I used to mess with it at her house when we visited. I am hoping it comes before I go to Colorado so I can take it with me. I even went yesterday and chose some inexpensive acrylic yarn to practice with on my very first loom (maybe someday I will have a big, floor loom--now wouldn't that be cool?).