Patricia Stewart

Lorem Ipsum What’s on your Loom?

[Date] Artist…

Patricia Stewart Works…

I've been weaving for twenty years, mostly scarves and yardage for jackets but have never woven on a Jacquard or even designed for one until this fall when Tien Chiu received her new TC-2. As she was occupied with making her designer chocolates that month, she invited me to come to her house to weave on it and I jumped at her generous offer.

Tien's introductory warp is 1,760 ends of 10/2 cotton, 880 ends black and 880 ends white on two warp beams threaded in a 1:1 ratio at 60 ends per inch total. My thought was to weave samplers in interchanging double weaves with some simple images and a background evoking familiar dobby textiles.

My first large sample was a design of persimmons with some leaves woven on the black warp with a basket-like structure woven on the white warp, backed by the black warp. This was woven with four wefts, all 10/2 cotton. The persimmons and leaves were both woven in 6-end satin with two wefts on top, using the same gold-beige that stitched the basket-like structure, along with either an orange or green weft.

What’s on your Loom?

Amongst the known unknowns I needed to sample was how to deal with the wefts not weaving on the face. The persimmon sampler I wove with 4/4 twill on the back (presets were 12x48) which made a neat, thick textile.

Off-loom I simply put a binding around it to use as a table mat.

The next sampler was woven with two wefts using an image from an Arahweave damask demo of lotus. The lotus flowers were woven on the black warp with a magenta 20/2 silk weft using three 8-end structures: weft-faced satin, a granite weave, and Bronson lace. I wove a lattice structure on a preset of 48x48 on the white warp with a chartreuse 20/2 silk weft. The backing weave is just 8-end weft satin, which with only two wefts made a simple, supple fabric.

The peony sample was woven in 8-end satins with three wefts, red and yellow- green 20/2 silk weaving on the black warp with gray 20/2 silk weaving a lattice on the white warp. For this, I enlarged a lattice motif to a preset of 96x144. The back weave is a 1/15 satin which made a supple fabric but, at this scale, the long floats require a backing to be a useable textile.

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What’s on your Loom?

My last sampler of autumn leaves used the same lattice as the peony but woven on the black warp with the same gray silk weft. The leaves in gold or red silk (or both) were woven in 8-end satins on either the white or black warp. The backing weave was 1/11 satin this time, which also created long floats.

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The two layers of the last three samplers were all joined invisibly with a single hidden weft self-stitcher in each preset repeat. All three samplers were made into pillow covers so the back weaves were covered.

I had a great deal of fun weaving these samplers. I found the TC-2 very easy to weave on and even handling multiple wefts not as difficult as I had imagined. I'm looking forward to learning more about designing and weaving on Jacquard looms.

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