Experimental Weaving Leads to Places

I decided to try some new techniques on the loom recently as a resulted I found unexpected out comes. The first technique I tried was a woven shibori, which is a technique used to resist dye in a dye bath after the fabric has been woven. The resist lines are floats woven into the pattern so when everything is finished being woven the floats are pulled tight, and once the fabric is dyed the resist lines are then taken out I have not gotten to the state of dying yet, because while I was pulling the resist lines I discovered something that the cloth was doing that I had not expected it to do. The cloth started to curl. Evidence below.

I continued the process of pulling the lines while taking photos as I went. The structural aspect that it was giving me was something that I was hoping to discover within weaving. I never would have expected it to come from this process. Now that I have tapped into some possibilities I am going to go further into the sculptural aspect of this technique. The dyeing part of this exercise I have not yet forgotten. It will come in time. Now this is what I have to play with.

 

Thinking about playing with the possibilities of shape with a weaving; I took on another experiment. This time I would play with the shape while it was still on the loom. Using 10/2 bamboo I soon discovered my excitement for this weaving was not as inthralling as prior weavings. Maybe it was the size yarn, or the fact that this takes 10 times longer to weave it because it is like weaving six weavings at once. 

The idea was to separate the weaving while it was still on the loom. Once the weaving had enough inches on it I would then undo the tie up of the back beam and re-thread it so that the strips would cross one anther. Giving it a braided effect. 

This has not yet been completed, for once I got to the crossing point I ran into some technical weaving problems. Once I get over that hump the weaving will continue. In the mean time here is an in process photo.