Wearable Art
Scarves & Shawls
For 25 years I painted with oils and the whole time color was my muse. Color is powerful. It generates mood and it sets off emotional reactions and when you are ‘painting’ with threads, you get the added benefit of a person being able to wear the piece.
Scarves and shawls are kinetic paintings. They can be hung on a wall like a Chinese scroll or an abstract canvas or they can be twirled and twisted and wrapped around a body. I love designing a good long warp and then letting my hands fly with the colors my mind’s eye chooses. VERY rarely do I repeat a design. Usually, I get so excited by the color combinations in front of me that I just keep choosing. I’m selfish like that. I want to keep exploring and finding new combinations.
For that reason, if you like a scarf that you see, you may want to purchase it because it will never be woven again.
Another reason why I weave: When a warp is on my loom and I am, say, working on Kitchen Cloths, I have the opportunity to save a certain amount of warp at the end of my Kitchen Cloth project and experiment. Maybe I want to hand-manipulate a weave structure and create a wall piece, perhaps I want to throw different materials in to just see what happens, or, my favorite, weave off a double cloth to be worn as a scarf/shawl/neck wrap.
Doublecloth is when the weaver uses two shuttles, separates the threads thus creating 2 separate and stacked layers and then weaves through them individually. The weaver gets to see the top layer evolve but is working on the bottom layer blind. The shuttles cross on one side but not on the other, thus creating a cloth that when cut off the loom can be opened up to twice its length. This ability to play when I am working on one project and pivoting onto another is one of the many fascinating things about weaving that keeps me coming back time after time.
the finer details
Scarves are generally 20” wide and 80” long. Shawls are generally a double cloth and so work out to approx. 45” wide and 60” long. Cotton is a favorite of mine. Wool is woven in the winter and I try and keep my sources local.
