A Beautiful Rug in the Making

1st panel, hand-woven, hand-dyed wool, 15"x64"

Detail, end of the first panel, 15"x64"

Hello lovely people.

Well, I've done it.  Panel number 1 is finally complete, and I've found that after so much practice, after so much work, I am still a very slow weaver.  I have about two weeks left to get the next two panels done in time for critique, and I am ready to have an anxiety attack over it.  Seeing the first one completed is helpful; it offers me some inspiration towards my next pieces.

Overall, I am immensely pleased with this first panel; I am getting excited to seeing the two complete and all three together.  I feel a little sad that the photograph above doesn't exactly do the piece justice thus far (in addition to it being pixelated after I tried adjusting the exposure).  I put so much time and consideration into perfecting my group of colors; in reality, they are much richer and darker than in the photo.  The color changes are all very subtle and rich, with pops of the orange here and there.  As I weave, my heart races a little with each stripe of color.  They're so beautiful, and I've found that my love for the red and green complementary colors, as those in my rug, are becoming somewhat of an obsession.  For goodness sake, I dyed my hair red and like to wear green to complement it.  Enough said.

And on that note, dear readers, I bid you all ado.  As always, thank you for reading and have yourselves a pleasant day.  

P.S.  Don't forget to check out my wannabe photography blog, my pinterest, and instagram pages...links are above!

Something Unwanted

The beginning of a something unwanted.

A bit further along...

Hello lovely people.

Here's an in-progress look at a project that I am doing for Studio Drawing.  I've been trying to mix weaving with drawing, and it has been a challenge.  With limited ideas and increasing stress, anxiety, and ultimately, more migraines, I kind of lost it.  One of my classmate's during our in-progress drawing critique advised me to tear everything up and see what happened.  It was the one piece of advice that I had dismissed entirely, and the one piece of advice that I had actually followed.  I tore everything up and started all over.  I gathered every possible thing that I had that was unwanted: scraps of material, old embroidery floss, yarn, pages from my sketch books, and old photo prints that weren't perfect.  I then drew all over the surfaces I could, tore them up, and wove and stitched them back into this piece, using all of my unwanted emotion to push me forward.  It's a very new way of creating art for me, and its ugliness is strange.  As a rug weaver, I try to make something ordinary and domestic into something extraordinary and beautiful.  This way of thinking is implied in every other medium I use: creating something absolutely beautiful to engage the viewer with positive emotion.  I feel like all of the bad and ugly things in the world is what many focus on, and I try to bring back attention to the beautiful things that remain.  When I began this piece, I tossed out any notion of beauty, and focused on the materials individually as well as my frustration and anger toward school and my personal health.  The more I stitch and weave into the piece, the more I see a reflection of myself.  I imagine that if one were able to see their soul, this is what mine would look like: something imperfect and ugly to the common viewer but full of good intent and beauty to those who look a bit harder.

And with that my friends, I bid you all ado.  As always, thanks for reading and have yourselves a pleasant day.

Instagram: art_by_rosemarie
Photo blog: wannabe-photographer.blogspot.com

Snow day!

My classmate, Jaclyn Gese, thioxing designs onto fabric.

Hello lovely people.

Today was a snow day, which is always a glorious occasion.  A few of my classmates and myself were already on campus, however, and decided to go to class anyway.  In the picture above, my classmate Jaclyn is thioxing designs onto fabric.  Whenever you use thiox, it releases fumes that smell of something terrible.  As you can see here, Jaclyn did not have a problem as she donned a gas mask and is designing away (and her fabric is looking quite beautiful if you ask me...).  Below is the bit of work I got done today on my loom.  Honestly, it looks very similar to my last in-progress photo of my 3-piece rug, but I just love the colors so much.  I become more entranced with them the more I weave with them; that bright red-orange stripe seems to glow, and I love it.

Working my way through the first panel of my large, 3-piece rug (will be 15"x5' when completed)

And on that note, my friends, I bid you ado.  Ado, I say!  As always, thanks for reading and have yourselves a lovely, snow-filled day.

P.S.  You can also follow me on my photography blog at: wannabe-photographer.blogspot.com or catch me on Instagram at: art_by_rosemarie.

A Cold Start...

Beginning the large 3-piece rug; first panel (will be 15"x5' when completed)

Hello lovely people.

Rosemarie-Flavored Popsicle (eww...)

It is brutally COLD.  If using all capital letter is not dramatic enough to indicate the current temperature, my picture should act as testament as to how cold it is outside.  My eyelashes and hair are frozen, and I even have a frost mustache!  I love the winter weather, but there is not much one can do outside in such frigid conditions, other than stay warm inside and weave away.

I have begun weaving the first panel of my upcoming 4'x5' rug, and so far it is going swimmingly.  I have about 2' woven already, and I hope to have this first panel completed by the end of the week.  I had put so much careful planning into the warp size and each individual color (of which there are 12), that I was nervous to get started; I was afraid that I would make some terrible mistake, and the entire thing would be ruined.  Overreaction?  Quite.  But I wanted to make sure that this piece is perfect, as it will be featured in my senior show in the fall.

For any weavers out there, I have also included an image below of the shaft-switching technique that I use.  If, however, you are not a weaver, you can either try and figure out what I am talking about or skip this next paragraph altogether.

Shaft-switching, using beads on the warps to change harnesses

Shaft-switching is a weaving technique in which the weaver can change the harnesses in which a warp (the white string, in my case) is bound to during the weaving process; normally, everything is threaded before-hand, and changing the pattern is impossible.  I had originally used safety pins through the eye of the heddles, clipping the heddle to the warp strings.  Proving useful but inefficient as the safety pins would always fly off of the loom, I switched to using beads with string tied around them.  The warp is threaded through the string with the bead attached while threading the entire warp through the heddles; using flexible, string heddles on the first two harnesses, the two that I can "switch," I am able to take the bead attached to the warp string and push it through the eye of the string heddles.  So far, the weaving process has been smooth and the beads and string heddles have proved themselves very easy to hook-up and use; they have become good friends to me in my time of need.

Ski shuttles

Ski shuttles, complements of my professor, Morgan Clifford, are also a good friend of mine.  A shuttle acts as a little "vehicle" in which you wind your weft (the dyed wool yarn, in this instance); it carries the weft back and forth through the shed (the space created when lifting each harness).  These "ski shuttles" are super special, not only because they look cool, but also because they glide easily when weaving (which is incredibly helpful when one is weaving rugs).

And on that note, my friends, I bid you ado.  As always, thanks for reading and have yourselves a lovely, cold day.

P.S.  The more I use weaving terminology, the more I realize that anyone that has not woven before probably has no idea what I am talking about, and for that, I apologize.  Perhaps I shall have to include a blog post purely on "weaving explained," should the interest be there...