Friday, June 10, 2011

Art & Soul Weaving

A few weeks back I spent some quality time with a bunch of art-loving folks at the Art & Soul Retreat here in Hampton.  It was my first time at any of these classes and it was a fun, different experience.  I'm used to the bead and wire crowd from my many classes in those realms.  This was a little different, though, because the focus was heavily on mixed media.  I loved being able to try some new things--I really focused on color and texture.

I picked a day-long class called Loom Weaving for a New Age taught by Cindy Yost French & Kat Allison.  Let me start out with a shot of my (nearly) finished product:
These lovely ladies have developed a portable small loom called the Copper Loom but now that copper is so expensive they've made adjustments and now the loom is fabricated from PVC pipe.  This bag of pipes and such is what we started out with in the morning.  The genius behind this design is that it honestly starts out like this and then turns into a tool that you can use for weaving...and mixed media weaving was the emphasis of the day.
 Once the loom was together and the warp threads were tight, we were encouraged to go to town with straight weaving and then they taught us some other techniques to crochet onto the warp threads and add other textures. I packed a bunch of orange and pink materials since that's what I had most on hand--lots of ribbon, raffia, leather, yarn, and wire.  
My technique isn't perfect because my sides aren't even, but I was so excited with how all the different ribbons and yarns were looking that I don't really care about the sides.  :)
I'm only showing macro shots of the detail because the piece isn't quite finished yet.  It's still on the loom.   When I eventually take the next step and get it off the PVC I'll post an update.  :)
If you're interested in exploring more, Kat has an Etsy shop with some of her amazing woven pieces as well loom kits.  Plus, the gals are on the schedule for the Portland version of Art & Soul in the fall.

5 comments:

  1. Wow! I didn't know you had those mixed media skills. You should definitely have it mounted and framed when you're done. Gorgeous!

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  2. A friend of mine took it last year and a bunch of us decided to take it next year as it will be offered again here at Hampton. It's amazing, love your choice of colors, we saw a few people working on theirs at the store and fell in love with the process. I agree that you should frame yours when it's done!

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  3. Pink and orange is one of my favourite, over the top, joyous colour combinations - looks fab!

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  4. Oh, this is so for me! I unfortunately don't live anywhere near there. The etsy shop didn't have any loom kits. Do you know of any other source. As a knitter, quilter, all around fiber-amasser, this would be such a wonderful new toy to play with. I love your vivid colors. Cool stuff, Jen!

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  5. those are some really great colors. very nice, love the pink wire too.

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Bedford, PA, United States
I'm a retiree/artist/student who makes things. It's a nice kind of lifestyle!

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