Weaving

I've been weaving since October 2006, and am in love with it! It is the most complex and challenging of the fiber arts. I weave on a 24-shaft, 24" AVL Workshop Dobby Loom, exploring different weave structures and playing with color. I hope you enjoy perusing my weaving gallery!

Works in Progress

The cashmere coat

A lovely garnet red/black handwoven coat, in a Celtic knotwork pattern of my own devising. Still in progress.

wedding dress

I expect this project to take me a year or so to complete – I intend not only to design and weave the fabric, but also to design and sew the dress myself, using couture sewing methods. There are three fabrics in this wedding ensemble – an eternity knot pattern, a Chinese double-happiness character pattern (the double-happiness character signifies a happy marriage), and a three-strand Celtic braid pattern. Together they symbolize a wish for eternal happiness in marriage!

Finished Works

Lava Flow

The Handwoven Magazine “Not Just for Socks” reader challenge inspired this shawl, a collapse weave in two different sock yarns. I was rummaging through my stash of sock yarns for the contest, and found some Cascade Fixation, an elastic sock yarn with a crinkled appearance that reminded me of cooled lava. This, in turn, brought to mind my trip to Hawaii and the beautiful rivulets of fire in the lava flows there. So I set out to recreate the beauty of flowing lava, fiery ruffles against crinkly black stone, flecked with fire.

ocean sunset II

This shawl is created using a knitted blank and a warp dyed in 29 colors. Knitted blanks are an interesting concept taught to me by Nancy Roberts of Machine Knitting to Dye For. You knit up a rectangular piece of fabric, dye it, and then unravel it and reuse the yarn. Using this technique you can get gradual color changes WITHOUT having to dye a zillion skeins, which is exactly what I did!

black jewel

This is another shawl woven on the 2/28 silk warp, with colors that gradually transition from turquoise to fuchsia and back again. It is woven with a black cashmere weft and is SO soft and sensuous against the skin! It is one of my favorites, and I wear it often.

ocean sunset shawl

The shawl is made from 2/28 nm silk dyed in 60 colors (!) – 29 in the warp and 21 in the weft. It is woven in stripes, each stripe so similar in color to its neighbors that the transition appears seamless. There are 58 stripes in the warp and far more in the weft. Each warp stripe is only 1/2″ wide!

Silk & cashmere jacket

This jacket was my first attempt at sewing my own handwoven fabric, and one of my very early attempts at design. I hand-dyed all the yarns in this jacket, and dyed the silk lining as well.