Tien Chiu

  • Home
  • About
    • Honors, Awards, and Publications
  • Online Teaching
  • Gallery
  • Essays
  • Book
  • Blog
  • Dye samples
You are here: Home / All blog posts / Why weave?
Previous post: Getting my rear in gear
Next post: (Almost) four yards!

February 4, 2011 by Tien Chiu

Why weave?

Michelle posed a very interesting question in a comment on yesterday’s blog post:

Do you weave because you have a passion to weave? Or, is weaving a modus operandi for your art?

An excellent question.  I thought about it for awhile today, and concluded that the answer is YES!

First and foremost, I weave because I enjoy weaving.  I love sitting at my loom and transforming thread into cloth. I love the design process, the tactile joy of touching yarns, the magical moment when warp and weft intermingle to produce – miracle of miracles! – woven fabric.  I enjoy every step of weaving, from planning to wet-finishing.  I weave because I love it.

But I also want to use my weaving to advance my creative goals.  If I were to give you a “mission statement” for my life, it would be, “I want to create work of awesome beauty and power.  I want to make _____ the way that Itchiku Kubota created kimono.”

(If you missed the first act, my blog post on Itchiku Kubota’s amazing kimono – and the inspiration I got from it – can be found here.)

I’m still struggling to find my medium.  Weaving will definitely be a part of it, because I love to weave.  But I don’t think that weaving alone will let me express the things I want to express, or create the things I want to create – it will most likely be a combination of weaving and something else.  Dyeing?  Sewing?  Quilting?  All of the above?  I don’t know yet.  But I am looking for a way to meld weaving with other techniques in a way that is complementary to all of them, that takes the best of each technique and fuses them into something brilliant, expressive – something greater than any of those techniques alone.  This is why I am meditating on the role of weaving in art, and how it plays into design.

And this, more than anything else, is what I want to do with my life: make something – anything! – the way Itchiku Kubota made kimono.

Share this post!

  • Tweet
  • More
  • Email
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print

Filed Under: All blog posts, musings, textiles, weaving

Previous post: Getting my rear in gear
Next post: (Almost) four yards!

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Information resources

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • How-Tos
    • Dyeing and surface design
    • Weaving
    • Designing handwoven cloth
    • Sewing

Blog posts

  • All blog posts
    • food
      • chocolate
    • musings
    • textiles
      • dyeing
      • knitting
      • sewing
      • surface design
      • weaving
    • writing

Archives

Photos from my travels

  • Dye samples
    • Procion MX fiber-reactive dye samples on cotton
    • How to "read" the dye sample sets
    • Dye sample strategy - the "Cube" method
  • Travels
    • Thailand
    • Cambodia
    • Vietnam
    • Laos
    • India
    • Ghana
    • China

Travel Blog

Entertaining miscellanies

© Copyright 2016 Tien Chiu · All Rights Reserved ·

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.