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Next Phase

on August 20, 2025

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Blanket Beginnings

Here we go. Let's talk about textiles. Our clothing starts as bits of fluff or stringy fibers that are weak on their own. Weak and too small to cover us, unable to provide protection from the elements. We must add energy into these bits of fiber to strengthen them. This is usually done by adding twist - or spinning. In our modern world, we have all kinds of machines that accomplish this task. In antiquity, it would have been done by hand and the tool used would vary based on the region and what fibers were available. The simplest tool is one's hands. You can add twist to the fiber simply by rolling the fibers between your fingers. This is not efficient for production, but it accomplishes the goal. Once upon a time, somebody figured out how to use a stick to add twist AND store the twisted fiber and thus the first spindle was born. This technology is basic and portable. In Women's Work, Elizabeth Wayland Barber expounds upon the implications of how textile production becam...

Fluffy wrap of doom is finished!!!

Whew! This was an exercise in patience. The process of adding in all that extra fluff is very time consuming. This project was inspired by the great pile-woven trade cloaks - like this image: (sourced from https://www.ashford.co.nz/threads-of-history-an-icelandic-varafeldur-in-the-south-highlands/) It's a magnificent piece. In the Valkyries' Loom, Hayeur Smith proposes that this was one way the people of the North Atlantic (especially in Iceland) grappled with a drop in temperature. Another adaptation was that they packed in their wefts more closely to create a more dense fabric. Adding in extra wool was another way to add warmth - this time by adding insulation. These cloaks were found across northern Europe, so either the process was widely shared, or they were a traded commodity. I absolutely love how mine turned out, it is about 30" by 80". I initially was adding tufts of fiber every other pick, then after 10 inches added every third pick...

Step. Throw. Beat. Sing.

Weaving has started in earnest on this project and I'm thrilled with how it is turning out. I've found a high resolution image of the fragment and lined it up with my own weaving. The match up with the weave structure is almost exact and makes me really happy. It encourages me to try spinning my own yarn for a smaller project in the future using the same weave structure and pattern to really hit the extant dead on. (my weaving on the left; extant piece on the right) A little context for this piece: it was found in 1933 by Robert Wallace. The town was in a period of growth and they were building facilities for new buses. Wallace was working with a team excavating sand in Bell's Meadow and he structure what he thought was a rock at first. This article relays his experience with extracting the jar, recognizing the coins, and hiding them from his over eager coworkers. This tiny scrap of fabric was covering the mouth of a clay jar full of coins. The focus was very much on the s...

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