By Amelia © January 18, 2012 With the new year, I am looking to re-inspire my fiber arts. Writing is always a joy, but life has kept me from pursuing activities as much as I would like. So a chance run-in with a local weaver and invitation to their guild meeting was too lucky to pass up.
And can you believe it, the topic was finding inspiration! A few of my fibery friends were there, and one handed me the feather you see above. The table was full of yarn, so finding colors was pretty easy. We chatted as we made "wraps", to sample color combinations and decide what colors were in our inspiration.
Wrapped samples like this are a common tool among weavers. They are a great way to sample colors and proportions. As I was winding mine to "match" my feather, it started working its way into my mind, firing off ideas of what to weave.
The feather and the colors reminded me of a color-and-weave I have not yet done, so I took the idea and worked with it, weaving a sample to see how it would look:
Plaid. Yes, not a 2/2 twill that would make it an authentic plaid, but symmetric stripes with border colors. I like it!
The fun part of the project was also the instant gratification -- one of the ladies cut matt board for us, so we can mount our inspiration and our sample weaving, frame it and have a new piece of art for our weaving corner. That is where mine will hang...
You can find inspiration in anything -- a rock, a feather, a picture, last year's calendar, furniture, the snow on the trees, a sunset. Look at it, explore its colors and textures, wrap or sample and wa-la! you will have made a new fabric that is all your own.
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© January 18, 2012 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog