Inspiration is All Around

You know you weave too much when you see weaving inspiration everywhere! I was on vacation recently. It was lovely: hot, sunny and chock full of inspiration. Mayan ruins, waves, the silky smoothness of sting rays, the exquisite patterning on the shell of a turtle. I’ve come home with so many new ideas that I hardly know where to begin.

That’s what I love about weaving, and especially rigid heddle weaving. I can look at everyday things and see how the colours and patterns can be worked into weaving patterns. I didn’t have my loom with me (I’m seriously considering a flip loom for future vacations) but I spent happy hours on the beach imagining how to weave a turtle shell pattern and thinking about combining the symmetry of the Mayan temples with lace “vines”. I wonder if chenille would feel as soft as sting rays?

Inspiration is all around us, we just need to look. My camera is my best friend.  I see a colour combination I like,  I take a picture. I see an interesting pattern I take a picture.  A cityscape…take a picture. I have pictures of flowers (how can I weave a Queen Anne's lace?), spiders (check out the pattern on her back) seaweed (what an amazing colour).

Weaving is about creating something beautiful and useful, but it also about creating art. Taking what we see in nature or man made objects and bringing them into our art. The pictured scarf was made before we left, but it so beautifully shows the Mayan ruins. I’ll make another one…richer in colour and texture, showing the deep greens of the jungle that so quickly over runs anything man can build, combined with the structure and order that man attempts to bring to everything.