The Weaver Sews: Know Thyself

I’ve spent my entire adult life in front of a sewing machine. My primary focus has always been, and will always be, clothing. 

 

Part engineer wannabee and tolerable at math, I adore the multi-dimensional creativity of designing clothing. 

 

There are so many challenges with clothing: it must be able to be cleaned, be comfortable and wearable, able to get on and off a body. But the most important thing about clothing, it must make the wearer look good. 

I discovered weaving while attending art school in the 1970s. The loom drew me in using a language I already spoke: fabric. (I’ve been a dressmaker since I was ten.) To me, cloth from the loom was just another raw material with the possibility of becoming a garment. 

In the 1970’s, however, the type of yarn available for the average handweaver was coarse rug yarn or bulky Shetland wool, or at the other extreme, super fine cottons and linens for household goods. Handweaving as fashion was still in its infancy. 

 

Designing with Rectangles

My first handwoven garment, was indeed, the infamous bog jacket, based on a shape of garment made from rectangles, found preserved in a bog dating from the Bronze Age.  Nothing much has changed in the relationship between the rectangle and the female body since the Bronze Age. And by that I mean, there is no relationship…

In the early 1980’s yarn wholesalers like Silk City Fibers, began to move through the craft fair circuit, encouraging the handweaving community to try their yarns. The rayon chenille phenomenon took hold, and colorful, drapey fabrics, using rayons, silks, and luxury yarns like mohair helped to move handwoven clothing into the twenty-first century. 

Though still largely rectangular in form, garments from visionaries like Susan Neal with her brushed mohair coats...

 

...and Candiss Cole with her early silk Danish-Medallion lace dresses and ruanas, forever changed the future of handwoven clothing in the high-end craft markets.

 

(Note: Susan Neal and Candiss Cole are both still active artists. Susan will show her current body of work this year at the HGA's Convergence in Albuquerque and Candiss creates cutting-edge garments that she sells through craft markets and galleries.)

 

 

Designing with rectangles is where most weavers start, since there is little cutting and thus less fear of the cloth unraveling.  Also, garments made of rectangles require little sewing. Sadly these rectangular garments can leave the wearer looking shapeless and frumpy. Especially when compared with modern, spandex-reinforced, close-fitting garments.

 

So what’s a handweaver to do? (Besides weave with spandex...)

 

First, learn about your body. In a future column, I will talk about fitting commercial patterns, but no amount of expert fitting will change a garment shape that doesn’t inherently look good on you. 

Over time, your body changes: puberty, pregnancy, menopause, or an illness such as  cancer...our bodies are always adapting and reinventing themselves. And as your body changes, the designs and types of clothing that look best on you will change too.

And unfortunately, sometimes modern culture (with its emphasis on youth and unattainable standards of beauty) makes it hard to celebrate our bodies.

No matter what your age or shape, if you don’t like your body, you won’t like what you put on it. And all that work, spinning the wool, dyeing the yarn, and weaving it into a glorious piece of cloth, will not make you like your body any better. 

We only get one body in this lifetime. It is our responsibility to care for what we have, but also to understand that genetics, cultural influences, aging and medical issues are all out of our control.  We are what we are. And you have to make peace with that. 

As a breast cancer survivor, I’m missing a few body parts, but I’m happy each day that I can get up and weave, to create one more piece of clothing to decorate and celebrate that I am still alive. 

Each time my body goes through a major change, though, I need to become reacquainted with myself all over again.

How do you do this?  Go shopping…

 

This is the ultimate field trip; take a couple of guild members, grown daughters, your best friend, etc. and spend a day at an upscale mall, looking in department stores and trendy shops, trying on garments and colors that you may have never tried before. 

Look for special details: a shaped sleeve, a shorter or longer length, fitted or boxy, dress, Capri, coat, vest.

Try on something silly, try on something formal, take notes. (Occasionally I actually come across a piece of clothing that I really want in my closet, that makes me happy when I put it on, and can tie in with all my wonderful handwoven garments. And so I buy it of course).

This shopping trip is like going to a museum or gallery, looking for inspiration. You can’t get the same kind of knowledge looking through catalogues or shopping online, because the model wearing the garments doesn’t look like you and isn’t shaped like you. 

Notice what’s fresh, what color palettes are current. Just because you wore pink when you were young doesn’t mean it looks good on you now, and just because your mother told you you looked terrible in russet doesn’t mean that the paprika-colored vest from Coldwater Creek won’t make your face light up and sing. 

The point here is to get to know your body, and to play with and decorate it. Learn the colors and shapes that look good on your body, and then you'll be able to pick a successful design, worthy of your handwoven cloth.

I know my body pretty well. As it's changed over the last twenty years I've paid attention to fashion, to style, to color and I wasn’t afraid to jump in and start hacking away at my yardage. (And that will be another article, so sharpen those scissors and stay tuned...)  So as my body changed, so did my wardrobe of handwoven garments.

 

Custom Dress Forms & Draping

Another invaluable tool for learning about your body is a custom dress form. I can’t imagine creating garments without one. 

I use the Uniquely You, which is a muslin covered foam form. The muslin cover is altered to fit like a glove and then zipped onto the foam, compressing it to create a body double. 

They don’t work for everyone, but they are an inexpensive way to get a body that closely resembles you, and allows you to manipulate and drape a piece of fabric to see what works and what doesn’t.

(Editor's Note: Another custom dress form option is a DIY version involving duct tape and expanding foam.)

I never plan what I’m going to do with yardage before I weave it. (I’ll elaborate on that in another article) so I took this fabric, woven for a yardage exhibit at Convergence Tampa Bay 2008, and started to play with it on the form. And ended up with this… 

 

 

 

So, shop ‘till you drop, see what’s out there and how it looks on you, use the internet to explore costume collections, fashion blogs, runway collections, pick up fashion magazines, and look online at patterns. 

 

But definitely take a guild buddy or really good girlfriend shopping and try things on you never thought would look good on you. You never know. 

 

Have fun with this, and come back to the studio with a new vision and new appreciation of your body and suddenly that piece of handwoven yardage will jump off the table with options you never thought possible.