'Threads that make me and threads that make her,
threads that tie us,
interwoven threads of life and connection and love.
My magnum opus - the most challenging thing I have ever woven.
My proof of concept - that something like this can be woven, that I can weave it.
First, the yarns. The tangible. The real.
Materials carry meaning.
An all-the-silks warp, for everything that is soft, everything that is changing, everything that is kind.
Linen weft, for everything that is strong, everything that is simple.
Peduncle tussah supplemental weft, for everything that is precious.
Second, the weave, the way to interweave thread and thought.
My best description of how the portrait was woven is “pattern changes inside one shed + non-traditional discontinuous brocade over pattern (overlay)”.
I could tell you how innovative this way to weave is, how new and exciting and unique, but I will not deceive you like that.
The techniques are nothing new. There is hardly ever something new under the sun. You have seen me weave like this, you have seen others use the same techniques.
I have just layered the known, the easy, over each other and pushed some of it a bit further.
The truth is, there could have been more - more techniques to layer, more colours, more detail. I hope to see how far this thread leads me in the future.
But I wanted this portrait to be deceptively simple at a first glance, but with detail and pattern and texture that draw you in, if you care to look closer.
I have been thinking a lot about control. How motherhood takes a lot of it away. How very controlling I am while weaving. How I could move on from that, relinquish some of my control and move towards a conversation with my loom.
Once I started weaving the portrait, I only saw a close-up, never the whole picture.
It is always like that. It has never been like that before.
No going back, no way to fix mistakes. It is impossible to unweave so many little overlays.
Line by line, day by day.
A surrender.
Blind trust, that it will work itself out.
I have not expected it to be so emotional, though.
