Donna's Ribbons
a woven story, part I
Hello friends,
The last time I wrote to you was over a year ago. I haven’t stopped creating. Most of that time was spent slowly shuttling threads back and forth to produce cloth, an (unexpectedly) large piece of handwoven, special cloth.
Hand weaving is a slow, laborious process. I have never known myself to be the most patient person, but I treasure the method and the metaphor of weaving - its capacity to hold memories.
At the end of 2021, my friend Verity unearthed a 60ish-year-old box of ribbons from her grandmother Donna’s wedding. They were about to get tossed and it was lovely of her to think of me.
The ribbons were mostly white, some with gold edges, some yellow, and some baby blue and pink. 1 I sat with these materials and dithered for a few months - flipping through my dictionary of handweaving patterns and auditioning fibers from my own collection to find a harmonious base (“warp”) for the weaving.
These were some of the photos of weavings that Verity liked and sent my way for inspiration —
It took me a long time to get started. Usually this is the space in a creative process that makes me the most anxious (that, and the very end when literal loose ends require tying). Twyla Tharp’s words come to mind —
“I walk into a large white room”
I dressed my loom (a vintage Dorothy table loom) with linen threads and intervals of pale pink + yellow silk tweed (from my own collection). I guided two hundred and fifty eight lengths of threads through the eyes of individual heddles and tamed them when they inevitably stuck to one another (inevitably for me - I am still new at this).
A v e r y s l o w p r o c e s s . . .
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A brief parenthesis here (though it felt anything but brief) — At the start of this project I was still finding my way back to myself after a cross-country move to Québec. A few months later, years of anticipatory grief turned to real time grief as we said the hardest goodbye to our beloved, freckle-nosed Bibi.
At my job, I was finishing up my time on the most challenging feature film of my career, working noon to 9pm. We moved, again (not too far this time). My parents moved, again (far).
Most days I could not motivate myself to do anything at all, though I did maintain a journal, a sketchbook, a collection of poems…
So I suppose some of my own stories and invisible interruptions were woven in with Donna’s ribbons too.
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The first part of my weaving was a “sampler”, experimenting with the marriage of ribbons and other fibers. As with most of my work, I made decisions as I went, weaving each row intuitively. The downside to doing so on a loom is that I only get to see a portion of the cloth at a time. Previously woven sections get rolled onto a wooden beam, patiently awaiting the completion of the rest before the reveal.
Here is a simple diagram of a loom
To be honest, I had not decided where the sampler ended and the main piece began until much later. The most obvious delineation was when I shifted my technique - a small manipulation that resulted in the main piece taking so much longer and being so much longer.
More on that and other details of this heirloom textile in my next post! : )
I wish I knew how exactly these ribbons were used in Donna’s wedding. I never thought to ask my friend until I finished writing this post. I will try to find out and share it in my next post if I do (with permission)