Heddle and Hook : March 2020

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Re-Imagined

Some of my scarves have been available at Red Sky Gallery in Lake Forest Park since December.
They announced a special show for March with the theme Ruth Bader Ginsburg Re-Imagined to celebrate Women in history month and her birthday on March 15th. The show runs all month but the opening reception was Sunday March 1st. Then on the 15th there will be her 87th birthday celebration.
You can go to the facebook page for Red Sky and see many of the wonderful artists' conceptions of her in fun activities.
People's choice will be announced on the 15th, so it's a good time to visit the gallery and vote for your favorite.

Since some of us with work at the gallery are not a painter, sculptor etc., so Laura, the gallery owner asked if we could make something also inspired for the show.

The first thing that came to mind was Justice Ginsburg's history of women's rights activism and the lace collars she wears.
I knew exactly that I wanted a black scarf with a panel of white lace along one edge.
With some ideas shared among my facebook weaving groups, several pattern drafts were proposed. I took some of those and reworked them with the aid of my favorite weaving book Strickler's 8 shaft patterns and the trial version of Fiberworks, a computer weaving-design program.
I made the warp with yarns I fortunately had on hand: a 5/2 Rayon in colorway "Midnight" a very deep navy black for the main part of the warp and an off white rayon and cotton seed yarn called Shahrazade alternating it with white Rayon slub for the lace panel.
I planned to use black 8/2 Tencel for the weft.

So off to the loom I went and carefully threaded my 10 dent reed intending for 20 ends per inch for the black and 18 for the thicker white. The reed seem to thread easily. The flat steel heddles were next and they posed a little issue with the thicker seeds in the Shahrazade. I could see I would have to be careful winding on as well as when advancing the warp during weaving. I had a successful winding on with even tension and got the warp tied on at the front ready to weave.

Writing this after the fact now, I have lost track of how many times I ended up making adjustments to my preliminary drafts on fiberworks as well as to the weaving.
But I started weaving only to find that first off, the Shahrazade was catching on the 10 dent reed and pulling back and forth with beating. Out came the 8 dent reed and resleyed it. Wove a few inches, much better for the thick lace, but found I did not like the sett. 20 epi was too loose for the black and 18 was way too loose for the lace yarns. Unwove and resleyed changing to 22 epi for the black and 24 for the lace.

Ah, finally, will this work? Weaving went smoothly, the thick seed lace yarns needed gentle guidance through the heddles, but the reed was now perfect. There was some evidence of difference in take up, but not too bad, so I just played with tension as needed.

I was reminded of comments I've read about Justice Ginsburg being a perfectionist and how her students and legal aids never presented a finished piece of work but always labeled them a draft because she would always have some correction to red letter in.
Therefore I will present my scarf as a final draft.
I cut off the first scarf, tied fringes, wet finished, pressed and found that I was a little disappointed with how the lace pattern showed less distinctly than I'd hoped.

No problem, back to the computer and redesign for the second scarf, two days of blurry computer eyes later, I've decided and now to rethread the heddles in the lace portion, retie on, and weave the second scarf. It will be what it will be.

There are subtle differences between the two, but overall I feel very accomplished for all I learned during this process.