Design Challenge

In my previous incarnation as a fabric weaver, my kimonos were somewhat graphic in that the pieces, once sewn together, made a graphic image of their own. The stripe color and placement could make or break the garment.



But now I am learning knotted pile. And, like any good weaver, I'm most concerned with the technical details: the sett, the yarn choices, the beat, the selvedges, the hand of the fabric. The design is secondary, at first, while I concentrate on the learning the process.

But viewers, most of whom are not weavers, don't care about that. The graphic image is what they see, and how they determine the success of piece. It can be simple:



or complex:



and I'm trying to find my *voice*, so to speak, in what I like as well.

I am learning an ancient and very visual textile medium, which has traditional images and graphic concepts associated with it. I have no intention of directly replicating the work from another culture. Instead, I can draw on my own world, and from cultures around the world that inspire me. So these days, my bedside reading is all about design: symmetry, tesselations, and sacred geometry. And my sketchbook follows me from house to studio, always ready for the next idea: