Fashion Weaving

Carrying on from my work with printed images and manipulating them. My next task was to experiment with weaving. Which i had a little experiment with earlier in this fashion pathway as with my first work in Paper manipulation I created a twisted weave piece as well as in my printed image work i also used overlapping strips to form simple weaves. However this time I'd be using different materials such as fabrics and cloth to create different weaved patterns!

First I made this very simple weave by just cutting into a piece of dark fabric and then weaving into the base with a lighter fabric. Alternating the first point of entry (top or bottom) to give the full weave an effect of depth and not just the same pattern on either side. This was nothing special but more an expertise in its self to let my mind and hands get used to the method.
Next up I got some card and string and created a backboard for a much larger weave. Cutting equal length notches into the card and then wrapping the string around to create a basic grid to be woven into.

Once the string was tight enough I went to work cutting strips of woollen fabrics and cloth of equal length. Once I had 3 of each type (One cream fabric, one white wool, one grey and one pattern dark fabric) I went to work weaving in the same method as before starting one under and one over, but this time also alternating the colour of fabric so it had a light/dark/light/dark pattern. Making sure to keep pulling the strip downwards to keep the weave tight I did this till completion as seen above. The next step would have been to cut the string on the back of the card and tie up the loose ends of fabric but I thought it would look best in my sketch book still on card to show how i created the piece so I left it intact. I really like the way this turned out with the alternating colour. If i was to try it again I'd want to use just patterned fabrics to try and create a design running down the piece in one way or another.

Lastly I created this shag rug sort of piece in which I cut very small pieces of fabrics of 3 different light colours and one dark and threaded them through this rubber mat stopper material [which as seen below] is just a square gauze. Its work very well for this piece as cut perfectly I took 2 piece of white fabric and alternated pulling them through the mat material and once all the way around once. Came in 1 notch and did the same but this time with the other white and black fabric. I did this 4 times till I finished / reached the centre.
I really like the way this came out even if it was very time consuming, I'd love to see what a full sized mat or rug would look like. This one was only about the size of both my hands. The closer i got to the middle the hard it was to thread the fabric through the holds since the lack of space and fabric being everywhere making ti harder to see. But after a lot of fiddling it was complete.
I feel this is a very Victorian sort of piece and using different coloured materials you could come up with a plethora of designs and patterns.