This is one of two hand-woven pieces made with vintage cotton fabric remnants, saved across 30 years by cutting the first strip of fabric off from each bolt of thousands of commercial fabric prints that I bought and sold in my business — including fabrics that I designed. I pulled out the blues and then added some pale blue vintage hand-dyed indigo cotton strips to the mix. The weaving technique is the traditional Japanese sakiori rag weaving that I learned in Japan.
The two pieces stand independently, but they also work beautifully as a pair. Blues 2 (shown here) is woven with only one strip of a print about 42” long before changing fabrics, whereas Blues 1 uses repeated strips of the SAME fabric to form 2-5” wide sections. Blues 2 also has a feature section of hand-dyed dark blue ribbon that was finger-woven into the work AFTER removing it from the loom. A few indigo beads and a shell float in and out of the ribbon “waves.”
There are several options for displaying these near-twin weavings, whether as a pair or singly. They can be displayed flat on the wall or laid across a horizontal surface such as a table. They can be “bent” inventively or rolled into 3D curved shapes. They can also be worn as adornment. Tops and bottoms are finished with a short fringe from tying off the black warp. Each comes with a dowel for easy display. The sizes vary just slightly.
Blues I Have Known 2
Size: 62.5” Ht. x 13.5” W.
