Janet – Page 5 – Handweaving by Janet Whittam

Why Does It Have To Be So Hard? could be an alternative title for this post.

For months I have been trying to learn how to create, manage and update my own website.

My original website was made for me in exchange for some handwoven products many many years ago. And then, for many years, a good friend, and very talented photographer and writer, Richard Hinchcliff took care of it for me. I appreciated his help, input and expertise so much. The site was all in code and was making any changes on it, totally beyond me. I loved that site! I was so proud of how it looked and how it presented my work and my abilities. But times change and it was time to change the format and enter the world where so many people access information by their phone with its teeny screen and its limitations. I also needed something I could update and add to when I wanted to.

I had started my business Facebook page, with help from my sister, Judy Hudson and daughter, Kaija Whittam, and was amazed how easy it was and how much response I had received. That made me a little confident that I could learn to manage a simple Web Site.

Try WordPress they told me. You can do it. I was totally unsure that was true. Looking at WordPress examples, I usually picked the ones (like Finland’s travel site) with content that appealed to me. I could not imagine my own site in any of the provided formats. At first I just wanted to move most of the old site over.

Next step was to realize it was Time To Change. Time to “Let Go”. And then, that I had to move beyond denial, insecurity, feelings of inadequacy, and just DO IT.

It has never been “fun” as I was told it would be. Partially, because of course, I am just not a fun person. It’s been a steep learning curve, with always a stubborn digital monkey wrench popping up in the most awkward places. “Plant a cabbage, get a cabbage, not a brussel sprout. That’s why I like gardening, you know what you’re about” to quote the song from the Fantastics. That’s why I do like gardening, very hands on, very direct results and problem solving. To do anything on a web site, I learned, you have to figure out what it will let you do, where and when. Why does not seem to enter into the equation. It doesn’t feel very creative for me, its like negotiating a day with an ornery 3 year old some how, limiting, frustrating, in oh so many ways. There are things I cannot change about the format that I am using, like the skimpy print size on the headings. Another example, I would like a different photo slice as a header on each page. Impossible. Why? Its often like wrestling with an uncooperative remote control. Etc. etc. But I have given in, abandoned a lot of my wish list, did what I could, and hope the finished project (it will never be complete) is a good reflection of my work and abilities (teacher, weaver, basket maker, etc.).

Many people have made this launch possible. More than feeling pride in my accomplishments, I am so very grateful to my helpers whom I think of as The Big Three. Judy Kavanagh who started me off, gave me very practical assistance and advice and was always a very sweet cheerleader. She was right behind me every step of the way. My sister Judy Hudson, who helped a lot in the early stages and kept trying to show me how easy it was. She has a lot of misguided faith in me. I still marvel at her idea we could do it on Skype, her on Vancouver Island, me in Alabama. Lastly, kudos to Katherine McCarron, currently my BFF who firmly got me on the right path, did a lot of the heavy lifting and has remained my go to helper by phone and email, whatever else she is trying to do in her life.

So now, I find the photo I want for this post, move it into the Website Images file, and then into my Media Library and then on to the blog post. Then move the photo to a centre of page alignment so that the pesky print does not snake around it. I am impressed that I can now do all these steps. I do feel proud! Then I press Update.

Finally the new website for Handweaving by Janet Whittam is almost ready to go. After settling what Scans that I need and when, it will be launched. (What Scans and Why, my fevered brain considers. ) To Be Continued.

Photo of me at the loom — When you forget something at home you have to improvise!

The time that we spend in Alabama in the winter is time free of a lot of the interruptions, commitments and obligations that are part of my Ontario life, so I like to have some thought-provoking projects to work on during this time frame.

This year I decided to work on some sewing and some weaving projects. I had 40 years of handwoven fabric scraps in purple tones. Last year I worked with the black ones and sewed them into practical and attractive clothes. Many people would have just discarded this cloth, but I know how hard I work weaving and how expensive are the yarns that I like to use, so even the leftover handwoven cloth has value to me.

For my weaving project, I wound a 35 meter warp of periwinkle blue cotton before I left home and packed various yarns that I have been saving to use with a warp like this one. I also packed some beloved but tattered clothing in this colour to use to finish off the warp as rag rugs.

Starting with the sewing project, because I had lent my loom to a student for the summer and she was unable to return it to me right away, I collected the larger pieces, moved through the sizes, separating them first into pieces with some kind of hue or tone relationship, and then began to fit the pieces together.

Right off the bat I realized I had not brought enough different coloured wool threads for the hand sewing. Oh the challenges of moving a weaving studio! I had to leave some sewing to do back at home, and this is after un-weaving some unwanted cloth, as much as I could, to get some threads to sew with.

I was doing a lot of handsewing because my sewing machine would not work. Oh no. Oh yes. Usually I like to zigzag all raw ends, because I do not want anything to unravel. I am sort of neurotic about this, even though I have scraps of handwoven cloth 40 years old, and most haven’t even started to unravel. I do lightly felt my pieces because I do not like the kind of weaving that someone can poke a finger through, I like fulled cloth. So, after the crushing disappointment of the sewing machine not working, I thought upon this problem for a few days. My decision was that I would sew pieces together on both the right and the wrong sides of the piece, over the joins, and how could anything fray after that treatment? And I prefer hand work to using a machine anyway.

So, OK, time to put these pieces together. I was fortunate in that some strong unknown person had hoisted an 8 or 10 ft. picnic table onto the back veranda of the cabin that I rent. It was so perfect for laying out the pieces and fixing them together. I do love to work in the Plein Aire. The colours are so clear, decisions seem easier.

I pinned the pieces together, made sure things were laying flat, did as little cutting as I could and started sewing. It Takes Forever. These are not just pick up items. But, its so much fun for me. I learned a lot. Again. I always use the salvages as much as possible, but I started making a “virtue out of necessity”. Accentuating some awkward joins, using them as design elements. Its tricky. I started making a bump of stitching in a large piece to balance off the bulkier seam areas The pieces with fringe I want to put on the edges. (I don’t want to waste anything after all. Other adjoining pieces I unravel in order to make fringes.) These are all practical construction details and then there are the design decisions!

A long time ago, I took a workshop from that expert weaver and seamstress, Mary Morrisson. She had us add pieces to a fusing cloth, and iron them on. Then the join areas were covered by ribbons, thus having a thinner piece, no overlapping. For my recent projects I overlapped and did get a thicker, bulkier cloth, but that is sort of the fashion now, I even read a piece about this look in Vanity Fair! The main thing I learned is to cut pieces until they are the right shape and look good. Previously, I ruthlessly tried to join pieces without modifying their shapes. That was crazy of course.

The smaller pieces of cloth I make into lavender sachets. I used to only use rectangles, until all the rectangles were used. Then I figured how to turn a triangle into a rectangular pouch. At first I tried to minimize the seam that entailed, diagonally across the front. Then, I went wild accentuating the join, even adding buttons and other embellishments,even fringing the fold over part. It feels very creative and fun and I hope the lighthearted mood of the pieces is apparent to my clients.

So, this whole process is the reason that when I saw Ann McElroy’s post on Facebook about using scraps to embellish felting, I felt exasperated. I could spend my whole life using up my scraps of yarn and cloth. I have tried to use them in felting, but much as I would like to use them this way, the finished pieces are not to my satisfaction. That is why I now bag them up and pass them on to Linda Tait to run through the drum carder or whatever else she does to create her textile magic. Marie Pierre Kroetsch also uses bits of yarn and many other things in her multimedia pieces. I am so impressed by her creativity too.

Waste not, want not is an appropriate maxim, and people seem to approach this situation with their own creative vision and skills. And that’s a good thing.

And as for my 35 meter warp? It all came together. I used pretty much all my yarn. I am coming home with teeny balls of left over yarn. I did feel rather proud of my math skills, figuring how much yarn to bring. I did have to buy some more cloth in Alabama to complete the rugs.