It was a very good year!
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Robyn Spady's doubleweave
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2011 was my last year as editor of Handwoven. I’ll probably look at the 2011 issues of Handwoven many times in the years to come, since every issue is full of rich memories. An editor forms rewarding relationships with many people during the production of an issue. The most important one develops with the weavers who contribute the articles. (A look at my email record for the last issue, for example, shows seventy-seven emails in the folder of just one author!) Then there is the back and forth with everyone involved in production, from the photo stylist and photographer to the assistant editor to the tech editors to the page designer to the production chief to the final proofers. More emails! Numerous phone calls! Many, for example, that involve having Christina Garton, assistant editor, count the picks per inch, measure width and length, count the strands in a fringe, examine how seams were made, and more. Panic attacks occur: What if the photo didn’t show the closure? Yikes, the one error in the whole piece turned out to be in the middle of the photo! Oh, no, the yarn company discontinued the yarn!
Luckily, what I remember at the end of an issue is the good stuff. 2011 was full of good stuff. Two of the issue topics were my all time favorites: Blocks and lace. For the Blocks issue (November/December 2011), I looked for a two-block design, knowing that almost all our readers could choose a weave structure to produce it in. My favorite answer to this challenge is Robyn Spady’s doubleweave runner. Not only is it woven on four shafts, but changing the weft color can produce a completely different color in each layer. How cool is that!
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| Lynette Lynch's lace scarf |
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The Lace issue (May/June 2011) is as deep and meaty as a book on lace. It has the basics (Atwater-Bronson and huck) but also some especially innovative ways of creating lace, such as Danish medallion and Spanish lace in two projects that can be woven on a rigid-heddle loom, or burning out (dévoré) selected sections to create lacy, transparent backgrounds. Or how about Lynnette Lynch’s lace scarf that uses leno to stablize the edges of a spaced warp?
For the Design issue (March/April 2011), I called upon a team of long-time, regular Handwoven contributors—for the joy of seeing their work and for the pleasure of working with them once more on a magazine. Perhaps my favorite project in that issue is Tracy Kaestner’s "Happy Towels"—they really do make me smile every time I see their photo.
2011 began with an issue that touched my heart, however, in unexpected ways. When we first thought of the topic Cloth with Meaning we were thinking of fabrics that had cultural significance, such as ecclesiastical fabrics and ceremonial cloths from other cultures. This was only the springboard to a discovery of the deep significance handwoven cloth has in all of our lives as weavers. I love everything in that issue. Perhaps my special favorite is the way Connie Elliott turned a design in a Huichol carrying bag into a “lightning” towel. This issue reminds me that weavers speak a universal language that we take with us wherever we travel and whenever we talk to each other.
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Tracy Kaestner's Happy Towels |
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Connie Elliott's "Lightning" towels |