Shanel Wu

They/them. PhD student: smart textiles, weaving, computational craft, hardware hacking.

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3 June 2019

Shape Weaving Experiment 1

by Shanel

Woven random shape finished with knots

Using the tapestry loom (the toy one with the rotating heddle), wove a random shape with the intention of cutting the warp. I wove two shapes (only one got finished today) that were separated.

I had to slide the pieces apart on the warp before cutting it off the loom. While weaving, I didn’t leave enough space between the pieces. After cutting the warp and cutting in between the pieces, I saw that each piece needed at least 1 inch of warp sticking out.

This length allowed me to tie square knots using pairs of the cut warp ends. Using pairs (threes or fours should also work with finer warp yarn) to tie the knots means that each “stair step” of the woven shape should be at least 2 ends long.

Detail of woven random shape