A Warp Obsession

Whether I like it or not, life has a set-in-stone structure to it. We must sleep, eat, get dressed, keep our homes relatively clean, work, keep up the cars and yards, spend time with family and friends, care for one another and perhaps numerous other things depending on your particular needs and lifestyle. I am forever  finding great comfort in this structure or railing against it with all I’ve got.

The warp strings on a loom speak to me of this ongoing structure in my life. Once a loom is warped, be it a floor loom, rigid heddle loom or a small frame loom, it doesn’t change throughout the entirety of the weaving. With the exception of supplemental warps one might add in for effect, typically the warp threads stay put in whatever pattern they were set in the beginning. Such is life, both frustrating and beautiful.

I seem to be a bit obsessed with warps lately. Recent weavings on my Saori floor loom, a rigid heddle and now working tapestry on a smaller loom, I find myself enjoying the regularity and structure of those vertical lines around which to build something lovely. I even caught myself noticing the fences in and around our neighborhood and thinking I could weave something cool in and through the fence slats. Strange perhaps. But cool to think about.

The fascinating bit of all of this is that in weaving, the warp cannot stand alone. Without the weft, it would fall apart and become just string again. In painting you lay colors onto the surface of a piece of paper. This paper, or canvas, holds its structure no matter what you paint on it.  But in weaving, the “support” becomes something solid only once you add the colors and textures of the weft. Without the regular and methodical over-under work in and around these established structures, there would be no real substance, no beauty, nothing really to hold. It is the addition of wool, cotton, ribbon, wool locks, sari silks, etc, that holds the warp together in a cohesive work, whether it be for cloth or tapestry.

It is a painfully beautiful thing to watch a life unfold. Whether it’s my own life, or  that of loved ones, we are all weaving over and under, in and through established structures of life and living, beliefs and choices, and the inevitable hardships and suffering that come our way. Each of our woven lives are unique and hold a preciousness and beauty to them that we often cannot see at all.

In classic tapestry weaving, one often weaves with the backside facing. I weave with the front facing me so that I can better understand what to weave next and exactly where the yarns need to go. But in life, I only see the backside of the tapestry … it looks like a crazy mish mosh of loose ends.

One day I’ll see it from the front side. For now, I must trust that as I work alongside my Maker in the over-under of daily life, something beautiful is underway. And I can take comfort in the structure of the warp, even though their taut regularity may be maddening at times. They are guidelines, guard rails…a path through… so that I can continue to weave.

 

 

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