Trio & Short Stack

Three finished pieces, off the loom yesterday, laundered and ready for whatever's next. Plus my growing short stack, below, of handwoven fabrics awaiting their respective fates. There are a few more hanging on the wall, as well.

I've been in a place of flagging confidence recently, unsure of myself as an artist. I always feel like I'm just a beginner...there are so many artists so far ahead of me, whose work I so admire, that I feel I'll always be behind the curve. A wannabe.

I am satisfied with the fabrics I'm weaving. And that's a good thing. But I'm overwhelmed with options and alternatives for turning said fabric into art cloth. I have to take it slower and I know it. Get good at one or two new techniques before moving on to others. But there's so much I want to try and everyday I wish I were doing more than I am doing, more than I obviously can do. Because I am doing what I can do already. I have such high expectations of myself. I always want myself to master things quickly. But reality, I suppose, is showing me that I need to take it at an assimilable pace and not get ahead of myself as much as I might want to. If I look back to where I was at the beginning of this year, or a year ago, I am in a very different place, much farther along artistically, I have a creative direction, I am capable of so much more, I have embraced so many new ideas and techniques. I tend to forget this on a day-to-day level.

I wound a warp today and plan to be weaving my next set of pieces by end of this week. The warp is dupioni silk, beautiful shiny white stuff, and I'm planning several small pieces about a yard each in length. I have a bunch of unusual silk yarns to use for weft, some quite a bit heavier than I normally use. I've been wanting to weave them up into heftier silk fabrics. So that's what I'll be doing.

It's interesting that I used to spend a lot of time spinning when I was thinking about things I wanted to weave, gearing up to weave, or avoiding weaving. Now I spend a lot of time weaving (or getting ready to) as I think about surface design things I want to do, gearing up for surface design, or avoiding surface design!