First a couple of questions.
Do you know anything about the Open College of the Arts BA Textiles degree? A friend has been researching textile courses for a while and we’ve both got excited about this one. I’ve looked through OCA website, plus found quite a few “learning log” blogs of current students – http://ocacreativeartsjourney.wordpress.com/ is a good place to start since she has links to other students in addition to her own work. I’d love to learn more about the course and peoples’ experiences with OCA, so please leave a comment.
The second question was left in a comment from Isa Vogle: “Please, I am wondering if you or anyone else knows how to put short z-spun singles on a sectional loom not using a tension box. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Isa” I don’t know the background of the various constraints Isa is facing (other equipment available, width of warp etc) and have never tried anything like this, but it sounds like a potential world of pain to me. I think you’d need a nice long leader to attach to, or maybe tie onto a ghost warp? Plus there could be challenges relating to the amount of twist/energy in the singles, avoiding tangles and/or the yarn simply falling apart. Any other ideas for Isa?
Finally a brief update on P2P2. I’ve started a sample using some of the ideas from here. I came up with a threading on 8 shafts which I thought would give me the plain weave background and some options in the positioning of the floats that allow movement. It was immediately obvious that I had no idea what I was doing and the threading was rubbish (well, the plain weave base worked)! Fortunately my good friend the pickup stick has helped enormously and I think I have the hang of it, with the bonus of lots of flexibility. The proof will be in the wet finishing.
Are the long horizontal skips intentional, Judy??
Hi Meg
Yes. The idea is that the supplementary warp will move during finishing, so it moves back and forth over the surface of the cloth. The base fabric is a merino/cashmere blend that I know will shrink and felt during finishing, which I hope will provide the stability. I’ve used floats of different lengths to find out when is too much.
My mother did a couple of the OCA textiles modules while she was working overseas and found them very well structured. The tutor was very good and provided a lot of support. The content was varied but seemed to focus on stitching and surface design – much less on constructed textiles though there was a wee bit of knitting involved. When it comes to specialising in your own area, therefore, I am not sure how feasible it would be to specialise in weaving (if that was what you wanted to do) as there might not be the teaching expertise – you’d need to check who the tutors are first. My mum’s experience was several years ago, before they had developed the higher levels of study.
Thanks Cally
I had wondered about including weaving so had already written to OCA about it. I got a response very quickly from Pat Moloney, the course leader:
“Weaving is explored in Textiles One but only on a frame. But if you are an accomplished weaver, you can use weaving throughout the courses. We do not give specific guidance on loom weaving in the course books because it would mean that students would have to invest in the equipment required.
“There is no feltmaking or papermaking but students do projects using these techniques, so no problems. It would be helpful to you to ask for a tutor with a weave specialism. That would be either Charlotte Grierson or myself. ”
Which seems reasonable.
I didn’t know Charlotte Grierson was now a tutor with OCA. I have one of her scarves!