Pleated cloth is my favorite structure. The cloth is doublewoven, in this case the warp is black and white cotton, the weft cotton and linen. The water-like ripples produced in the three dimensional linen ridges give a rich movement to the cloth, a lovely surprise with every throw of the shuttle.
Furniture makers have approached me to weave upholstery for their custom chairs. It is a delicate marriage between the wood and cloth, one should not overpower the other. Here, in the case of Willi McArthur's chair, I dyed the silk to blend with both the nuances in the wood and the peach tones of the client's walls. This pattern required 40 threads to the inch.
Bill Walker Chairs - a desk and two chairs for two sets.
This silk seat cover is a double weave in which two layers are woven simultaneously, each layer has 1000 threads. The dark woven pattern in the cloth is intended to match the marketry in the desk top. The dark silk is threaded as the layer underneath and pulled up through the light silk threads in a pick up technique. I wove four chairs seats each taking a month to do.
Pecan table and four chairs - the cotton and linen upholstery was dyed then woven to emulate the blending of colors as in a watercolor.
A chair by Les Cizek, we chose
leather strips to match the tan oak.
This is a detail of an ikat silk scarf I wove. Ikat has been done by many cultures for centuries. It involves the use of resist bindings applied to the warp before dyeing (like-tie-dye) and then shifting the resulting dyed warp threads to form a pattern while dressing the loom. Very tedious!
