Weaving at Lisio

So finally I manage to put something on the blog!

The story so far - I ran away from home to Florence, Italy, for weaving. That's about it really. Oh and I'm having an amazing time! The course I'm doing is at Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio , where I studied first when I was 18. It's wonderful to be back.

Onto the weaving. I think I started out fairly slowly. I didn't have much time before I left to prepare designs and things - mainly I had ideas for techniques I wanted to experiment with. Techniques with more of a sculptural, engineered quality, embedded into the cloth surface.

So the first cloth is a fairly simple circle, with a semicircle overlayed and long weft floats. These floats have bothered my teachers a lot! I may leave them or cut them when it's finished though - I'll make that decision when it's off.

The first repeat - with a card punching mistake! This fabric is woven face down so this photo is take from underneath but will be the right side of the fabric.

Initial trial of design -

 Change colours - beautiful, beautiful blends of silks!

O la la! so many broken threads to fix!

This feels better! 2nd day of weaving. Found a lot of mistakes to fix, so today should be relatively trouble free!

I found a little bit of glow in the dark thread, so I wove a little bit with it - I'll only be able to see what it's like when I take it off. It's light until after 9pm here at the moment!

And this is the right side of the fabric, with the flash on, to show up those beautiful silk floats!

More later! I promise!

--melly