aloft on a swath of cloth

in which Sarah once again gets carried away

You know how sometimes you have a glimmer of an idea?

Not much—a mere spark—here and gone—then back—glinting and flitting —then back and more insistent—then visible—then gone again—

dismissed deliberately—

—because it’s ridiculous.

You pretend to forget about it.

Until one day you find yourself winding a warp, inadvertently lit.

Oh dear. And—yay!

Because why not?

Since when do you specialize in sensible projects?

Anyway, it’s only a few coffee filters, some dab ends of linen, and a little time.

It's also compelling. Still ridiculous of course, but worth a couple of tries anyway. And you really do like backstrap weaving¹.

Indeed, you could add a few stripes to a second swathe, use those dyed skeins of milkweed tow. They feels precious, of course they do, but what else were you going to do with them? And is the milkweed more precious than the carefully tended coffee filters?

More durable, perhaps, and more conventional, fabric-wise. But do you actually have a hierarchy of fibers? Hmph. A thing to contemplate. But not now. Now you are carried away by the idea of stripes and the pleasure of getting to handle both of your lovely boat shuttles in the same project.

Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing learned.

And what you learn, confusingly, is that the swaths of cloth are lovely. Confusingly, because in some ways it would have been easier to say, “well, that was interesting but—ick—oh well—cross it off the list and get back to something familiar.”

But you like them—the look, the feel, the drape—and it’s even hard to tell which stripes are milkweed and which paper, a thing you didn’t expect at all. They feel—how do they feel—a bit like strong linen cloth, with a delicate sheen and robust drape. The one with only coffee filter weft is as pleasant to handle as the one that is half milkweed.

Of course they do have linen warp, so that has to have a big influence. But the linen is pretty fine—less than 50% of the cloth by weight—even as it adds a lot of useful strength.

Gosh, would it be strong enough for—-

Kind of interesting to make a—

But no, that’d be even more ridiculous.

Except maybe?

You could you know. How many more yards would you need?

More, it turns out, than your hands are able to make.

In fact, you need to stop this particular line of work, right now.

Arghghghgh. So Frustrating! But you’ve done this before; you know full well that life and ideas don’t always match up.

Still..ugh.

With a sigh, you roll up the lengths of fabric and move on to other things. Perhaps the paper cloth will provide a fresh line of chat for the other swathes you’ve woven and stored and they’ll generate compelling ideas for the future.

For now though, into a bag. Ziiiip. Onto the self.

Time passes, as it does. Life unfolds. Things are made. Things are composted. Hands rest, or not, as the days demand.

Until a couple of years later you once again find yourself making a warp.

And then another.

Coffee filter weft is still crazy fragile to work with, of course it is.

And this has never ceased to be a ridiculous idea.

But you still find it utterly lovely.

And the truth is, you dearly want to make it into a shirt.

It’s what you’ve wanted to do from the start.

And what better time than now. Because for sure a gal needs a paper shirt to go with her super short haircut and new life, right?

At least—she needs to try.

So this is where you find me now—

—smack in the middle —

—weaving, measuring, stitching, cutting —

—pinning and basting—

—wondering, worrying, working and wondering some more.

The garment I imagine is roughly based on a well worn and now beloved linen shirt² I made four years ago. It can't of course be the same; yarn content aside, the swathes of cloth I'm now working with are all different sizes than in the original, and I don't have any idea how this fabric will behave when worn.

Also, have I woven enough fabric? And if so, will my shoulder idea work so the thing is wearable? I’m not worried about the body, but you know how the fit of a sleeve can make or break a person’s comfort. Perhaps a gusset in the armpits? More experiments.

And even if/when all these questions are answered, will I even want to wear it? Why turn it into something three-dimensional anyway? I could just sew the bits back together and call it a blanket, a shawl or a curtain. A paper blanket would be rather wonderful.

Except—light—air—a bowl³ for my body.

That is what I'm truly curious about.

And perhaps you’re curious too?

Alas, I have no answers for either of us.

At least not yet. Not only have I not yet done the work, but once again I’ve managed to stray into the Substack territory of “post too long for email.”

So we’ll just have to leave me here, aloft on my cloth, trusting that the words and the fabric and my hands and the astonishing coffee filters will somehow come together and I’ll know more when I am back next week.

Till then—you’ll know where I am, and perhaps you’ll keep me company and do something a little absurd yourself!

Because, why not?

1. I began weaving on a backstrap loom in 2016 —another one of these “I dunno why but this idea is going to bug me until I try it so easier to just start,” kinds of things. It then took over my life for quite some time and the following year I wrote Backstrap Dialogues, a comic both about how weird it felt to include open plain weave cloth in my practice (vs keeping it as a funny sideline), and a guide to the techniques I developed then and still use. There are also tons of backstrap posts on my blog, so feel free to explore if you’ve a mind to.

2. This shirt has turned out to be even more of a “go to garment” than the linsey-woolsey shirt for which it was supposed to be the prototype. As you can see from the blog post, my working methods have not changed much.

3. A few weeks back my desire to explore the world in my knitted bowls was the spark that had me warping a loom once again. While not a coracle, a shirt is still a light-filled three dimensional vessel of sorts, and somehow, just now, irresistible.