Of all the mediums I’ve ever used weaving just might be my favorite, but it also has the most barriers to entry. It requires so many tools that are expensive, bulky, and complicated to use. I’ve joked with my wife that I’ll feel like we’ve “made it” in life when I can afford to own my own floor loom and a piano (and, a home with enough space for those two things) But seeing as we’re millennials living in the hellscape of late stage capitalism and I work in the non-profit sector, I’m not buying my own loom any time soon!
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to learn to weave for years and never really had the opportunity until I moved to Charleston and met my local weaving guild, the Lucy Quarrier Weavers. By joining this guild I got access to a studio full of looms and supplies, in a charming old converted school house that we rent from the city. Even more importantly, I joined a community of wonderful experienced artists who are only too thrilled to show me the ropes.
One of my long term goals is to be able to weave tallit and I’m exceptionally lucky in that several of the other weavers in my guild are Jewish with tons of experience weaving beautiful tallit so I have some incredible mentors in that goal! But I’ll need to work my way up to making tallit; I wanted something a little simpler to start with and I wasn’t excited about making placemats or napkins or any of the other common “first projects” for weavers.
In general, my art is intimately tied up with my spirituality (I’m Jewish & Pagan, which requires some explanation, but that’ll have to be its own post at some point). So it seemed fitting that my first project should be an altar cloth for my home altar to my patron goddess, Athena.
One of the other weavers lent me a pattern book to pick a pattern and gave me a cone of yarn from her stash to use as my warp thread. I bought a cone in a pretty lavender for the weft. And then the leader of our guild walked me through warping the loom. That process, getting the warp onto the loom at the beginning of a project, is by far the most difficult part of weaving and I’ll definitely need help again for my next few projects. (Thanks Barb & Lynn for all your help so far!!)
The plan was to make 3 cloths at 8 inches wide by 30 inches long each, one for my altar, one for my wife Caitlin’s altar, and one more just because. Of course, I somehow did the math wrong on the measurements and it’s only about 6.5 inches wide (oops!), and the warp seems to just be never ending! I finished the initial two 30″ cloths and then instead decided to make a series of small squares each in different colors (mostly with scrap yarn) and slightly different designs. Eventually, I’m planning to create little travel altar kits as presents for various friends & chosen family scattered around the country, each with a square of this handwoven cloth.
I feel like there’s something really powerful about most of my dearest people, thousands of miles apart, all with ritual cloths woven from the same warp. Most of the intended recipients are also some combination of Jewish & Pagan, and I think they’ll appreciate the magic of the one continuous thread running through this project, connecting all of us together. Anyway, I’m almost done now, there’s just enough warp left for one or two more little squares. I’m excited to finally cut this project off the loom and see what it looks like!
- Featured Project: Altar Cloth
- Medium: weaving
- Pattern: from “The Handweaver’s Pattern Directory”, page ??
- Material:
- Warp — (need to look it up)
- Weft 1 — cotton blend, lavender
- Weft 2 — (look up)
- Other Weft — miscellaneous yarn from LQW scrap bin
- Started: May 2021, in progress as of March 2022
- Other relevant posts: Woven Connections
#workinprogress #weaving #Athena #Jewitch #theology
The Owl Weaver 
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