Saturday, January 26, 2013

Cloth of Kin design options


Cloth of Kin designed by Solstice Studios
Cloth of Kin is a family co-creation, a hand-woven cloth created by each member of a family picking one colour that will represent themselves in the cloth. Creating the Cloth of Kin has been a long labour of LOVE for me, starting with the birth of the idea over 2 years ago to selecting materials, developing the guidelines, weaving designs, getting online, and that's just the beginning! In time I believe Cloth of Kin will take many different forms as weavers around the world join this initiative and weave custom ordered Cloth of Kin in their own personal style. What I want to present in this post are the "Solstice Studios" warp and weft design options that I've developed for my Cloth of Kin custom orders.

Let me note that ALL the cloth on this post was created using the SAME 10 colours in 3 different warp designs. "Unity", "Fibonacci", and "Symphony".

Cloth of Kin Warp and Weft Designs:
Unity warp design

 "Unity" warp design - here are 10 different colours, selected by family members, spaced evenly across the width of the cloth.

The weft used on the top cloth was light grey alpaca/silk and on the bottom was dark grey alpaca/silk.

The dark grey weft interferes the LEAST with these bright warp colours, meaning that they stay truest to their unwoven colour.











Unity warp and Unity weft





"Unity" weft design - This weft design creates blocks of colour by taking the colours used in the warp and using them for weft. It's effect is very vibrant.






"Fibonacci" warp design - This design blends the colours slightly to create a rippling effect. The weft used for the cloth below was black alpaca/silk.

Fibonacci warp design

Fibonacci warp and Fibonacci weft design
"Fibonacci" weft design - This cloth was made from the same warp as the one above. The weft colours here alternate in the same pattern as the warp colours. This design is the closest to a traditional tartan. It takes a long time to weave so there is an extra charge for the "Fibonacci" weft design. Here I have added 0.5 m of "Fibonacci" weft to the 2 ends of a 5 m piece of cloth. The rest of the cloth is woven with grey cotton weft.






Symphony warp and Unity weft

"Symphony" warp design - This design uses the same colours as all the Cloths above but they are made into smaller stripes and arranged in a secret mathematical way :) It reminds me of Scandinavian fabric that I grew up with.

"Unity" weft design - The colours that were used in the warp are also used as weft colours woven in blocks.

Please note, all of the fabric in this post was made by Solstice Studios as an exclusive Cloth of Kin custom order and is not for sale.

2 comments:

  1. These look wonderful! And thanks for such a clear break down of the design options. For the last picture (Symphony warp and Unity weft) could you list the weft colors from left to right? Thanks!

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    1. Thank you! The weft colours from left to right are blue, yellow, green, honey, and pink.

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