Gathering on Weaving

writing published in “Durable Discussions: essays from the Disarming Design Department    

In this essay I invite the reader to think along with me and different actors through different processes of making and being. What are the threads we pick up and pass on in our process of becoming? Weaving as a practice, form, and method structures this essay. Fabric is made through the interlocking of two sets of threads at right angles; the warp and the weft. A loom is needed: an apparatus or a frame that holds the warp under tension as long as the weaving proceeds. Into this structure, the weft threads are introduced by passing them over and under those of the warp. Once the weaving is complete and removed from the loom, the fabric holds together only by the interlocking of its threads and fibers.

“Weaving has long been a metaphor for the
creation of something other than cloth, whether
a story, a plot, or a world.”