Book Review Part One

While being away from my shuttles and looms, I have had the pleasure of getting to read and devour some excellent weaving books. In the next few days I will give my humble opinion of some I have found interesting if not down right exciting. Some are mine and some I have been allowed to borrow. You may or may not have some of these books. The good thing about belonging to guilds is that most have a library of weaving books to borrow. I hope you have or can borrow some of these books.

Let me first talk about a 1985 swatch book by Virginia West. The very first sentence in the introduction truly touches my heart. "I like to think of a fabric as a painting, conceived through artistic vision, lively with depths of tonality and texture, the warp and weft the rush strokes across the surface, the yarns themselves the architectonic element that build the composition." As a young person, I always wanted to be an artist. But not being able to 'draw' put the skids to that idea. Weaving lets the artist in me come out.

This swatch book speaks to my creative side. What if I did this or how about.........

This swatch example is called "Scallop". She gives the drawn down along with fibers to use and sett. And of course a real sample to touch!