After I ‘proofed’ the treadling, I started weaving. It’s not ‘perfect’, but…good enough.
The linen weft is stiff, and the relative humidity in the studio is ‘low’ (around 32% at time of writing) so the linen isn’t very pliable and doesn’t want to bend ‘nicely’ at the selvedge. The weave structure is a ‘fancy’ twill, therefore the selvedge has inconsistencies. None of which bothers me a lot.
A friend used to remind me that ‘perfect kills good’ when I would fuss about all the ‘imperfections’ in my cloth.
I don’t call them ‘mistakes’, or ‘faults’ when they are minor or will not very much affect the cloth in its function.
I leave it to the customer to decide if my tea towels are ‘good enough’.
Of course, I will not submit any of these textiles to a juried exhibit. For that I want the very best, the closest to ‘perfect’ I can manage. I want to live up to the expectations of the judge(s).
I was part of a jury for an exhibit where the textiles had been separated into categories and each category had a 1st, 2nd and 3rd ‘prize’.
There were 3 rugs in the rug category. One a fairly new weaver (one assumed), a 2nd a very well done small floor mat, and one huge shaft switched area rug. Hung in the large hall it tended to dominate the room, but when I went over to that section to look closely at the 3 rugs, I was…disappointed. Not with the design. The size was impressive. But it had been woven in a weft faced technique and…the warp threads were visible.
*IF* the weaver had wet finished the rug they might have been able to ‘fudge’ the finished results by somewhat fulling the wool and causing the wool to unite and cover the small gaps. But they had not. And I understood why not – it was about 6 by 8 feet. It would have been a huge challenge to full it, then dry it.
And yet. I could not give it 1st place.
The initial jurying had been done singly by the 3 jurors, and once we were each done our individual walk through, we got together, decided on the ‘place’ finishers together. Each of us had our ‘favourites’ and sometimes after discussing our personal rankings, one or two of us would adjust our ranking. And frankly all went very smoothly until we got to the rugs.
I hesitated to say anything until I heard what the other two had to say. One juror spoke up and said that they could not give the area rug first place. The second juror was astounded, extolled the beauty, the size, etc. When she was done the two looked at me and I said “I cannot give first place to a weft faced rug when the warp shows through.” The second weaver said “What?” I repeated my comment, walked over and pointed at the rug and said “I can see the warp quite clearly when the weave structure is supposed to be weft faced.” The first juror agreed with me.
Later I was button holed by a local weaver who hesitantly brought up the rug and I simply said the same thing after agreeing it was a huge project, but I could not give first place to a weft faced rug where I could see the warp.
“Oh.”
One of the things I had to come to grips with as a professional weaver was who my audience was. Generally my audience was not other weavers, it was the customer in my booth at the craft fair. I wanted to make functional textiles that would do the job they needed to do. I wanted to make them as attractive/pretty as I could manage.
But I got over being overly focused on ‘perfect’.
That does not mean I don’t care about other weaver’s opinions. Of course I do. I even submitted a piece of cloth to the HGA Convergence in Vancouver in 2002. The juror was Junichi Arai, well known for his innovations in textile construction. I was curious for any feedback he might provide.
What I did not expect was to be given 2nd place.
Later I went to look at the exhibit, which I had not yet seen (that conference was where I launched Magic in the Water – I was a tad busy) and while I stood in the hall where I could see my piece, two weavers standing in front of me were looking at my cloth and chatting, so I tuned it to hear what they were saying.
“I have NO idea why this piece won a prize! It looks like a bedsheet!”
I stifled a laugh and walked away. Did it bother me? No. I had the opinion of Junichi Arai. The disappointment of a random weaver was of no particular interest to me – other to remind myself to stay humble.
So the current tea towels? Not perfect. I reckon they are ‘good enough’.
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