Experimenting

I don't really think of myself as a weaver, not yet anyway. I get the basic concept and I can muddle my way through setting up an inkle loom or a frame loom but anything more complicated than that and I'm apt to throw up my hands in despair. So, naturally, I decided that the best use of my time prepping for upcoming shows in a month would be to play around with weaving and developing some kind of wearable prototype. Call it creative procrastination. I'm not even sure how you're supposed to finish woven objects and measuring may as well be some form of higher math the way I avoid it. Hence, when I took what I thought was going to be a cuff-type bracelet off of my daughter's conscripted bead loom, I ended up with this:

Too short for even a bubbie bracelet and what to do with the ends? I was feeling cranky with myself at this point because I had put a few days into weaving this...whatever it was. I played around with it and tried to decide if I could salvage it. Was it mini-fiber art?

A bookmark? Or maybe a dollhouse rug?

That's pretty much where it's stayed, exiled to my kids' room while I moved on to other forms of creative procrastination. Like mastering the fine art of hammering snaps together so I can get around the pesky step of sewing them on. Which was how I discovered what my actual new product is going to be. I had another experiment in weaving languishing on my inkle loom, a long not quite scarf of a thing that I thought I might squish together and apart into a couple of bracelets. Instead, I freed the entire thing from the loom and tucked in all the loose ends. When that resulted in a fairly polished looking loosely woven ribbon of fabric I took a chance on the hammer and the snaps. They went on with relative ease and I realized I had a belt, specifically a child-sized belt and a perfect sort of accessory for dress up clothes that tend to come several sizes too big or playsilks turned into togas. I've been letting my eldest daughter wear it to see how it holds up under the pressure of real day-to-day use. And I have no idea how many people are in the market for one of these, fabulous as I think they are. But I think that, in future, I'll be a little less cranky with myself for needing a day to just fiddle around with this idea and that. If I hadn't given myself some time to play who knows how long it would have taken me to come up with this?

“This post is part of the Exploration Party – a celebration of our inner explorers, led by Tara Swiger of Explore You. You can find other tales of adventure from artists, crafters, writers and biz smarties – and share your own story – right here.” - See more at: http://taraswiger.com/exploration-party-invite/#sthash.weGXzT8c.dpuf