I had a lot of ideas brewing while waiting for my TC2 to arrive. One of them was thinking through how I would weave a book – washable, durable, maybe with pockets and zippers and… you get the idea. As I got to the end of my black and white cottolin warp I decided to give it a try. I guess I could have gone with platonic solids, numbers, fruits and vegetables, storybook scenes – all sketched on my iPad – but instead I went with the alphabet for heaven’s sake! Go big or go home I always say.
I wanted to do a 3 color weave with many different colors and needed some consistency in the layout so I decided to weave the book in rotated strips. Here’s the first sketch.
Ultimately I ended up with a different grid so that I could get the size and detail I wanted with colors that made sense for each letter.
My prototype was a little squishy in the folds so I stitched the pages down with 8 picks of interlacement change. Hopefully that will work… we will see when I put it together.
I put indexed images into an Indesign page layout to get some consistency and to manage font design changes, etc.
I exported the pages as individual images then took them to Photoshop to rotate them and reindex them. Then off to adacad.org
I made a bunch of seed drafts for the range of values I might need then set up each row as an individual adacad workspace. Here’s a screenshot of the setup that uses several seed drafts at the top, Individual image map for each page, a systems and materials to use the colors in one of the seed drafts, pattern across width to combine drafts for the selvedges, pages and space between pages. There are a couple of other drafts in there to make the interlaced dividers and separate layers that begin and end the page rows to make it possible to attach each stripe to the next one. In the view below I have selected the pattern across width operation so the viewer shows part of the resulting draft.
It is a long way from each image map draft to the seed drafts so I drag them to the top to work on them and then slide them back to their column when finished. I may have to break down and get a large monitor but for now (and for the last 30 years doing everything from 3D modeling to data analysis) I work on a laptop screen.
The weaving is done and now comes assembly. I think I will baste it together and try to use my sewing machine as all of that hand stitching is not my favorite. Things have a way of changing when you get into it though so I will post the results when I get it finished.
I will probably weave this again as some of the letters need improvements. I may make it as a baby blanket or with more or less colors. I’ll probably weave the other book ideas for geometry and numbers and the story framework. I have 15 more yards of cottolin so we’ll see.
Still loving this loom. Just FYI, D is for my doggie, the cutest little apprentice ever seen on this earth.
