Messiness and the Creative Process

I really love getting a peek into other people's studios and seeing how their work comes together. And I often find myself marveling at how neat and organized and precise their work areas and creative processes are.

Does anyone else have a completely messy, disorganized creative process? I'm kind of all over the place. I start at one point and wind up somewhere completely different most of the time, it seems. A case in point - this piece that I may or may not finish in time to try to enter into the HGA's Small Expression Exhibit (deadline approaching fast, yikes).

I started with permafrost photos, and some messy sketches of just general ideas, thinking, at first, that I'd weave yardage.

Most of my ideas didn't involve any sort of repeating motif, though, so I thought yardage probably wasn't the best end result, and switched to thinking about a smaller scale piece that would stand on it's own.

Next was to work out possible approaches for weaving, and I started with thinking I'd do some sort of doubleweave project, with an undulating twill in earth/water/methane colors with a white huck lace second layer that would float over, or possibly interact with, the undulating twill fabric.

But when I got the warp for the undulating twill onto the loom, I liked it too much to cover it up with the silk for the lace layer! So the silk is going on my little Harrisville 4-shaft loom, to be woven separately. I started sampling on my undulating twill, and then thought about maybe embroidering over it and skipping the second layer completely.

I explored some embroidery stitches - fun, but not what I was hoping for. So I kept weaving away on the undulating twill, thinking - oh, phooey, I'll just make a scarf, I guess.

But then I started playing with some longer samples that are already off the loom, thinking I could weave flexible wire into the fabric, to give it a 3D shape, possibly a spiral. I adore spirals, but ultimately rejected the idea as too overworked, though it might work nicely on a small piece of fabric (ideas for a project later on!). I kept manipulating the fabric, wanting it to speak for itself, and wound up here:

And now I feel like I'm getting somewhere. I've got to get going on weaving my white silk huck spot/lace fabric and then get up the guts to actually start cutting and stitching this fabric into what I'm thinking will be the final result.

But, talk about fits and starts! How do artists like Lotta Jansdotter (love her work) wind up with such gorgeous journals to share when talking about their process?

Testing out Weft

Yay, ready to weave!

Oh, no, actually, not quite yet, first I have to fix my tieup, which is my least favorite thing to do in this whole process. Sigh. A dobby loom would fix this problem (no crawling under the loom to tie your treadles up), but when I had one I never used it. It was a really lovely loom (a LeClerc Weavebird), a 16-shaft compudobby, but there was something about having to make up my mind about what I was going to weave before actually sitting down to do it that put me off. (And, yes, you absolutely can change your mind, you just make adjustments in your weaving software, but I found that a real barrier too.) Maybe I'll try another one some day, but, for now, I'll put up with crawling under the loom to tie up.

Coffee makes everything better. :) And after that, I can get on to another fun part, testing out weft yarns!