Woven in time and place

Woven in time and place is a 10–13 week learning sequence that explores the significance of place and making practices across the mediums of photography, collage, collagraphs and fibre weaving. The resource covers the evolution of textile and fibre works as representations of time and place. Students move from representational design artworks into abstraction as they produce a series of place inspired design artworks.

  • 5.1 – develops autonomy in selecting and applying visual design conventions and procedures to make visual design artworks
  • 5.2 – makes visual design artworks informed by their understanding of the function of and relationships between artist – artwork – world – audience
  • 5.3 – makes visual design artworks informed by an understanding of how the frames affect meaning
  • 5.4 – investigates and responds to the world as a source of ideas, concepts, and subject matter for visual design artworks
  • 5.5 – makes informed choices to develop and extend concepts and different meanings in their visual design artworks
  • 5.6 – selects appropriate procedures and techniques to make and refine visual design artworks
  • 5.7 – applies their understanding of aspects of practice to critically and historically interpret visual design artworks
  • 5.8 – uses their understanding of the function of and relationships between artist – artwork –world – audience in critical and historical interpretations of visual design artworks
  • 5.9 – uses the frames to make different interpretations of visual design artworks

Visual Design 7-10 Syllabus copyright NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) for and on behalf of the Crown in right of the State of New South Wales, 2004.

Learning sequence

The learning sequence is designed for Stage 5 Visual design students to explore the significance and representation of place through a range of artist practices including Crossing threads and Alexandra Kehayoglou. Students develop skills in digital imagery, printmaking and fibre weaving to create a series of works about a place of significance to them.

Visual resource

The learning sequence is supported by a visual resource guide with sample images of the suggested making activities and tutorial videos for both teachers and students to learn making techniques and processes. The visual resource could be placed on a digital platform for students to navigate easily and safely.

Critical and historical assessment task

In the critical and historical assessment task students analyse and interpret the work of Crossing threads through 3 short answer questions. This sample task includes marking guidelines.

Making assessment task

The making assessment task requires students to produce 3 design artworks in different mediums over the duration of the learning program and is supported by marking guidelines.

Tutorial videos

The tutorial videos may be used for teacher professional development and/or as a demonstration and support for students.

Digital imagery

Watch 'Distorted image tutorial' (8:57)

Distorted image tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Distorted image tutorial: Woven in time and place”. Screen transitions to Photoshop workspace.]

Instructor

Welcome to the Distorting Images Tutorial in Adobe Photoshop. Once we've opened Adobe Photoshop, you may have a screen similar to this, and you can select open. If you don't have that option here, you can go up to file and select open, and you're going to select one of the pictures you've taken of your chosen place that has a good range of vibrant colours that you can draw upon to make this creation. I'm going to select this image. There's some nice colours in the reflection on the water. Okay, once we've opened up the image, we need to make sure that we have the tools accessible that we need. So, if this toolbox isn't present on your workspace, you can go to window, and then select tools, and it will appear. We also need the layers box. If you don't have a layers box, it's typically sitting on the right hand side of the screen. You can go to window again and select layers. Once we have both of those things open, we can come down to our layers box, and select the icon that is a square with a little plus symbol in the middle. This is the create new layer symbol. When we click on it, a new blank layer will appear on top of our image. At the moment, it's completely blank or clear, so it makes no difference, but once we start working on it, we'll be able to see our distortions.

The next thing that we need to do is set up our paintbrush. So, in the toolbox, we're going to find the paintbrush icon. It could also look like these other icons, a pencil, for example. So, by right clicking on the icon, you'll be able to select a different mode for the tool. I'm going to stay with the brush tool. Up the top in the menu bar, I'm looking at the options and the settings for my brush. So firstly, we're picking the size, the diameter, and I'm going to work with this 152 pixel circle for this project. If you wanna play around with size, you can go up and you'll see a bigger circle when you click on or when you hover over your picture. And again, you can see it when it shrinks down smaller as well. So, I think I'll work at the 150. Okay, the hardness here is about the clarity around the edge of the circle. So, hardness of zero means that it's really soft to brush and it fades out completely. And hardness at 100% means that there's a hard edge, a very clear circle being painted. I'm going to work in the middle. I want it to slightly blend, so I'm going to stick at about 50%, and that's good.

Okay, now the opacity at 100%, which is what we want. And the flows at 100%, which is also what we want. Now, we're coming down to this colour palette. You'll likely to see a black, and white box down the bottom here, or it may have a colour in it. By clicking on the top box, the colour picker will appear. And if you hover your mouse over your image, it'll turn into a little dropper. So, for example, we're going, I'm think I'm going to drag my lines here, vertically, just to cover this bottom section. So, starting at the water reflection and moving downwards. So, I'm gonna start with this lighter colour, and I'm selecting a few different times just to see. Yep, mustard's good, okay. And once I get there, I'm checking I'm on the right layer. Layer one, not the background. We don't wanna paint on our picture, so make sure you click on layer one. And I'm going to start about here, and I'm going to hold the shift key so that my mouse moves exactly vertically, without a bend. There we go, and I've made my first mark. Then I'm coming back to the colour picker using my dropper to select the next colour that I can pick up across the water there. I'm gonna take this greeny colour, and I'm going to start slightly lower, and hold shift and click and drag, straight down. Now I want these darker, pick up these darker colours, and I'm going to start slightly in line with those, holding shift, dragging down. Again, on my colour picker, picking a little pixel of blue, holding shift. So, you're going to continue working all the way across your image, selecting the colours, okay, and painting them on. We make a mistake, we can press Control Z. Control Z, or Edit, Undo to undo our last step.

Okay, once you've stretched the colours or painted the colours on the section, you can see here with the eye tool, you can click it on and off. So, I've just turned the layer one off. You can see the images there behind hasn't been painted on. And now my layer is one, is back on. Now, I don't like this edge here, the way that it's created. So, to refine that, I'm going to use the eraser. So, you can click on the rubber tool, or razor tool, and I'm going to select a opacity of maybe 25%, I need it to be much bigger. Awesome, go about 200, and I'm gonna bring the hardness down about 15%. And I'm very carefully going to rub away across the edge of my paint, just to tidy it up, and to help it look like it's stretching from the reflection. So if you've got any ugly or uneven bits of lines, you can use the eraser to come in, and just tidy them up, clean them up. And once you are finished and you are happy with your image, you can select File, Save As. Now the saving options, a Photoshop file will only open in Photoshop, but you'll be able to access the layers. So, I'd recommend you save once as Photoshop file, and then once as a TIFF, which will be able to be shared by email and seen without programs like Photoshop. Okay, and that's your first distorted image.[End of transcript]

Watch 'Digital collage tutorial' (18:37)

Digital collage tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Digital collage tutorial: Woven in time and place”. Screen transitions to Photoshop workspace.]

Instructor

Welcome to the tutorial on how to make a digital collage. So here I have Adobe Photoshop open. This should be the first kind of screen that you see, and I'm going to click New file. It's okay if your screen doesn't look like this, and you don't have a new file option that looks like mine. You can also go up to File and then New. Okay, I'm going to create an A4 size document, so that it be the same as the other artworks that I'm creating throughout this unit, so I'm going to do everything to about the same A4 dimensions. If you don't have a preset like this, we can enter the information down the side. So in the width you can put 210 millimetres, in the height you can put 297. The resolution for a good quality image is around 300 pixels per inch. However, sometimes the images can be a bit smaller than that, especially if they've been taken on a mobile phone. So I'm going to lower my pixels to 180, which will still be a good resolution for printing, but reduces the risks of having some pixelation in my image. I'm going to have RGB colour, a white background, and I'm going to hit Create. So this will open up the workspace, and it provides me with my blank document. I wanna make sure that I have all the tools that I need first, so you'll need to go across the top of your window here, and click on Window, and make sure that your tools option is open, you should see all the tools like this. They may also be presented side by side like this, you can change that by clicking these little double arrows. We also need to make sure that down here we have the layers box open because we'll be using that. So if you can't see your layers box, you can head up to the top click Window again, and select Layers. So here we have our blank piece of paper.

Okay, now I need to open up the images I'd like to use in my collage. I'm going to open one at a time, so File, Open and I'm going to navigate to the folder where I have saved my images. Okay, so we're going to make a beach landscape collage. So I've got this one. Okay, so you can see across the top here we have our blank image on this tab, and then Image 1 and Image 2 across there. So what I'm going to do is start by clicking and dragging my photos down, so that they're in a floating box, and this one as well click and drag. Okay, then I am going to place this image onto my blank paper first, so making sure I'm on the Move tool, which is little cross with arrows pointing north, south, east, and west. I'm going to click on the image I want to bring over and drag it onto my blank paper, you'll

see how the cursor has changed, and let go to drop it on the paper. I've got quite large size file so it's bigger than the paper itself, which is great.

I'm gonna close that image once I have it. And the first thing I need to do is resize this picture, so I'm going to click on Edit, Transform, Scale. By selecting this way and dragging these in, it keeps everything in proportion. So you can see as I'm dragging in and out, the tops also changing so it's not distorting the picture, it is just changing the scale of the image. So I'm going to bring it right down until it fits across the page, pretty much. Okay, what I would like to use out of this image is this little section here, so I can just leave it like that, hit Enter. I'm going to lay my next image over the top and it's going to start here and cover up this bottom part. I'd like to use these rock pools across the picture. And I think I would like to use the shape of this area and do a sort of slightly diagonal line across for the next section. So again, I'm gonna make sure I'm on the move tool, select the image I want to bring over and drag it onto my page. Once it's on my page, I can close this. The reason that I closed them once they're on is because it's a very large program to run, and it can help the computer by not having too many things open. Again, this picture is pretty big, so we need to resize it by clicking on Edit, Transform, Scale. And I'm gonna grab the corner and drag it down. Now, I've dragged it a bit too small, but that's okay, I can drag it out again. And what I really would like to do, is come down to my layers box and click on opacity, and turn the opacity down just to so I can sort of see through it and get an idea of where I'm placing it on top of, the previous picture. So I'm actually going to turn this an angle, I can do that by hitting Enter to accept those changes. And then click Edit, Transform, Rotate. And when I come to the corner, I get this corner arrow that lets me turn my image. Now, I'm gonna turn it a little more, and I'm going to click Edit, Transform, Scale again and pull it out this way. Okay, and then I hit Enter.

Okay, so at the moment it's looking pretty messy, but bear with me. Down in our layers box we can see this is Layer 2, and this is Layer 1. And I'm going to turn the opacity on Layer 2 back up, so making sure I'm on Layer 2, turn the opacity back to a 100. And I'm going to add a mask, which is this option down here, it's a rectangle with a circle cut out of the middle and it adds a mask layer just there. Now, this is really fantastic because it's an easy way for us to add our layers. I'm going to zoom in, so using the Zoom tool down the bottom, the magnifying glass. And up here you can check that it's on Zoom In, if you wanna zoom out you can change it to the minus or zoom out button. So I'm going to zoom in a little to the area that I'll be working in, and I'm going to then select the eraser. Now, my circle is too large, I need to turn it down. Okay, that's a good size. So we need to flip to white. White allows us to rub out the pixels, so I'm going to start by rubbing out the top of the page because I wanna keep the underneath image intact. Now, I've got a soft edge here, you can see the hardness is at zero and I'm getting this lovely blended look. If you would like a hard edge, you can turn it up by any number. 100% will give you a clean cut. See the difference between this clean cut and the smooth blending? I'm gonna stick with the blending for now, putting my hardness down to zero 'cause it helps refine my image and look like a smooth transition. So I'm going to pull this down, I think I'll come in around that one and maybe across here. It's okay if you rub out too many pixels because the masking layer allows us to put them back. So I'm just going to do a good rub out of the areas I don't wanna keep at the moment. Now, do I wanna keep all of that, or do I wanna

come down to here? I think I'd like to get rid of this section. And now I've got the rocks from the image underneath starting to come through. I feel like if I take that away, it's quite a nice blend, isn't it? Okay, I'm going to zoom in even further, plus, okay. And I'm going to go to my eraser and turn the hardness up. I'm just going to tidy up my work to try and help.

Okay now, I'm not tidying it all the way across just in this area because on that side I do like the way that it fades. See how that rock fades into the water? I think that's great, I'd also like to soften it, and help this part blend a little more. Okay, File, Open, and let's select something else. I think we need some more water. So I might do this one with the water and the sand. Drag and drop, drag onto my picture and then close this file. I need to resize it. Okay, and I want it to sit roughly about here, Enter. Okay, again I'm gonna add a masking layer, and select the eraser. And I'm going to erase the areas that I don't want to keep, making sure I do a really thorough job. I love this shape here. I would like to keep that if possible, and I'm gonna follow the lines of the light in the water. And erase all of that so I can see underneath it. Now, we're just gonna take a bit more back and see what's under here. Mm, I'm not especially attached to this part of the picture, so I'd like to put the pixels back. I can do that by flipping my colour patches over here with this little arrow so that the black's on top. And by having black on top, it's telling the computer you'd like to put those pixels back where they were. So I'm going to put these sand pixels back up to about here, and I'm gonna leave that and come down across. I might remove a few more on this side, just carefully sweeping across there, very nice. I almost feel like I'd like to cover this part up, so I'll go back to black and cover this here with the sand and water pattern.

All right, now, I've used that soft... I've taken the hardness all the way to zero, so it's got a soft blend on the edge which you're welcome to do, or you can turn the hardness up and have a nice hard, clear definitions between the pictures, it's totally up to you. Then File, Open, and open the same picture again with the rock. I need to turn the picture around, so Image, Rotate, image, oh sorry, Image Rotation, and then 180 degrees. Let's try this clockwise, there we go, upside down with the rock on the right hand side. Now, I'm going to click on my move tool, click and drag. File, sorry, Edit, Transform, Free Transform, drag down to size. Okay, and once I'm happy I hit Enter, and then I'm going to close this image. Yes, oh, sorry, Cancel, No, Close, No. Okay, put a mask layer on, grab my eraser. I'm gonna to start by erasing some of the area I've already worked on. Just moving in little circles to make sure I do erase all of the pixels, and I don't leave any sort of dust or pixels left behind. Just feeling out the shape around this picture. Kind of like this idea of it blending down around the rock. And then leave the land, and the rock, and the cloud. It's a bit trippy. And then I'm going to take out, I'm gonna make it bigger so it's quicker. I'm gonna take out this bottom part. Now, can you see some of those blue pixels have been left?

So, we want to just make sure we erase properly. Okay, File, Open. I think I've got some border crashing on the shore. There it is. I then can click File, Save As. So if you're saving at the end of a lesson and you're still working on your image, it's important to save your work as a Photoshop file because this will keep all of the layers intact, and allow you to keep editing all of those layers. Once you are happy with the finished product, so I'm gonna put here, Beach landscape collage, and I'm going to save it into my folder as a

Photoshop file. When you are ready to send or submit this image to your teacher, it needs to be a JPEG. So we say File, Save As, mine gives me the option to save on my computer, save wherever you are instructed to. And I can select TIFF and then, or TIFF or a JPEG. If I save a copy, I can select a JPEG. So in my folder, and it's a Beach landscape saved. Excellent, and there you are, there is your digital collage.

So just a reminder, we've got our move tool to move our images around. We have Edit, Transform or Free Transform to move the pictures and resize them, and turn them on different angles. We have our masking layers, which look like this and you get them by selecting the rectangle with the little circle. You can erase pixels by having white on top and using the eraser tool. And you can put pixels back by flipping to black and using the eraser tool. You can change the settings of the eraser up in your toolbar up here. I hope that's very helpful.

[End of transcript]

Watch 'Distorted image Life skills tutorial' (6:21)

Distorted image Life Skills tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Digital collage tutorial: Woven in time and place”. Screen transitions to Photoshop workspace.]

Instructor

Welcome to Adobe Photoshop. Let's distort an image of a landscape. Once you have opened Adobe Photoshop, you'll see a screen similar to this, which gives you a new file, or open, option. If you don't see this, that's okay. You can click up on file, and then open. Now you need to navigate to wherever you've saved your images of your chosen place. I'll just change the view to extra-large icons, so that I can find the picture I'm looking for. This is it. Okay. Now we need to make sure that we have the tools that we need available to us. So, we need to go up to window, and make sure that the tools option is ticked. Otherwise, you need to click on it so that the tools appear. So, you may have no tools at the moment. Down the left-hand side, we click window and go down to tools. And here is our toolbox. Okay. We need to find the tool that looks just like this, the smudge tool. Sometimes it's hidden behind other default settings. So, you might need to right click. If you see the blur tool, or the sharpen tool, so the icons look like a little droplet or a triangle, try right clicking on those icons, and a little menu like this should appear. And then you can click on smudge tool. Now at the moment, my smudge brush is way too big. So, I'm going to come up to this top menu. You can see I'm on the smudge tool, and next door it is the size of pixels, or the size of the smudge that I can create. And where it says size here, it's too big. I'm going to drag it down, and I'm going to look at about a hundred, 105 pixels. And when I hover over my picture, it shows me the size of the circle. This is a good size.

Okay. The hardness is currently at 100%, and I'm going to bring it down to 50%. Okay, so make sure that your settings match mine. Once you've done that, you can click on this arrow, and it'll pull the menu back up. So now we have our smudge tool settings, and our image in the middle. I'm going to smudge across the right-hand side of my image. I'm going to pick a starting point, and I'm going to click and drag, sorry, I'm gonna hold shift, click, and drag to the right and that'll help my cursor move in a straight line. So, I'm holding shift, click, and drag. Whoops, dragged me right across the page. If this happens, you can use the little slide bar down at the bottom, to slide your image back into focus, hold shift, and drag, drag. Now you can see these funny shapes appearing, as the image starts to distort. We want to keep dragging over the top, until they become long lines of colour. Can

we see the difference there? Now we have these long lines of colour influenced by the image, as we stretch and smudge the pixels. So, we're going to keep clicking and dragging over the same spot, until we have mice long, vertical, or horizontal lines, across our image. So, click and drag, click and drag. There's still a bit of shape happening in these spaces, so I'm gonna click and drag over those again. And you can see the pixels stretching out. It's almost like smoothing paint. There we go.

Okay, now we have a nice series of horizontal lines, using our smudge tool. When we're happy with how our image looks, we can save it. If we've made a mistake, and we need to go back, we can click window, history. So, window, history, and this box will appear. I'm gonna just click and drag mine to be a bit bigger. Now, it shows you how many times I clicked the smudge tool. But let's say I get to the end, and I'm just not happy. I can scroll all the way up to where I've opened my image, and it'll take me back, and I can start working on it again. Or I might think, oh no, it was only a few smudge tool tricks ago. It was just when I got to the sky. So, I think I'm gonna come back to here, and then I can keep reworking this little part of the image, until I'm happy, where I am a nice dark streak across there. So, once you're happy, it's time to save your image. So, you click file, save as, now my computer gives me an option to save it on the cloud, or on the computer. I've selected on the computer. And then you pick the place on your computer, and you can call it by your name. This is a JPEG file. That's okay to save it as an image, and then click save, and okay. And now I've saved this picture, or this design, this distorted landscape, ready for my teacher.

[End of transcript]

Weaving

Watch 'Setting up a loom tutorial' (03:40)

Setting up a loom tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “How to set up a loom weaving tutorial: Woven in time and place”. Screen shows hands holding a wooden-framed loom; scissors and a spool of white string lay on the bench.]

Instructor

Here I have a 30 by 40 centimetre frame that had a canvas on it. I've removed the canvas, and I've added small nails at one-centimetre distances apart across the top and the bottom of my loom. I also have some cotton thread. This is a non-stretch cotton thread, and it's very strong so that it will hold. This will become the warp for my weaving, and I have a pair of scissors. I'm leaving a tail that's about 10 to 15 centimetres long, which will be woven into the back of your weaving at the end to tidy it up. So, I'm starting with a loop, and then I'm going to place it on the bottom left nail and pull tightly. You can do a double knot if you like. I think sometimes that's good for holding the tension. So now I have a nice tight knot, and I have my tail here which I'll just leave off to the side. Now the trick for getting a nice, tight warp is keeping the tension on your cotton thread and making sure you're using something that doesn't stretch. So, we are going to go over 2. So, one, 2 nails, and this will keep my warp about one centimetre apart. Now I'm really pulling quite tightly as I go around each bend to ensure that I have a nice tight warp across my loom. You can see the threads just rolling out. You can measure out your cotton or yarn before you start and cut it off to set up your loom. I'm just leaving mine on the roll. I'm using my finger at the ends just to hold it right at the bottom of the nails right up against the timber of the frame. You can use the same process if you have a cardboard frame. If you've got little slits cut about one centimetre apart, you're going to follow the same process of going up and around each little slit to create your warp. Nearly done. Now, when we get to the end, if you have an uneven number of nails, you can just stop where your line is straight. What we are really Looking for is a warp that is parallel to the edge of our frame. So, we want it to stay mostly straight. If your warp starts to have an angle like this, something's not right, and we need to undo it and go back and fix it. So here we have a nice straight warp. I'm going to cut off, now I've lost the tension there, so I need to just tighten up the ends again. I'm gonna wrap it twice around this nail just to hold it in place. And then I'm going to tie a knot by going up and around this piece of cord. And there we have it. And we're all set up ready for weaving.

[End of transcript]

Watch 'Plain or tabby stitch tutorial' (04:06)

Plain or tabby stitch tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Weaving techniques tutorial: Woven in time and place – Plain or tabby weaving stitch”. Screen shows a wooden-framed loom with 24 vertical strings and several rows of woven pink wool.]

Instructor

Now we're going to learn a plain weaving technique, a simple over and under. I'm going to do two rows. Actually, I'll do 4. So, I'm going to measure out my wool, leaving a little bit of a tail. So, one, 2, 3, 4, and a tail and little snip. Now, again, we can start with just our tail hanging off the edge and we are going to go, so we might come back this way to start with, over, under, over, under, over, under, all the way along. Okay. So now we can see we've gone over and under all the way along. If you notice a mistake and you've accidentally gone over 2 or under 2, that's okay, just undo it, bring it back to the space where you've made a mistake, and then correct your error and reweave that row. There we go. Now, I wanna pull this through so I've got enough of a tail for the end, and then I wanna shimmy it down just nice and easily as close to my previous row as possible and then I can use my other end to go back.

Now, I'll show you a little trick to make it faster one way. So, I'm going to put my little extra bit of paper or card. The opposite is under, so under, over every second. Is we can use our thread and just pass it underneath all the strings that we can see. So just as I'm coming around the bend here, I don't want my warp to distort so I'm going to pull it back a little while I'm getting my line of thread through, just making sure the spaces remain even, and then tuck them down nice and firmly. We wanna cover those lines. We don't want them up like this where you can see parts of the warp. We want to push them all the way down together to cover the entire warp. If you've got diagonal lines in your design, you might not do the entire row. You might do part of a row. For example, I've come to about halfway here, just under halfway, and I can at this point, oh, I can at this point then turn around and go back.

So, I'm gonna go under this one and fill up this side to start creating my diagonal lines. You can do that a couple of times if you've got quite a steep line, or if you've got just a subtle line, you might do it once or twice. It's really depending on your design. Now, I've got a tail there left over. It's a bit too long, so I'm going to trim it off the 10-to-15-centimetre mark. And there we go. We have our plain weaving stitch.

[End of transcript]

Watch 'Interlocking tutorial' (01:51)

Interlocking tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Weaving techniques tutorial: Woven in time and place - Interlocking”. Screen shows a wooden-framed loom with 24 vertical strings and several rows of woven pink and green wool.]

Instructor

Okay, your design may have some elements where you have lines and textures that don't go all the way across your loom, and in that case, we need to create an interlocking stitch, so that they seamlessly blend together when we finish each row. So, I'm going to do the plain weave or the tabby stitch across this first line just to show you how we would do an interlock. So, coming from this side, we finished this top row under, so I'm gonna go over first. Over, under, over, under. Now, my last row finished here, if I just push it up a bit for you to see, so I've got this and this. Now, if I turn around on this row here and go back, you're going to get a gap in your weaving and you'll be able to see the wall or a space behind. So, what we want to do is the one extra, and I've pushed the row up, I'm going to weave over, and then come back under. Now, push this on top, and now I've closed that gap and I've interlocked my lines and my different threads. So, I'm going to just tuck that little tail in the back there to tidy up later, and that's how we do interlocking.

[End of transcript]

Watch 'Knot stitch tutorial' (02:59)

Knot stitch tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Weaving techniques tutorial: Woven in time and place – Knot stitch”. Screen shows a wooden-framed loom with 24 vertical strings and several rows of woven pink, green and white wool.]

Instructor

Okay, the next weaving technique looks like a series of knots stacked on top of each other. So, I finished this last row over, so I'm going to come under the first string, or first line of warp, all the way around, and then under 2 so that it curls around like a knot. Now I'm going to go over this next string, over, and under 2, leaving my next knot. Now I'm not pulling super tight. I'm just pulling enough that they sit nice and neatly. But if I pull too tight, I'm gonna get something like this. So, it's important to just tidy up the pattern as you go rather than waiting till the end, because it's a lot harder at the end. So, we're going to go over that one and under 2. Pull through and slide your knot down. Under that one and through 2. Over and under 2 so that the knots form on the top. So, we're always coming from behind and looping over the front of the warp to create these knots. Now if I head back the other way... So, I'll do a, my last one here, I'm going to go over again. And then I'm going to work back the other way. So over this and under 2. Over this, under 2. Over one, over... Sorry, yeah, over one, under 2. And you can build up this pattern if you like with that technique. Leave my tail.

[End of transcript]

Watch 'Rya loop stitch tutorial' (03:05)

Rya loop stitch tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Weaving techniques tutorial: Woven in time and place – Rya loop stitch”. Screen shows a wooden-framed loom with 24 vertical strings and several rows of woven pink, green, white, pink and green wool.]

Instructor

Okay, if you would like more of a bubble than this and you want it to hang down a bit longer, we're going to use the rya knot technique. But instead of cutting our thread, we're going to use one long piece and continue the pattern. So, the first thing that you do, just like the rya, we'll start at this end because I've got my tail over here. So, leaving my tail, I'm going to create a bit of a U-shape, head underneath those 2 strings and then pinch my two sides that have come through down. So now I've created these long loops. You can adjust the length of your loop by pulling the thread and shortening them or pulling more lines through to make them longer loops. They don't have to be uniform, so you can have a short loop and a long loop. You can have a variety. It depends on what effect you're trying to achieve. So, I'm going to leave mine about this long and then I'm going to go around the next one so I leave a loop like this over the next 2, come under from each side, pinch the 2 together, and slide down to secure the knot. Have a little arch underneath either side. Come up through the middle, pinch them together and slide them down. Arch, come up inside each line, pinch them together, slide them down. Arch, underneath and come up through the middle. Pinch them together, slide them down. Arch. Now you can see here my warp is a bit too tight there, so I've just pushed my finger with some pressure so that I can loosen it, loosen the knot, come up through the middle, pinch and pull. And there we have our loops and you can continue to build them up. Each row might have different lengths depending on the texture that you're trying to achieve. So that's our rya knot with little loops.

[End of transcript]

Watch 'Start your weaving tutorial' (06:40)

Start your weaving tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “How to start a weaving tutorial: Woven in time and place”. Screen shows hands holding a wooden-framed loom with 24 vertical strings.]

Instructor

Okay, now that our loom is set up with our warp, we need to create a space at the bottom to protect the thread or the warp at the bottom from having a weaving sitting on it and that way we'll be able to get our weaving off the loom at the end of the process. You can use paper or card. I'm just going to use a scrap of paper so I'm just gonna move my loom aside. Here's my A4 paper scrap. Now this frame is 30 by 40 centimetres so I'm going to fold my paper this way so that it sits across my entire warp. So, I'm going to start by folding my paper in half just matching up those two edges and then in half again. So, this is about 5 centimetres in width and then I'm going to weave it through my warp over and under, so I've gone under the first string, over the second, under the third, over the fourth, under the fifth, and so on. I'm just pushing a little bit of pressure on my string to help guide my folded paper through and I want to go all the way across to the end of my loom. Okay, so I have gone under over all the way across and I'm going to slide this all the way down to the bottom of my warp nice and tight. These are the threads that we'll use to tie off our weaving at the end.

Okay, so to get started for our weaving, we need to do 8 to 10 rows of a plain weave or a plain stitch across the bottom of our loom because we'll be working from the bottom up. I'm going to use this cotton, the same cotton that I used when I started to make my warp just to create my 8 rows to hold this nice and tightly. I'm going to measure the thread roughly, so with a bit of a tail left at the end, one, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and a bit of a tail. Okay, so moving this to the side, you don't to tie a knot or tie it onto your warp. You can just leave a tail and we'll tuck it in at the end. So, I'm going to start from this end and I'm going to do the opposite of my piece of card or paper from the bottom. So, I went underneath my first string here, so this time I'm going over the top and under. So, I'm gonna go under every second string. You can use a large, blunt needle. There's lots of plastic options. You could attach your string to a skewer to help thread it through. Personally, I like to do it with my hands and I'll show you a cheats trick on the way back. Okay, so once I've got my thread all the way through, actually I'm gonna leave it with its tail there. This line of weaving

needs to come all the way down to the card. So, moving across, once you've done the whole row, we need to just butt it up right against the card there.

Now we don't need to make it super tight because otherwise it'll pull your warp in and you'll get some variation along the edge unless that's what you want to create. If you want your weaving to stay square or straight, you need to just be mindful when you're turning around and coming back the other way, which is what we're about to do now. So, the trick is to get your thread back through, now we're going the opposite way. We're now going under again and I'm going to bring my thread as close to the warp as I can and then hold both in place with my finger just while I do the first couple of stitches so under every second 4. Okay and then carefully pull it through. You want to make sure you're working in a nice clean and tidy space to make sure that your thread doesn't get caught on anything and now I've maintained a straight line. If I pull this tight, it's going to bring my warp over, so it's important to make sure that when you come around each corner, you make sure that you've maintained the space in between the warp threads. I'm gonna just finish this row. It can also happen when you're pulling the rest of your thread through, you can close the gap, so it's important when you finish the line just to make sure that you come back and just pull the tension back the other way.

Okay, 6 more to go. I have enough thread here that I could do a couple of extra rows on top of the eight that I measured, so I'm just using it up. I don't want it to waste it and I have the space and it only adds to the stability of my work later. Okay, when we finish, you can just leave the tail off the side or hanging out through the back. We'll weave those in at the end. Ready to start our design.

[End of transcript]

Watch 'Rya knot fringe tutorial' (05:34)

Rya knot fringe tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Weaving techniques tutorial: Woven in time and place – Create a fringe with rya knots”. Screen shows a wooden-framed loom with 24 vertical strings. A strip of paper at the bottom of the loom is woven underneath every second vertical thread. Several rows of white string are woven above the paper.]

Instructor

Now that I've started my weave and I have added on my 8 to 10 rows of plain weave at the bottom just to secure the piece as a whole, I'm going to add some fringe at the bottom of my weave. And this is the perfect time to put it in if you want it to cover the bottom part of your weaving when you're finished. So, we're going to do a rya knot and I'm going to measure out roughly how long I want my fringe to be. Now remember, this is actually the bottom of the weaving. So, from here, I want my fringe to be about that long and I need double that length, so I'm going to pre-prepare a bunch of yarn ready to hang onto my weaving. So, keeping this as my guide, gonna cut them all roughly the same length, regular scissors work. When you're trimming your fringe towards the end, it is a good idea to try and use some fabric scissors because they're sharper and you'll get a nicer finish.

Okay, now that I have cut all of the pieces ready, I'm going to tie them on. So, what we need to do is put our piece of string roughly in the middle over the first two lines of warp, one and 2. We're going to push them through. And then in the middle, in between the two pieces, we're going to pull up. So, from behind, I'm pulling the two sides through, so I now have a knot that looks like this. I'm going to bring the tails together and pull them upwards just to tighten the top of the knot and then pull it down and make sure it's nice and secure at the bottom. And there's my first one. So now I'm going to go to the next two lines of warp, line three and four. I'm gonna go over and push them in. And then in between, I'm going to pull up side one. And in the same space, pull up side two. Now I'm going to put my little tails together and pull upwards lightly and then slide it down and pull to secure at the bottom. Now, if you pull too tight, this is gonna happen and we're going to disrupt our warp spacing. So, it's important that we maintain the same spaces as we work. So over and through, grab your tails.

What happens if they're uneven? So, let's say you put it through and one tail is longer than the other, what we can do is still put them together and just carefully guide the shorter tail

to be a little longer through the knot and then pull down to secure it so that it's the same length at the end. And there is our first row of rya knots to create our fringe. You can comb or brush these out to create a different texture. I'm gonna leave mine like this and I'm going to create a second row of knots in between spaces.

So here we have lines one and two in a knot and lines three and four in a knot. I'm now going to put my second row on lines 2 and 3 just like this, so 2 and 3, so that they go in the in-between spaces and fill out my fringe. So, I've left the first string there. That's completely okay. If you're not sure where to go, look for the gap between the last two knots, and on the next row, you can add it here. And there we have two layers of fringe. Of course, you can mix and match with different yarns and put different rows and different levels of fringing. And you would start then back at one and 2, 3 and 4 for your third row

[End of transcript]

Watch 'Basket stitch tutorial' (02:40)

Basket stitch tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Weaving techniques tutorial: Woven in time and place - Basket stitch”. Screen shows a wooden-framed loom with 24 vertical strings and several rows of woven pink and green wool.]

Instructor

Let's look at the basket weave. So, to do a basket weave, you need to do like a tabby stitch or the plain stitch, except we're going to go over 2, under 2, over 2, under 2. So, this last row finished with an under, so we're going to start with an over. I'm just going to loop the end of my thread around like this just to make it easier to work with as I go across. So over 2 and under two like that. And then over 2 and under 2, over 2 and under 2. Over 2 and under 2. Over and under. Okay and I've left my little tail there at the end and I can start working back this way. Okay. Now we're going to do the opposite. So, we're going to go under 2, over 2, under 2, over 2, all the way through to the other side. When I'm tightening up this end, I'm just holding my warp out to make sure that it doesn't pull in too far and then sliding all of this down. Okay and then we're going to come back the other way. This will start to look a bit like a wicker basket pattern. I'm holding this again while I pull the thread through just to make sure that it doesn't pull on the warp and I'm going all the way across to push down. And I'll just do another row to help illustrate what it looks like. See that's pulled right in so I want to pull it right out again. And there we have a basket weave over 2, under 2.

[End of transcript]

Watch 'Bubble stitch tutorial' (06:35)

Bubble stitch tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Weaving techniques tutorial: Woven in time and place - Basket stitch”. Screen shows a wooden-framed loom with 24 vertical strings and several rows of woven pink, green and white wool.]

Instructor

Now we're going to do a bubble effect. So, I'm going to create it just across this next section. I'm going to start with just a plain tabby stitch as my first row. So, this line finished going over, so I'm gonna start, sorry, this row here went under, so now I'm going over, then I'm just gonna go over and under all the way to the end. Leave my tail and slide down. I'm gonna go over this and under this one just to bring them together. I don't wanna leave a gap in my weaving. So, I'm just sliding like that. Okay, I'm gonna go over and under and then I'm going to start the bubbling effect. So, so far all we've done is a plain tabby technique. Now I've got my old paintbrush here and I'm going to wrap around my paintbrush and then under the warp and through, go around my paintbrush and then under the next warp and through. Okay.

Over, under. I'm going underneath the next line of warp and I'm pulling it up through on the top of the paintbrush again. Over, under the next line. I'm pulling it through on top of my brush. Getting it tucked quite tightly. Over and under. Bring it to the top. Over and under my next line. Under there. Okay, so let's say that's the only part that I want bubbled. I'm just gonna leave my brush in for a minute and finish that row as a tabby or a plain weaving stitch, making sure I do the opposite to the row before. So, I made a mistake there. I need to come back. Over, under, over, under. Okay, pull that through. Now that's that row done. Now I can carefully glide my paintbrush out and I'm left with these lovely bubbles and I can do the same coming back this way. So, I might keep it plain to start with and then start my bubbles around here. I'm gonna go over and then under the next one. You just need to work gently around these because they can be pulled back through. So, we don't want to do that. We want it to stay bubbly. And what we need is the next couple of rows to hold our bubbles down, hold our bubbles in place. Over and under. Over and under.

From the top, over and under. There we go. From the top, over and under. That's about as far as I wanna come for my second row. I'll just pull those bottom ones through by pushing

up from underneath. And then slide these on. And I'm just going to do my plain tabby over, under, all the way to the end. There we go. Pull it firm enough just to hold in place and then slide your brush out. And if that's all you want to do, you can do more, but once you've done as much as you want to do, I would add at least one more row of a plain weave or a tabby weave back over to help hold your little bubbles in place. I'm just gonna slide that right down nice and tightly over, under. And there we have the bubble effect.

[End of transcript]

Watch 'Plait stitch tutorial' (04:30)

Plait stitch tutorial

[Description: screen shows an Acknowledgement of Country. Screen transitions to a title screen that reads, “Weaving techniques tutorial: Woven in time and place – Plait stitch”. Screen shows a wooden-framed loom with 24 vertical strings and several rows of woven pink, green, white, pink and green wool.]

Instructor

Now we're going to do a stitch that looks like a braid. So, it looks really good when you've got a fluffy yarn like this or if you've used a thicker yarn like these ones and you've brushed it so that it loses some of these lines and becomes more of one piece, although it works just as well with a range of different yarns. So have some time and play around and work out what you like the look of. Gonna start with a tail off the end and I'm going to go over 2, and then come back under one, just to start, there we are. Over two, under one, and back on top. Over 2, under one, and I'm leaving them quite loose because I want them to form these diagonal lines. Over 2, under one, and then pull it down. So you can see here it's starting to form these diagonal lines, over 2, including the one that it's already under, so one, 2, and then under the second Over 2, one, 2, and then under the second. So, you can see I'm adjusting my stitches as I go. Don't wait till the end. You want them to be about the right shape and size as you go across your loom.

Now if you've got a tail like this sticking out from a row that you've finished up, I would trim that tail to be about 10 to 15 centimetres long and I would tuck it in the back, so just through the warp, so that it's out of the way, and continue my stitch. Okay, now we're going to come back the other way. You can continue in the same direction and you'll get rows on rows that look just like this. But to create one that looks like a plat, we need our diagonals to change direction and move back towards this. So, what we're going to do is come under 2 on our last one. One, the first one can be a bit of a mess. So, we've gone under, we finished our last one, and then we come back under 2, over the same 2, and then under one, and popped out the top here to come back in the other direction. And now we can go the same, over 2, under one, and slide him down. Over 2, under one, slide him down. My tail's still coming out on top. Under.

Okay, now we can see our plat forming. So, you can continue to change directions with each row, or you can maintain the same direction all the way across. This is towards the

end of our thread now so I'm going to go over the 2 and leave the tail in the back there to tidy up later.

[End of transcript]

Category:

  • Stage 5
  • Visual Design 7-10

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