Weaving

Most of what we weave use a weft-faced plain weave. Weft-faced means that what are visible are the weft yarns. The warp yarns, the structural foundation of the fabric, are visible only at the fringes. A plain weave has weft yarns passing over one warp thread then under one warp thread.

Most of our weavings combine shuttle work with tapestry. This means that if you look at a piece, and the same color reaches from one selvage edge to another, we have produced that by throwing the shuttle from one side to the other, which lays in a shot of weft yarn, then changed sheds and beat the yarn into place. When we weave tapestry we use a "discontinuous weft". In other words, the weft yarn does not pass all the way from one selvage to another, but more than one spool of yarn will have to be moved to cover the warp from side to side.

Tapestry weaving can be very time-consuming. The more spools a weaver has to move to progress from one edge to the other, the longer a tapestry piece will take. In Rio Grande the weaving process is usually one and the same with the designing process. A slower project allows more time for decision-making. A quicker piece demands quicker decisions, and has the potential for more spontanaiety.

We don't often used "cartoons" (full-sized drawings of a weaving), or other sketches. Producing such drawings take time, limit on-loom creativity, and can be a lot of work in themselves.