Sewing a seam to join handspun, backstrap-woven wool striped fabrics.
As soon as I began to stitch a figure-8 seam with alternating colors, these bits of weaving seemed to become a legit textile. This decorative joining stitch made my weaving look a bit like the handwoven textiles I brought home from Damascus and Doha.
Bedouin and other nomadic weavers using ground looms tend to weave narrow cloth in long strips that are cut to the right length and sewn together. I’ve always admired the alternating colors on the joining stitches, and knew it required extensive care and time to make these figure 8 stitches so close together. It wasn’t until I started sewing that I understood that alternating colors has a structural function. If you alternate colors, you’re adding strength and protection, because if yarn breaks in one place, it’s surrounded by the opposite color yarn and won’t simply unravel. Traditional methods almost always have a practical, structural reason behind them, in addition to beauty.
Even this tatreez on linen, a Palestinian fragment that a friend identified as possibly from Bethlehem, shows the dense alternating joining stitches. Makes me wonder if this is a case of a popular technique being used in excess of its structural need. I’m sure this join is stronger than strictly necessary, but it’s definitely beautiful. The artist experimented with another type of joining stitch in the area on the left.
Now I'm noticing joining stitches everywhere. This is a nice join on an embroidered bag from Gujarat, which I've been using to hold a writing project. It's more of a double blanket stitch, maybe similar to Van Dyke stitch…. I don't know how it's done.
Meanwhile, I carry on stitching my panels together. Looking at the joins on these various traditional pieces, maybe you can see why my own weaving feels more like the real thing when it’s sewn together with decorative joining stitches. And it feels good to make narrow strips into a wider cloth (although I still can’t say what it “is”, besides handwoven wool cloth.) There are times when ‘putting in stitches,’ as my quilting mentor Mrs Graham used to say, feels like the only way to hold it together. I mean that in the widest, most global sense.
I could say deep things about ‘joining together’, but I think the metaphor is already obvious. I continue to not be able to get enough of Abdul-Wahab Kayyali’s oud playing, which moved me to poetry when I heard him live with Les Arrivants last month. Just learned about this powerful project combining music and poetry around themes of survival and devastation (Mafaza project, through Henna Platform). Wishing for more beauty, less bombing.