The Structure

Structure refers to the numeric order by which a weaver threads her heddles and ties up her treadles and – if she’s holding strictly to a structure – the sequence in which she treadles them. Structure is architecture, mathematics and engineering: signatory forms, passed down through generations, the creative genius of women (usually) whose lives were restricted to the domestic arena but who found expression at the loom. I am particularly fond of the Overshot structure, perfected by immigrant and pioneer women who wove ornate coverlets in a spartan hardscrabble age. Working with Overshot, I can feel its outlander legacy. Through assigning letters to heddles, Overshot was even encoded to relay messages and meaning.

Breaking with prescribed treadling patterns, structure becomes a container for my ongoing creativity. I use weaving structure like a poetic form, like 5-7-5 haiku or the self-imposed limits of Oulipo-inspired work – Christian Bok’s Eunoia, for example, in which each chapter is restricted to a single vowel, Y is forbidden, and ‘a culinary banquet, a prurient debauch, a pastoral tableau and a nautical voyage’ must appear.

On the loom, structure influences more than my patterns: it proceeds colour and yet it can determine how much of a colour will be seen. Surprisingly too, it draws various textures from threads: my cottons woven in Hunk Lace are soft, but in Crackle Weave, they’re coarser.