What is MiniWeaving?

I coined the name MiniWeaving to emphasize a weaving process different than life-size weaving. How different it is has demonstrated itself to me throughout the last three years of learning and experimentation to find the right balance of thickness, design, texture, and feel for the textiles I made. Cloth in miniature is an involved affair playing to all our preconceived notions. It does not take much for a finely handwoven miniature rug to look like a cut-up piece of machine-made dress cloth. While miniature rugs made in petit point embroidery benefit from being as fine as possible, the same does not hold for woven ones: they must preserve some scaled roughness to look like a beach house cottage runner, or traditional oriental kilim, or modern bohemian rug. That is all achieved through elements such as type of fibre used, thickness of yarn, denseness of the warp (vertical thread ends on a loom) and pattern of weaving the weft (horizontal rows of yarn). The combinations of these elements are vast as it is: I have walls of yarn I bought to experiment (and I had to buy more than one colour each time too), from too thick, to too fine, until I got the one that is just right.

THE LEFT SIDE OF THE BRAIN FIRST

Once I choose the colours the yarn gets stretched on an intricate loom made for life-size weaving, a process that takes anywhere between two to four hours in case of miniature rugs, depending on how wide I want them to be and how complex the patterns will be. This stage is called “dressing the loom” and requires great precision as any mistakes made will show throughout the whole weave, much like those nasty runs in stockings. If there is an error at the beginning of the weave, then the whole threading must be undone and done again. This process requires the rational size of the brain fully engaged with precision and accuracy. But once done, the stage is set for some 30 rugs to slowly materialize in front of my eyes.

THEN THE RIGHT SIDE

Once the loom is set, the weaving that follows is where creativity takes over and runs amuck. There are patterns and patterns and then some more patterns. Then there are colours and types of fibre, and when I put all these moving parts together in a certain way, I do not have to make two the same ever and so far haven’t. Each piece is an experiment I start with curiosity ( “Hm, I wonder how would that peach colour cotton look with that white silk?”), which quickly escalates to few options pursued (“No, I am going to undo the last four rows of plain weave and replace them with twill, see will that give better texture.”), pushes through ups and downs (“I love this! No, wait, I hate it. Oh, I actually love it!”), speeds up as it starts nearing the end (“OK, I had ‘nough of this.”) and as I complete it concludes in a review that always brings yet another possibility (“Dunno, I should’ve done this differently.”). Weave, review, weave differently. Hence, never two the same.

When all the weaving is done, which, depending on how long of a warp I have set up, can take few weeks, the whole string of miniature rugs is taken off the loom and transferred to a large embroidery frame. Here is where I tie the fringes manually, with tapestry needle and thread, for that vintage, authentic, and appropriately rug-like appearance. The work may be tedious, but it’s, like most hand embroidery, soothing and mediative. It takes at least one season of Star Trek Next Generation to finish them all, but the results are totally worth it.

FINISHING TOUCHES

Starching, ironing, removing odd hanging threads, fixing minor mistakes - all these finishing touches complete the tiny treasures now ready to be tested with an assortment of furniture and accessories. Ultimately, they have to be able to trick the observer into seeing real rugs, not pieces of cloth. They all have to lay flat and be thin so that most furniture can sit partially on it without looking angled. They are never rigid like cardboard and since they do not have any under-layers, as flat-woven rugs wouldn’t in real life, they are double-sided. That enables certain heavy patters to be very light on the opposite side.

Hand weaving in itself has all the traits of ancient crafts that make it so authentic and organic. It is endearing for its lack of perfection, for its slight inconsistencies, and warmth of direct human touch. For us miniaturists, it’s a beautiful medium to engage with when the life-sized art is inaccessible. Weaving in miniature is no less meditative in its rhythmical motions, creative in its endless combinations, and demanding it its complex technique than weaving for life-sized textiles but the results tend to be much cuter.