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Style by Style Weaving:  Chimayo Weaving Chimayos is something I come back to time and time again, and after all these years I’m convinced that it’s because I really like what I call “Chimayo thinking”.  I’m convinced that it suits me best.  So let me explain. First of all, there is a clear expectation of where I’m going to be putting designs.  It doesn’t mean that all Chimayos look the same, but they start and end with stripes, and they’ve got one, two, or three designs between the stripes.  Okay, there could be more than three, but the other designs...

  “Bubbles” – Lisa Trujillo, handspun indigo dyed and undyed wool, 60″ x 90″, 1993 This morning the people who own this piece came to visit us.  They were happy to talk to me about it, telling me about where it lives and what good care they are taking with it.  Clearly it means a lot to them, in part because of the connection it makes between my family and theirs.  They remembered that I had told them that I had woven it when I was pregnant with my daughter Emily, and they have a daughter Emma who is a...

We can weave very traditional Rio Grande blankets by just weaving stripes. Which means that we’re just throwing a shuttle back and forth, and changing colors to make the stripes. Shuttle throwing is a chance to do some pretty physical stuff, and get a bit of a workout. I’m pretty ambivalent about workouts. I see the benefit of it, but and am only interested in such exertion for brief periods of time. This isn’t a design consideration per se, but it’s probably a big reason why I rarely weave pieces that are just striped. This is all an explanation as...

I like to think that each piece I weave has its own set of rules to follow and its own set of challenges to overcome.  But the kinds of rules I set for the piece, and the kinds of challenges I’ll face, are related to the kind of weaving I’m working on.  So I thought it would be an interesting idea to look at what I call “style thinking”.  At least it’s interesting for me… When I am deciding on what I am planning to weave, I tend to make our decisions based on yarns and considering whatever time constraints...

(This may be heavy on hyperbole, but it’s hard not to hit the high notes when talking about something this good!) 1) There is a proud history to Rio Grande weaving.  There once were a lot of people here in New Mexico weaving blankets for trade to far away places.  And that was over a period of hundreds of years.  At any one time at least some of those weavers were trying new things – designs and techniques – and their legacy remains for us to explore. 2) The old pieces are things of beauty.  The time we get to...

The Vallero is the first design within our tradition that actually develops here in Northern New Mexico. It’s named after the beautiful mountain town of El Valle, where there were a number of weavers who had the respected skill of being able to weave these distinctive textiles.  The oldest of these use commercial plied yarns, and tend to be more detailed than later Valleros.  The majority of Valleros were dyed with the early synthetic dyes, but are handspun wool.  Those woven before about the 1920’s are woven in two pieces with a seam down the center. This is a simple...