A Closer Look -- Complex Weavers Award

This post is part of a series taking a closer look at award-winning entries from exhibits at Northern Wefts, the Midwest Weavers Conference, which was held in June.

Marcia Kosmerchock's "Pillow" received the Complex Weavers Award.

Marcia's inspiration for this project came from Lotte Dalgaard's Magiske materialer. Fascinated by the draft, Marcia did a full range of samples using overtwist, differential shrinkage and various spandex yarns. She also experimented with the length of the floats and sizes of the grid structure.

"It is really a very simple 4 shaft double weave," she says. "Layer 1 is white 20/2 silk sett at 20 epi Layer 2 is black cotton spandex sett at 16 epi in the areas where it weaves . The black spandex weaves in the inside of the grid and floats in both the warp and weft."

"After all my sampling I really wanted to weave a finished project. The weave is very one-sided so does not work well for a scarf and I thought it was a bit too much for a jacket," Marcia says. So making a pillow seemed the ideal application. "Once the weaving was completed the piece was steamed with a clothing steamer. This caused the spandex floats to contract and create the wrinkly grid. I made use of the ruffle selvage on the side seams."

Marcia is "more a texture person than a pattern person." She has been a member of Complex Weavers for about 10 years and co-chaired with Wendy Morris the Collapse Pleat and Bump study group. The goup has members from seven or eight countries and has a sample exchange once a year.

Marcia started weaving in 1972 while in graduate school. Her interest in collapse weaves was piqued by what she saw in Japanese galleries on business trips there while she was living and working in Europe. "My looms have been moved to three different countries," she says. "I hope never to have to dismantle and pack them again!"