Ribbon Weaving

Historically, ribbons have been used as trimmings -- folded, pleated, stitched, gathered and wired -- and woven together as decorative inserts on clothing, and for blankets, pillows, book covers hats and purses.

Using ribbon in its endless variations to design evening bags and pieces for the wall allows me to experiment with plain weave, twill weave, basket weaves and many more by combining widths, textures and colors in layers much like a painter layers a canvas. Supplementary ends are layered over the base weaving to enliven or to subdue color and pattern.

For the past several years I have been using ribbon as the medium for the Asian basket weaving technique called anyam gila, or the “mad weave”. This tri-axial weave employs three elements and produces a hexagonal pattern and a six-pointed star. In exploring this weave I have discovered that dozens of visual tricks can be produced by varying the color and value of the ribbons and by using two or more ends as single elements.