Lesley Fidler

I took the idea and used it to create a memory of the people around us who had died recently: there seemed to be so many. I cut the roll of paper into fine slices and then my partner and I used a Sharpie pen to write personal thoughts on the cut edges of the paper spirals. These were spun to create a thread.

Experimentation was needed to find the best way to handle the paper on a loom as it was not particularly strong and abraded easily. The answer I found was a strong silk warp (the threads that are under tension on a loom) and a weft-faced weave so that the threads that go to and fro across the weaving are the ones that show.

I then made several paper templates to create a box shape, chose my favourite and wove this so that there was no waste and no overlaps in the fabric when the finished item was assembled. I toyed with putting my tongue in my cheek and calling the piece ‘Weep not for me’ as the paper would lose its strength when wet with tears – but I wanted to emphasise the positive value of memories not the grief of loss.

Materials

Absorbent paper, embellished with Sharpie pen writing and spun into thread; vintage silk button hole thread

Inspiration

My inspiration was the beautiful pen and ink study notebooks of weaving students of the past, particularly the diagrams. I had recently visited an exhibition of historic Japanese textiles made from re-purposed fabrics and fibres. One of the sections was Shifu: thread woven from strips of mulberry paper that had been written on in black ink and were no longer needed. The characters left little black marks then thread was used to create a net fabric.

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