How long does it take to make this piece
This is a question that I get a lot, and apparently a lot of weavers get asked as well. As an intuitive weaver, this is a question that gives me the chills at the back of my neck. You’re asking me how long it took me? I have never timed myself when I weave. Time is a non existing element when I weave. Now I have to recall the process, the days when I was weaving this piece? I don’t know, I weave it in chunks when I feel inspired, when there’s a flow of creativity in my mind. It may have taken me 8 or 10 or 20 hours to weave it, depending on the complexity of the piece, with technique and also in creativity. What about the hours and days when I was having a conversation with the woven cloth to know what it really wants to be? What about the hours trying to figure out the best way to drape, to cut (or not to cut) the cloth so that it would be into the shape that I want. I don’t use a lot of specific garment patterns, so it really depends on the character of each cloth. It takes time to actually create each piece that are unique and never will be repeated again. So it does take time, but how much? I just can’t give a specific answer. It may seem really odd for most people out there to receive this kind of answer. If you’re manufacturing a product in a production line, you will know the exact time it takes, the exact amount of materials it takes to make a specific product. The thing is, I make everything specifically so that they are different than anything that is made in a production line. So the variables are going to be different. It is not how much time, how much yarn, but rather what was the inspiration, what was the circumstances, what was the challenges and what was the joy of creating this piece of work.
Although I cannot answer specific details about how much time it took me to produce a piece of work, what I can tell you is that it took me 10 years to get here. It took me another 5 years or so before that to actually discover this art of weaving while I was doing other crafts, looking for the perfect one that fits my personality. It also took me almost 500 days of classes in and out once every week to learn and immerse myself not only in the techniques but also the philosophy behind this weaving. It took hours within and out of those 500 days discussing about methods, techniques, ideas that surrounds the saori weaving with more than 100 members of the weaving community that I have known, engaged and be close friends with over the years.
Inspiration also plays an important role in creating many of my work and I get them through my travels to over 20 countries across the globe, over 100 cities, and dozens of museums that inspires me, that excites my brain to see something new, learn something new, learn something from the past as well. Step by step I get out of my comfort zone to talk to strangers, to visit workshops, to talk to people who seems to be too far up in the clouds for me to even say hi, to learn a new language so that I can make friends in foreign lands, to spend weekends or stay up late at night listening to seminars, all these efforts made throughout the years that has accumulated within me and is then sent out into my weavings, into my textiles, into the clothes that I make.
And don’t even mention how much money I have spent over those years to actually gain all these experiences so that I could understand myself, understand the world, understand the history of textile making, understand the trends, both good and bad, all so that I can create better so that I can offer something special, something unique to the world all taken from a part of me when I weave.
So, do you still want to know how many hours it took me to weave a piece?