Jefferson’s Fancy

Textile Design graduate student Sinéad Cahill is weaving a little history, school pride, and sustainability into a project for Grad Studio 2A this semester. The brief for this project asks the student to incorporate sustainability into woven design. Here, Sinéad has used various plastic mediums that can be found around the house, including bubble wrap, Saran Wrap, and plastic packaging materials as the filling “yarns”. Alongside the found plastic, she’s using silver and neon green multifilament yarns in both the weft and the warp. This class is known for pushing students outside of their comfort zones in order to find interesting alternatives to typical “yarn” and this project is no exception. Here Sinéad has reinterpreted the definition of yarn and found a way to reuse what might usually be thrown away and turn it into something greater than the sum of its parts.

The woven pattern itself is a variation of a deflected pick weave that goes by the name of “T. Jefferson’s Fancy” from the book “A Handweaver’s Pattern Book” by Marguerite Porter Davison. One can only assume that Thomas Jefferson really fancied this weave pattern! The last image is of a plate from the book, where you can see how it might look in a traditional staple yarn. Personally, I prefer Sinéad’s more modern version and I look forward to see what she does next!