Pamela Palma, The Accidental Weaver
My textile journey began with a childhood fascination for all things made of yarn, thread, and cloth. I watched my mother, grandmother and aunts create marvelous things and begged them to teach me. I was 4 when I first designed, sewed, and knitted outfits for my baby doll – without a pattern. I simply imagined what I wanted and then made it. I thought this was just normal. As time passed, my skills improved. I learned to use a sewing machine and started designing my own clothes. I have always preferred to have things no one else had, an anomoly for a kid. I used my embroidery skills to make hand embroidered boho bags before it was a thing. I observed how my mom and aunts made hand knit sweaters and then made up my own pattern. My favorite was the burgundy cable knit tennis sweater I made in my teens. It kept me warm all winter. Everyone else was wearing them in white, store bought. Mine was special. I have always loved having my own look.
My family did not weave. But like most girls of my generation, I wove a thousand looped potholders. I was fascinated with all the color combination possibilities – stripes, checks plaids! My design creativity took over, and abandoning the loops, I began to weave squares of woolen cloth with balls of yarn left over from sweaters and scarves. I sewed all the squares together and made a patchwork blanket. I was less than 10 years old.
I didn’t weave again until much later. In fact, I avoided weaving like it was a plague.
I was in my 20s, living in New Mexico, surrounded by beautiful Navajo weavings. I had a pottery studio then; I was making pots and, of course, I was still sewing and knitting and embroidering as I raised my young child. My house came with a small inkle loom which I had no use for and gave away. Then a woman moved in next door. She wove on huge floor loom. It looked so complicated so I declined her offers to learn the techniques. I was busy with my own things. I did not want to weave. Period.
In my 30s I returned to my old hometown of Buffalo, NY to raise my daughter. Buffalo State College offered a wonderful, broad, textile program. I wanted to learn to silkscreen, to print my own fabrics. I would augment the fibers curriculum with fashion design to improve my sewing skills, to learn pattern making. I would create original art to wear apparel.
That was the plan.
The Fates had other ideas.
My first course, Design in Fibers, was weaving! I was caught in the web of fate and there was no way out. So, I accepted my fate - I figured what the heck, I can make anything with yarn, I will give it a whirl. And whirl I did. I was totally, unequivocally, head over heels in love with weaving! I loved everything about it - the process of watching the fabric develop before my eyes, like magic, learning to read the coded language of patterns, designing, setting up the looms, all of it. It was the most wonderful, magical experience. I was hooked. I had the best professor - I adored her. She taught me so much. I felt like I belonged in that light-filled weaving studio of looms and yarn and wonderful people.
My fist assignment was to design and weave anything I wished on a portable, Navajo style loom. I was immensely homesick for New Mexico and so I created, from memory, a tapestry of a mesa in the desert, a sacred site, called Cabezón. It was autumn in Buffalo. I sat on my porch enjoying a beautiful Indian Summer, weaving the sacred lands of my past.
And thus began my journey as a weaver. As it turns out, I am a natural at weaving. I can easily read and interpret weaving drafts the way some can read music. They are very similar, weaving drafts and musical scores. Both are languages, codes. One produces visuals, the other sounds. Floor looms are like pianos, hands and feet work in harmony to produce results.
I often feel I am creating visual music when I weave.
I advanced from simple looms to very complex looms. I learned to manipulate traditional weaving structures , elevating the process to an artform. I discovered the sky is truly the limit with weaving. There is no limit. Anything that doesn't move can be incorporated into a weaving. I have fun with my work, why not? All manner of unexpected materials find new meaning in my mixed media art.
To this day, I create entirely from inside my head. I never sketch. I use no software. I visualize, play with materials and colors. I research pattern opportunities and then go for it. I let the work develop as it will, impulsed by the whisperings, the nudges of my Muses, the Fates who got me on this path in the first place.
Weaving is magic! It is mesmerizing, meditative, both stimulating and relaxing. Watching cloth flow from my hands is amazing. Weaving is universal, existing in all cultures across all time, brought by Spirit. Cloth is such a natural part of us as people we take it for granted.
When I am weaving I transcend time. I am connected to all who came before me, all who will come after me. I weave the past into the future through the present. My purpose for making art is to make the world around us nicer, more beautiful.
My textile journey began with a childhood fascination for all things made of yarn, thread, and cloth. I watched my mother, grandmother and aunts create marvelous things and begged them to teach me. I was 4 when I first designed, sewed, and knitted outfits for my baby doll – without a pattern. I simply imagined what I wanted and then made it. I thought this was just normal. As time passed, my skills improved. I learned to use a sewing machine and started designing my own clothes. I have always preferred to have things no one else had, an anomoly for a kid. I used my embroidery skills to make hand embroidered boho bags before it was a thing. I observed how my mom and aunts made hand knit sweaters and then made up my own pattern. My favorite was the burgundy cable knit tennis sweater I made in my teens. It kept me warm all winter. Everyone else was wearing them in white, store bought. Mine was special. I have always loved having my own look.
My family did not weave. But like most girls of my generation, I wove a thousand looped potholders. I was fascinated with all the color combination possibilities – stripes, checks plaids! My design creativity took over, and abandoning the loops, I began to weave squares of woolen cloth with balls of yarn left over from sweaters and scarves. I sewed all the squares together and made a patchwork blanket. I was less than 10 years old.
I didn’t weave again until much later. In fact, I avoided weaving like it was a plague.
I was in my 20s, living in New Mexico, surrounded by beautiful Navajo weavings. I had a pottery studio then; I was making pots and, of course, I was still sewing and knitting and embroidering as I raised my young child. My house came with a small inkle loom which I had no use for and gave away. Then a woman moved in next door. She wove on huge floor loom. It looked so complicated so I declined her offers to learn the techniques. I was busy with my own things. I did not want to weave. Period.
In my 30s I returned to my old hometown of Buffalo, NY to raise my daughter. Buffalo State College offered a wonderful, broad, textile program. I wanted to learn to silkscreen, to print my own fabrics. I would augment the fibers curriculum with fashion design to improve my sewing skills, to learn pattern making. I would create original art to wear apparel.
That was the plan.
The Fates had other ideas.
My first course, Design in Fibers, was weaving! I was caught in the web of fate and there was no way out. So, I accepted my fate - I figured what the heck, I can make anything with yarn, I will give it a whirl. And whirl I did. I was totally, unequivocally, head over heels in love with weaving! I loved everything about it - the process of watching the fabric develop before my eyes, like magic, learning to read the coded language of patterns, designing, setting up the looms, all of it. It was the most wonderful, magical experience. I was hooked. I had the best professor - I adored her. She taught me so much. I felt like I belonged in that light-filled weaving studio of looms and yarn and wonderful people.
My fist assignment was to design and weave anything I wished on a portable, Navajo style loom. I was immensely homesick for New Mexico and so I created, from memory, a tapestry of a mesa in the desert, a sacred site, called Cabezón. It was autumn in Buffalo. I sat on my porch enjoying a beautiful Indian Summer, weaving the sacred lands of my past.
And thus began my journey as a weaver. As it turns out, I am a natural at weaving. I can easily read and interpret weaving drafts the way some can read music. They are very similar, weaving drafts and musical scores. Both are languages, codes. One produces visuals, the other sounds. Floor looms are like pianos, hands and feet work in harmony to produce results.
I often feel I am creating visual music when I weave.
I advanced from simple looms to very complex looms. I learned to manipulate traditional weaving structures , elevating the process to an artform. I discovered the sky is truly the limit with weaving. There is no limit. Anything that doesn't move can be incorporated into a weaving. I have fun with my work, why not? All manner of unexpected materials find new meaning in my mixed media art.
To this day, I create entirely from inside my head. I never sketch. I use no software. I visualize, play with materials and colors. I research pattern opportunities and then go for it. I let the work develop as it will, impulsed by the whisperings, the nudges of my Muses, the Fates who got me on this path in the first place.
Weaving is magic! It is mesmerizing, meditative, both stimulating and relaxing. Watching cloth flow from my hands is amazing. Weaving is universal, existing in all cultures across all time, brought by Spirit. Cloth is such a natural part of us as people we take it for granted.
When I am weaving I transcend time. I am connected to all who came before me, all who will come after me. I weave the past into the future through the present. My purpose for making art is to make the world around us nicer, more beautiful.