I found this post after reading a comment left on one of my posts. I love the technical description of the weaving process, and the wonderful analogy to the weaving and re-weaving of our life fabric after a loss, especially the death of a child. Check out Grief: one Woman’s Perspective.
We recently toured Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina, housed in what used to be Biltmore Estate Industries/Biltmore Industries and the Homespun Shop. In its heydey, Biltmore Industries produced “hand-loomed woolens…sold in some of the best shops in the country. Biltmore Industries’ fame for quality wool fabric even extended to the American presidents.” (http://www.grovewood.com/about-us/history)
The process of weaving fabric by hand is incredibly intricate, painstaking, and very labor-intensive. I had no idea so much work was involved!! Only men worked on the looms because they had the upper body strength to do it.
In the case of the particular loom used by Biltmore Industries, 1068 individual strands of thread were hand-threaded in pairs through guides (lease rods) onto the loom from a roll of continuous warp (the carefully-wound large roll of threads). One thread from the pair went through a heddle eye on an upper heddle and the other…
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A Mother's Grief and Learning to Live Again 