A personal conversation with weaving
[May 2026]
Two of my weavings hang in my living room, reflecting stages of my life. As I prepare to attend an upcoming weaving workshop, wondering what will emerge, I reflect on these two and the gifts of natural materials.
Natural materials never lie to you. They mirror your inner world, and the patterns of your body, with great accuracy and kindness. Where awkward or unworkable patterning emerges, so too do the lessons and inspiration for resolution.
This round basket, made from simple raffia, was woven after a particularly heart-crushing break-up. I felt lost, and as though I would never be re-found. I began the weaving as a lifebuoy, a focus point when everything else was in flux. The tension of this desperation was reflected to me by the materials. The raffia was consistently breaking and fraying. It was an effort to force the needle through the previous coil. I seemed unable to get into any flow as I pulled the material far too tight, as if desperately trying to hold myself together. The materials gently reminded me, ‘You will truly feel more secure if you loosen your hold and drop your shoulders’.
Like rings of a tree marking growth across time, the next layer of coils began to loosen. I managed to lean back in my chair a little and find some flow. Until a hole emerged. My internal patterning began to panic, ‘Was it unsafe to relax!’ As always, the weaving reflected a wiser truth – the basket was in fact not falling apart at all, despite the holes, rather it was developing a beautiful lace-work effect. It said to me ‘You’re ok. You are beautiful just the way you are’.
Weeks passed by and the basket continued to hold and guide me through my grief. The flat base began to develop sides. The basket showed me I had found my edges again; I was able to move back into uprightness. A further tree ring later, I felt a joyful impulse to begin meandering; The final flourish of playfulness and return to life.
This basket has acted as a map, for the many inevitable cycles of death and renewal across an adult life.
Some 15 years later I am weaving again, this time within a group of women in their 40s through 60s. By now, we have each come to know the maps of loss and joy like the back of our hands. And so new lessons emerge. My attention spread between hosting, chatting, and the materials, a looser form of assemblage emerged. It was a trial-and-error process; more nature pieces picked up than ultimately used. The lessons are simple truths, with less intensity than the first basket. They emerge sporadically like threads of the broader conversation in the room – “You don’t need to know the end at the start; Some things hold together and others don’t; Try but also let go; Sometimes you may need a second pair of hands; This beauty will last for a while and there will come a time to let it go and create something new”.
And even now, the conversation continues, as this piece hangs in my living room. The green turned to shades of brown, flowers have fallen off and grasses dropped their seeds. Occasionally spiders make their webs. I particularly enjoy the different shadows it makes on the wall at different times of day. For me, it feels like an ongoing dance. Or echoes of a song, slightly shifting over time. It reminds me there are no endpoints, no final arrivals. Only the next moment.
I prepare for the upcoming weaving workshop I trust this conversation, and ready myself to be receptive. Messages may be beautiful or uncomfortable. But what I trust, is they will be real.
This piece was written as a contribution to this wonderful resource created by Briony Tronson of Seedpod Creative Arts Studio.