I am a Single Thread

The selection of a loom for this project works perfectly for connecting me to my heritage. This loom is hand hewn and constructed with traditional frame joins and pegged together.  The reeds are even made of original reeds rather than metal.  It is seven by six feet and six feet high.  It is a barn beam loom from the 1830’s.  My mother and father restored it after finding it in the basement of a museum.  After many years of my mother weaving on it, she gave it to me. I did assemble the loom once it was in my weaving room and weave on it regularly. To follow the tradition of woven rag rugs from pioneer days, my project is woven with rags.

The warp threads are set up in stripes to represent the many families of my ancestral roots. I spent several years researching and collecting data for both my husband’s and my family ancestors. I feel a real magnetic force from their pioneer and homesteading lives. In order to be successful, they had to have strength, patience, creativity, and religion. Their values and traits I have inherited.  I have also experienced them directly from my grandparents and parents.

The lower portion of my weaving uses the colours of the rich soil and the golden harvest of my distant ancestors.  The warp is nearly covered to indicate less knowledge of details of their lives.  As the weaving gets closer to my life, the warp threads show more in order to represent my firsthand knowledge of my relatives.  While weaving this area, I had many pleasant memories of those early years and recognize how my life was influenced by them.

As the weaving progressed, I incorporated plain colours to create the lovely moments of my life, and then some textured colours to represent the busy or stressful times.  As I reflect over the total weaving, I see that I have  been blessed with a very good life.  
I incorporated a yellow and blue stripe of warp to represent my life as a small part of the bigger family of relatives, but also as a strong influence within the “woven web“ of relatives. I added a blue weft stripe to represent my husband’s life.  The beads at the bottom of our warp stripes are to portray our parents and siblings.

The flower petals across the center of the weaving indicate how important our children are to us. Each petal includes our son and his family on one side and our daughter and her family on the other.  They are included in our past, present and future.

The whole weaving is framed with beaver fur. At first it was chosen to create a feel for my ancestors’ life of  hunting, trapping, homesteading and farming. Our life includes a past and present of the same type of outdoor activities and so reflects our lives too.  I think it also shows that our life story is surrounded by a universe of family and outside our family circle is a whole world of other stories to be told.

In my life story I am only a thread, plied by my ancestors with strength, patience and creativity, and dyed by my parents with knowledge, caring, and beliefs. I am emboldened, loved and befriended by my husband.  We live with pride, joy, and hope for our children and grandchildren. Our future is full of wonderful expectations and one day we will join our ancestors in the story of life.

Laura Sample Dec. 2023