Nancy Middlebrook

I’ve always enjoyed working with fiber and making things with my hands. Since childhood I’ve been knitting, crocheting, sewing, and doing needlework. When I started weaving fifteen years ago, it was like falling in love, obvious, a homecoming.

I’m fascinated by using color and design to express change, movement, transition, perspective and depth. The fabric structure I use is double weave or double cloth. As its name implies, double weave is a cloth with two distinct layers of fabric. At various points in my weaving, the layers interchange—the bottom layer is brought to the top and the top to the bottom. When I discovered double weave, just a few years after learning to weave, it seemed to be the perfect technique to explore my fascination. Its two layers of different color palettes, surfacing and disappearing, create endless design possibilities. I always find myself asking “what if” as the possibilities created by one piece lead me to the next.

The inspiration for my weaving most often begins with a color palette; the design follows. Some of my weavings I create on the loom as I weave; others I design in advance. Because color is so important in my weaving, I dye the yarn to get the particular colors each piece requires. There are many steps to creating a weaving, and I enjoy each one—imagining and developing a design, choosing colors and dying the yarn, winding yarn in preparation for putting it on the loom, setting up and threading the loom and finally weaving. I’m excited to see the colors of yarn when they come out of the dye pot and to see an image develop once the yarn is on the loom.