My latest weaving project for my Weaving a Life course is a mask.

The warp threads are cotton. The weft threads are t-shirts cut into strips. The green t-shirt is one of Bob’s old golf shirts and the fabric had a nice texture. I cut the strips rather wide (like 1 centimeter) so it would have more heft than a strip that I typically cut for recycled t-shirt rug hooking.

You weave this mask from one ear to the other, which is confusing because people expect you to weave from the chin to the forehead. You can see how the mask looked on the loom in this photo. It does not look like a face at this point. The blue area is the nose, if that helps.

Once you have the facial features woven, and you take it off the loom, you pull on the warp strings slowly. My instructor Susan says you need to allow the personality of the mask to slowly appear.

I was fortunate to be on vacation in South Carolina when finishing my mask, so I did the last 1/3 of the weaving on the beach.

Before I pulled the strings to make the mask into a more three-dimensional shape, Bob and I tried it on.

Later, I pulled on all the strings and manipulated the facial features to get the mask into shape. I thought when I held it up to the light that it looked like it was smiling.

I might put more decorations on it later, but since I’m not home, I don’t have access to my needles & thread or other decorative items. So this is my mask!