Designing Chilkat Patterns for Robes and Smaller Weavings

Aug 11, 2010 | Latest Art Projects, To Market To Market | 1 comment

Clarissa inspects the final version of her Chilkat robe design "Jennie Weaves An Apprentice"

I am working on several Chilkat designs at once.  Some of the designs are just “generic” Chilkat patterns I’m drafting up for my students and folks who just want a new pattern to weave; some of the designs are for actual Chilkat robes.  I am designing a series of robes called “a robe-within-a-robe.”  It’s obviously a Chilkat robe within a Chilkat robe.  I presently am working on one that I’ve wanted to weave for the past 24 years, and am finally doing it!  The story of the robe is based on my apprenticeship with Jennie Thlunaut back in 1986 called “Jennie Weaves An Apprentice”, the same name given to the handbook I wrote.

Traditionally, a male artist painted the pattern board on wood and the weaver  used wooden templates for the  given shapes that she would hold up to the robe as a guide.  Of course, we now create the actual robe image onto paper and most of us use paper templates as a guide.   Yet, being the innovative people that we are in our modern times using resources at hand, I conjured up a simpler step.  Several years ago, I developed the use of clear transparencies as the guiding template.  The template has all the design elements (i.e. eyebrows, eye, nose, mouth, etc) within an 8″ x 11″ sheet of paper.  Below is an image of Chilkat pattern transparencies; the one I am holding in my hand is a headband pattern I have used in my most recent Chilkat weaving class for beginning Chilkat students:

Clarissa holds a Chilkat pattern transparency; a modern adaptation used as a guide in Chilkat weaving.

I am both a Northwest Coast designer AND a weaver, which puts me in a unique category amongst Northwest Coast Native artists. As a weaver, I understands the intricate, Chilkat design elements that are workable and weavable in the unique Chilkat design style; as a Northwest Coast designer, I understand the form line elements – both are required to create a Chilkat design successfully.  I would not say that I am an excellent designer of Chilkat, because I am still learning (in the words of Jennie Thlunaut), yet there are very few of us who understand how to design Chilkat and feel confident enough to create original designs.   It is not as easy as it looks.

As I mentioned earlier, I am weaving the robe “Jennie Weaves An Apprentice.”  I always base my designs on a historical/personal event or clan emblem.   It is a commissioned robe where my clients and I got create with a  payment plan suited to  their pocketbook.  I am open to doing  trades or partial trades depending on whether or not the client has something to offer that I cannot do without!   We set the deadline for the end of September or October.   Based on the various things going on in my life, it looks like end of October. I must complete it by the end of October because I want to finish up the manuscript and photos for my robe book in time for publication and distribution by Thanksgiving!