Anyone who has ever cut a finished piece from a loom knows the small heap that remains on the floor afterwards, odd lengths of yarn too short to be of any use and too good-looking to sweep up without a pang of dismay.
In Bhujodi, a weaving village in Gujarat, that heap has become the starting point for Rewoven: Skies and Waters, a collection of handwoven wall panels from Post Rejection Design (PRD). Conceptualised and designed by Hanisha Thirth BennaBhaktula and woven by artisan Mayur Vankar, each panel is built from threads gathered after other textiles were finished and returned to the loom to be woven again.
A trio of handwoven panels by Post Rejection Design, all created from rescued, post-production threads.
If you keep a bag of wool ends for later, you will recognise the appeal of the method, since here the remnants get a say. The yarn on hand decides the palette and the pace of each panel. Irregular passages that a weaver might usually hide stay on view, and fragments from earlier cloth steer the design as it grows.
Across the finished surfaces, turtles swim and fireflies glow among lines that suggest moving water and shifting light. Look closely and you can see how the fragments have been reorganised, each yarn carrying traces of its earlier life...
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Image Credits:
Lead: Turtle panel on the loom at the Post Rejection Design (PRD) studio.
All further images courtesy of Post Rejection Design (PRD)