Escapeloom: Fabricating new afordances for handweaving

Abstract

Hand-weaving is a beloved craft in history, holding promise for many opportunities in making from fat sheet fabrics to smart textiles. To aford new weaving experiences, we explore how 3D printed custom weaving tools interplay with diferent materiality, augmenting the design space of weaving. We propose novel weaving techniques enabled by 3D printed custom tools: (1) water-soluble draft to synchronize design intention and practice, (2) fexible warps to guide complex patterns and to shape resulting object, and (3) rigid global geometry for woven artifacts in 3D. EscapeLoom as a computational design tool enables users to employ various parameters in their computational design, and showcases many creative possibilities that move away from the traditional defnition of a loom to dive into what more it can be.