Weaving Indiana Transcript
DEE: My name is Delores, but I go by “Dee” Nierman. I’ve been around a loom all my life, all my 86 years, except one year in the 60s I lived in California for ten months. And that’s the only time I guess there wasn’t a loom in my house or near it. So that’s exciting to me.
[TRADITIONAL ARTS INDIANA PRESENTS]
[A FILM BY CLAIRE GILLETT]
[WEAVING INDIANA]
[JACKSON COUNTY, IN]
DEE: It helps sometimes, I can go to the basement and just sit there and think of happy things, or I think my own thoughts. I’ve got an old radio and an old TV down there, but I don’t ever play them, because I have my own thoughts of maybe childhood days or growing up, or when things were different, and just comparing them. But, I just kind of sit down there all by myself in the quiet, have that as my quiet time.
It’s probably close to about 160 years old, the one I’m weaving on. Now the first one I had belonged to my dad’s side, and my niece Margaret Luckey Snyder uses that. Now I’ve got the one on my mom’s side, it was her grandma’s, or my great grandmother’s. It was built for her, and she was just 13 years old.
[SARAH COX COLLINS]
I wonder nowadays, there is a few who appreciate a loom at 13 years old, but probably they’d rather have a computer or cellphone or something, but that’s just how the times have changed.
I don’t know when I started weaving, but I know when I got involved in the weaving process. I was probably around 7, and I could wind the shuttles, because my legs were too short to sit on the chair. We didn’t have a bench on that loom like I have on mine here, so I would get the job winding the shuttles, putting the material on there, or maybe when they brought their balls, sort them into colors. We always had a job, to help with the weaving, and I enjoyed it. That’s what I’m still doing it today.
[Transition to Dee’s history]
DEE: I was born in Bartholomew County, and I lived in a log home. I was born and raised in a log home. It was my mother and my father and my sister and I, and we lived with my grandparents on my dad’s side. Then my dad got killed in 1938, and then my mother was there with just us two girls, and we just all lived in that log cabin.
When my dad and my uncle got killed, they were taking a load of cattle to Indianapolis, and a bus loaded of an orchestra or something, there was a young boy driving, and he hit, he didn’t make the curve, see. I mean who really knows what happened, but I mean, it killed, it knocked the whole bed off the truck, you know.
After my dad got killed, my mom and her sister-in-law, they had a sorghum mill also not too far from where we lived, and they would cook sorghum for people. They would bring their cane, and bring it over there, and one time mother said somebody didn’t have money to pay for cooking their sorghum, so they traded some chairs. Mother got the chairs for the sorghum, so it was kind of like if you didn’t have any money, they would do some trading.
And then my mother wove rugs. She would weave for a woolen mill in Seymour. And she done that because somebody had to pay the bills since my dad was gone. We lived with my grandparents, but like I say, we worked together. And that’s how she would pay the bills to support us.
The old loom was in the summer kitchen which was detached from the house, and in the winter then, it was cold. There was no heat in there. We would dismantle the loom and take it into the log cabin in that living room, which you weren’t in there very often. And we would nail it to the floor so that mother could weave, and like I said, to pay the bills. Then, when spring came, we’d take it apart again and take it back to the summer kitchen. And you know, that was her way she made a living. But you’d really have to work hard or charge a lot more nowadays. I wish I really knew what she charged, but probably just 50, 75 cents a yard would be my guess, back in them days.
People say “how did you do that?” Well, maybe we didn’t know any better, but that’s all that we had. I mean, we had to do with what you had. We just done everything we needed together, we made the garden; we’d butcher; we just worked together as a group. We raised some baby calves. We milked by hand. We had our milk bucket and a stool, and we would milk. My mother, she would get up every morning and start the fire in the kitchen. She’d have it warm when we’d get up every morning. We slept upstairs. There wasn’t any heat up there at all, which nowadays is probably unknown to a lot of people because we’ve got our houses all insulated better. We didn’t have any insulation, just the logs.
My mother, I never did hear her complain, you know. I mean, she had a great faith, and she knew she had to do it. I mean, but she had help with my grandma, and of course my sister and I got older, we would help, but I never heard my mother complain, like “why me?” And also my aunt didn’t, and she had four children to raise, and neither one of them ever remarried.
[Transition to Margaret weaving]
[BARTHOLOMEW COUNTY, INDIANA]
MARGARET: I’m Margaret Luckey Snyder. I am Dee Neirman’s niece. I still live on the same family farm where Dee and my mom, Virginia grew up. Weaving has been in my life all my life. My grandmother, since her husband died early, my mom was only nine, so she has always lived with us, or we’ve always lived with her. So, she was the weaver that I’m aware of. The loom that I weave on is the original loom that was here at the homestead. It was in the log house, and when we moved over here, it stayed in the log house. And that’s where I remember weaving for the first time. And it’s a similar story to my aunt’s, you know, your legs aren’t long enough to do the weaving, so you did the other things. You wound the shuttles, or you put the warp on the warping bars if you were tall enough to reach to the top, so you did that first. I can’t say what age that was, but it was pretty young. It’s just always been a part of my family, my life really.
My favorite part of the weaving, I think, is the finished product. When I’ve taken something that looks like scraps laying on the floor, or that you know is now being used for the second time--for instance, the blue jean rugs. Or wool that we get is basically throw away selvedges that would just be waste products for them. So the finished product of taking something that looks like rags on the floor, and make it into a rug that is useable, that somebody enjoys, that really wants in their home, that is the highlight of my weaving. And I also enjoy going to the craft shows and meeting different people. And even if it’s not people buying, it’s people there selling something, and seeing what they are selling. So that’s part of a community that is kind of nice to stay involved with.
[Transition to craft shows]
MARGARET: That’s good.
Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.
DEE: I’ll carry them out, and you can stack them?
MARGARET: When we go to craft shows, you meet a lot of different people. You get opportunities to see different areas of the country, and you know, different artisans that are there. When I was starting to weave, the church group would have people donate them rags, and then they would cut them up, and have me weave them for them to make some money for church projects, so you know it’s just always been a part of this community, regardless of if it was my grandmother weaving or my great aunt that was weaving.
DEE: Well, we do Fort Vallona in October every year, and I do Milan. We did do one up around Indianapolis a couple of years ago, I forgot the name of where we went, but we just did that one time, and we did ok. But, it depends on, of course I do other things too, how much you get done, you can’t do a lot of shows. Margaret goes with me, and she does a few, but she has a full-time job, even though she works at home, so I’ve always done these two for years and years--probably 25 years or so.
DEE: Hey Jan, how are you? We just said you hadn’t got here yet.
MARGARET: Do you need help unloading?
CUSTOMER: I’m just glad you’re here. My granddaughter said: “I hope the rug people are there!”
DEE: I have woven for people have put them on their horses as blankets under their saddle. I have woven for children to take their nap on in kindergarten, a mat. I have woven for a yoga mat--a lady not too many years ago, for yoga. Decoration, a lot of it is nowadays, where we really used it for a purpose, they call that a purpose nowadays, and it is, but a different purpose. I mean, I never did yoga. I might not get off the mat at my age, but I think that’s kind of interesting … it’s not just for your feet, you know. It’s changed a lot.
[Transition to warping section]
DEE: I learned to warp by watching my mom. She would warp, we had the warping bars in the old summer kitchen on the south wall, I remember. And she would warp, but we would just more or less watch her, because even after we got older, we said, we ought to write this down, which we haven’t yet. It’s just passed from one generation to the other.
I can hear her, I can hear her. She’d run ten spools, which I do. And if I think about it, I can just hear them running, when she would go back and forth, just like a roar til she got to the other end, then back to the other. I go back out there yet, of course the summer kitchen is gone, but I can just almost hear that. There’s the atmosphere I guess of being home.
It takes about four hours to get it on the warping beam. It takes about two hours, then you have to braid that off. Now, my husband will come down there and hold that til I get it braided off of there. If I’m on this end, he’ll hold the other end, because if you don’t it may a whole bunch come off, then you really do have a mess. Like 60 yards of warp right there. Then to take it over to the loom, it takes about a half-an-hour to put it on there, then it takes me another hour to tie the old and the new warp together, so you’ve got roughly four hours, 3 and a half good, and then you get your tension set. So, most people don’t stick around that long you know.
It takes one to hold, like you are driving a team, with those two braids. And one turns it, and I usually guide it onto the warp beam back there. So, uh, it takes three. Glen and I have done it, but it’s a job for two to do all that, but three works fine, great.
[Transition to materials/aesthetics section]
DEE: It’s just kind of on and on and on, repetitious.
What I call a good rug, and I’m not offensive to nobody, I mean, there are all kinds of rugs. But it’s beat tight together. And I use through each heddle, double strings, double slay. My mom always called it double slay, two through there. And when you beat it with my big barn loom, that big beam, that really puts it tight in there. I mean a lot of looms, bigger ones will weave a rug, but you don’t have that beater bar that’s heavy, like the ones like I have on the old handmade looms. And I consider that best, because when you beat them together, you can’t see through there, or stick your fingers through there hardly between each shot through there.
In fact, some of the brown ones I have in here, I bought them at an auction. This one, and that one, and that one. I bought them at an auction. I wove them for my cousin’s wife probably twenty years ago, and I’ve probably had them ten years, because when they passed away I bought them back.
Cotton soaks up everything, now wool kind of sheds dirt. You can shake a lot of that off. I always say, if you look at the sheep, he might be dirty on top, but if you part that wool and look down there, it’s white. So, I really like the wool to weave. That’s my choice.
The material comes from Pendleton Woolen Mills in Portland, Oregon. They’re sending me, if they weave suits or something, skirts or whatever, and then they cut them edges off, and that falls in a box, and that’s what I get. It’s already maybe an inch wide or so, and all you have to do is wind it. Or you don’t even have to, you could just leave it in the sack, but I usually wind it and put it on shelves. I like to choose the colors, now I have no choice when I call to order it. They’re not weaving for me to do rugs, they are weaving for either blankets or clothing, and you have to take what they send you. When I get the box of materials and see what color it is and then put it together, maybe if you get two or three colors you can make stripes. Or you can just make a rug out of one color, but it’s fun sometimes to make it striped. And you know, I don’t sketch what it’s going to be, I just put it as it comes, just random. And it turns out pretty good, usually pretty good. I’m pretty satisfied with them. But I enjoy that. And then you’ve made something usable.
MARGARET: Some of the qualities for a good weaver, I believe, is detail. You probably need to have a little bit of an artistic eye, and I’m gonna say a little bit, because I wouldn’t say for me personally being able to put colors together is a high point. I can do it, but know of a lot more people who are better at putting colors together, matching and seeing what goes together sooner than I do, so I don’t think that’s essential, but obviously you have to know a little bit about color and what looks good together.
With us both weaving, I think she’s helped me appreciate a little bit more of a color palette. Sometimes she’ll look at a rug and just be so excited about weaving that one when she gets the material. And I’m looking at the same one thinking “Yeah, that’s probably not the first one I would have pulled off the shelf, but she’s always right. It makes a beautiful rug when she puts it together.
[Transition to cutting rug off the loom / ending sequence]
DEE: I’m kinda I guess you could say a sentimental person, and to realize that clear back three generations they done this for, some of them, to really help support their families. And then, like I say, I’m very sentimental about that to think that it’s still going on. And they would be very pleased to know that those same old looms are going.
I hope to pass it on to someone. I have no children and I have just two nieces and they have no children, so therefore it wouldn’t be like a direct, blood relatives down, but I would hope that somebody keeps it up, and if not, well that’s the end of an era.
MARGARET: I’m not sure which, if life is helping me with my weaving, or if weaving is helping me with my life. It’s still detail, it’s still honesty. You know, you don’t want to make a rug that you know there is something wrong with it and pass it off. The way you live your life is the way you should make your rugs.
DEE: It’s still important to me to weave as long as I can because through life you’ve have to do a lot of things you don’t want to do. But, that’s one thing, it’s kind of relaxing for me, it really is. I like to learn how things are done or made, or something like that. Of course, we grew up quilting and tatting. I do a little quilting, tatting, crocheting, little needlepoint, I’ve tried a lot of things, spinning. But I still always go back to the weaving because I like that. It reminds me of mom.
[Credits]
WEAVING INDIANA
FEATURING DEE NIERMAN AND MARGARET LUCKEY SNYDER
WITH GLEN NIERMAN AND TOTO
A PRODUCTION OF TRADITIONAL ARTS INDIANA
PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY CLAIRE GILLETT
ADVISING COMMITTEE: PRAVINA SHUKLA, JASON BAIRD JACKSON AND JON KAY
ADDITIONAL ADVISING: MARJORIE HUNT
TECHNICAL SUPPORT: EMMA GILLETT
PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE: JANELLE AZMY
EQUIPMENT PROVIDED BY IU SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COMMONS
PHOTOS COURTESY OF DEE NIERMAN AND MARGARET LUCKEY SNYDER & JACKSON COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
MUSIC “YOUR LOVE” BY YUNG LOGOS
MUSIC “MEANT TO BE” BY OAK STUDIOS
SPECIAL THANKS TO: GLEN NIERMAN, ROGER SNYDER, BARTHOLOMEW COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY, IU LIBRARIES MOVING IMAGE ARCHIVE, JANELLE AZMY, EMILY BIANCHI, KATYA CHOMITZKY, LOUISA BALLIF, ERICA MCFARLAND, JAMIE THOMAS, AUSTIN GILLETT, ERIC GILLETT, KIM GILLETT
TRADITIONAL ARTS INDIANA IS FUNDED BY THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS, THE INDIANA ARTS COMMISSION, AND INDIANA UNIVERSITY
COPYRIGHT 2023 BY CLAIRE GILLETT
