Thread by thread: Kate Chitwood finds peace and patience at the loom

By Chelsea Retherford | Staff Writer

For Sheffield weaver Kate Chitwood, every hour at the loom is a lesson in patience. The meticulous process is slow and deliberate, but it’s one she finds deeply satisfying.

“It’s very soothing,” she said, then paused and added with a laugh, “when things are going well.”

At 76, she has spent more than three decades weaving threads into cloth, finding beauty in both the repetition and the rhythm of creation. Inside her home is a room dedicated solely to her craft.

The walls are shelved with rows of colorful yarn and unique tools she’s acquired over the years. At the center of it all sits her loom, its wooden frame strung with hundreds of taut threads.

“You can’t produce fabric quickly,” she said. “But that’s part of what makes it so satisfying. There’s just something about touching the threads and seeing it all come together.”

Before Chitwood learned the language of warp and weft, she worked in another kind of pattern-making — computer programming.

“I was in the right place at the right time,” she said, explaining her career choice. “I was working for a petroleum engineer, and he was doing some programming. I said, ‘You know, I probably ought to learn more about that.’”

Still living in Dallas at that time, Chitwood enrolled in a community college course in the 1970s, when computers took up the space of an entire room.

“Things were very different,” she said. “It was all mainframe computers, and it was all very new.”

That first class launched a long career in programming, ultimately at a Dallas bank. Looking back, Chitwood now sees more overlap than contrast between the two worlds.

“There’s a lot of math involved in weaving, and the pattern process — it’s very much like programming,” she explained. “On the surface, they don’t seem the same, but there are similarities.”

Both require precision, patience, and a willingness to problem solve.

“There’s a lot of angst involved when you find a mistake,” she admits. “Sometimes, you have to start all over. It depends how far back it was.”

Chitwood discovered weaving in the early 1990s, long before she retired.

“It’s just something I had always been fascinated by,” she said. “My mother was a fine seamstress, and I sewed a lot growing up. I knitted and crocheted as a child, and then on and off again as an adult. The idea of being able to make cloth — I thought that was such a wonderful thing. When I finally had the opportunity to take a class, I was hooked.”

That class came through the Dallas Hand Weavers Guild, which offered instruction and studio access. Over several weeks, Chitwood learned how to “dress the loom” — a complex setup that involves threading each individual strand through heddles and reeds before the weaving even begins.

“It’s not difficult, but it is slow,” she said. “The actual weaving part — throwing the shuttle back and forth — doesn’t take nearly as long as getting ready to do that.”

Weaving quickly became her creative outlet from the structured, logical world of programming.

“I don’t think I was conscious of needing that balance at the time,” she said, “but it certainly was helpful.”

After retiring in 2005, Chitwood continued weaving in her home state of Texas for many years before relocating to the Shoals in 2019 to be closer to her sister, Ellen Davis.

“She had married a forestry major and moved up here about 30 years ago,” Chitwood explained. “When I was downsizing and ready for a smaller place, this just seemed like the right time.”

As it turned out, the timing wasn’t quite so ideal.

Soon after the last moving box was unpacked, COVID-19 struck and with it came the pandemic shutdowns. Still, Chitwood soon found a way to connect with other fiber artists in her new community.

A year or so later, while attending a class at the Kennedy-Douglass Center for the Arts, she met and befriended another local crafter, the late Sandra Bell.

“Sandy was the first weaver I met here,” Chitwood said. “This is such a wonderful place for artists and craftspeople. We met another weaver, and since then, we’ve kind of all come together. We’ve picked up people as we’ve gone along.”

That small circle of artists eventually became Weavers of the Shoals, a group of seven who gather once a month to share projects, discuss techniques, and cheer each other on.

“You find your tribe — people who have the same interests and speak the same language,” Chitwood said. “When you’re in settings like that, it just fosters more creativity. You spark off each other.”

The group often demonstrates weaving at Belle Mont Mansion in Tuscumbia, introducing visitors to the centuries-old craft and encouraging newcomers to try it for themselves.

Around her living room, Chitwood displays an array of finished pieces — neatly folded towels, vibrant placemats, textured scarves, and woven purses. Though each piece is a work of art, she prefers to think of them as practical.

“I focus on goods for the house, you know, things that are functional,” she said. “It would be a terrible thing to do all this work and have it sit in a drawer.”

Her design process begins with color.

“I spend a lot of time looking at yarn and thread and thinking about how I can combine them,” she says. “If you want to make a scarf, it needs to have more drape and be softer than a placemat. That drives the materials you select.”

The process involves plenty of trial and error.

“You weave samples, wash them, and then decide if that’s really suited to the project you want to make. Sometimes you have to go back to the drawing board,” she said. “I often go back to the drawing board,” she added with a laugh.

This winter, Chitwood’s work will again be featured in the Tennessee Valley Museum of Art’s Winter Art Market, an annual showcase of regional artists and makers.

“It’s really a great opportunity for artists to display their work and communicate with people about what they’re doing,” she said. “The museum does a fabulous job of displaying and handling all the sales — just taking care of everything for us.”

Though she occasionally incorporates bright reds and greens for the season, she keeps her approach subtle.

“Sometimes, I’ll have Christmas colors and bright holiday colors,” she explained, “but I don’t weave Christmas trees into my placemats.”

This year, production slowed after she injured her shoulder in March.

“I tried to power through it,” she said. “But eventually I started physical therapy, and it’s much better now. I’m learning to pay attention to my body.”

Weaving, she admits, can be physically demanding.

“That repetitive motion over and over — it can take a toll,” she said. “But it’s still what I love to do.”

Each piece in Chitwood’s home carries a story. A reversible placemat demonstrates two distinct patterns woven from the same warp threads. A shimmering scarf hides tiny sequins threaded within the weave.

Nearby sits a miniature tabletop loom — a fully functional version of her larger one. She uses it to weave narrow bands, ribbons, and decorative ties.

“We weavers have all kinds of tricks,” she said, lifting a small box filled with narrow, brightly colored strips.

While many of those colorful bands are her own work, Chitwood brought out another basket filled with intricately patterned cords all woven by other artists from afar.

“My sister and I took a couple of trips to Peru to meet weavers in the mountains around Cusco,” she said. “It was life-changing. It really, really was.”

That first inspirational trip happened somewhat by chance. Chitwood had joined an email list for people interested in weaving and textiles. When someone in the mail chain posted about an upcoming trip, Chitwood decided to look further into it.

“This was in 2001, and it was really an unusual trip,” she said. “It was organized by an anthropologist who had lived in Peru and studied the society there for quite a long time. His daughter, who had spent formative years there, was in this group too, and it was all structured around weaving.”

Learning about those traditional practices taught Chitwood even more about her own craft.

“This piece was actually made from two — woven and cut and then seamed together to give it more width,” she said, pointing to a handwoven Peruvian tapestry on her bedroom wall. “They were working on backstrap looms.”

Backstrap looms, she explained, are as ancient as they are ingenious. The warp threads are tied to a post on one end and looped around the weaver’s back on the other. The artist creates tension by leaning back and forth, controlling every strand with their own body.

“They use their cloth for everything,” Chitwood added. “They carry things with them, they spread them on the ground. This is all handspun yarn too. They make things that are pretty yet durable. It’s meant to be used.”

Those informative trips to South America as she was honing those talents perhaps also led Chitwood to pursue mostly practical projects. Whether she’s creating dish towels or complex scarves, she approaches each new piece with the same calm curiosity that first drew her to the craft.

“I stand in front of that wall of yarn and think, ‘What would be fun to work on? What colors would be fun to work with?’” she said. “Sometimes, I see an idea in a weaving magazine, or sometimes it just comes from sitting down at the loom.”

Even after 30 years, she still sees weaving as both challenge and comfort — a way to think through problems with her hands.

“When you sit at the loom, it’s like meditation,” she said. “If you watch the process, I think you get a feel for how relaxing and Zen-like it can be. You find your rhythm, and it’s just peaceful.”