[title subtitle=”story: Marla Cantrell | images: Mark Mundorff”][/title]
Jan Bryant is bracing for another winter in Arkansas. It’s a season she loves. Time slows down, the land around her settles in, no longer needing mowing, no longer needing weeding, and she has time at her loom. In a nearby room, stacks of fabric wait: old bed sheets, blue jeans worn soft from wear, the last yard of fabric she found in the discount bin at a local store.
These pieces she will turn into rugs and placemats and table runners that she sells at the Fayetteville Farmers’ Market. She takes the material, cuts it with a rotary blade into even strips that are then sewn together to make even longer pieces. Her husband has threaded the wooden wonder, and it looks as if a crafty spider’s been at work. Jan sits at the loom, weaving the fabric in and out of the perfectly spaced heavy thread. When she reaches the end of a line, she pulls the wooden bar toward her to tighten the weave and keep it even.
Today she’s working with a peach colored sheet patterned with butterflies. As the placemat starts taking shape, the butterflies disappear and a subtle pattern emerges. Jan loves this transformation, taking what’s ordinary and turning it into a thing of beauty.
Another thing she enjoys is taking old clothes mass produced in other countries and turning them into something created by hand in Arkansas. “I keep those clothes out of the landfills, which is important to me,” Jan says. “I only use reclaimed products, something I truly believe in.”
Her love of weaving began when she was still living in Iowa, working as a home economics teacher. She had a small loom in the classroom, and she enjoyed using it. “I wanted to take lessons at a studio but I didn’t have an appointment. When I went, they handed me a book to read. So, I learned from a book.”
It wasn’t long before Jan was weaving rag rugs. “I remember when I was a kid,” Jan says, “we’d go to the church bazaar and get rugs to put on the floors. Things weren’t carpeted then; there was a lot of hardwood. And the rugs were decoration then. Of course, at that time, homes weren’t all color coordinated. You used what you had. I always identified with that kind of thing, and with handwork.”
So when she moved to Lincoln, Arkansas from Iowa in 1989, she was ready to do even more weaving. She bought a loom at an auction and got serious about her craft. But at the same time Jan and her husband were trying to build an orchard, grow a garden, and get used to their new home. “We needed seasons, spring and fall, and a little bit of winter. Snow one day, gone the next. That appealed to us. As time’s gone by, the orchard’s fallen off some. We have a little produce in the summer, but mostly we do crafts now. Me with the loom, him with his birdhouses.”
Jan smiles, and her face lights up. “I’d rather be weaving than weeding,” she says.
At eighty-one, she finds the work gratifying. She feels lucky that she hasn’t suffered from any aches and pains that make weaving difficult. “I don’t have carpal tunnel,” she says, “so that’s a blessing. Sometimes my back gets tired, but that’s about it.”
At the Fayetteville Farmers’ Market, customers often snap pictures with Jan. She brings her portable loom with her, so passersby can see how her products are made. There is something endearing about her; she has a grandmotherly voice, soft and gentle. Often she wears a bonnet to shield her from the sun. And always, always, her hands are moving. The crowds seem to love that there’s a story behind the things they buy. But it’s what happens when they take her products home that makes Jan really happy.
“I have so many repeat customers. They’ll tell me that my rugs or placemats last much longer than anything they can buy at the store.”
Jan’s weaving has also spilled over into her family life. Now, on vacations with her husband, they’ll find themselves scouting out resale shops and places like Goodwill. “My husband’s become as good a rag hound as I am. He can tell what’s going to look good when it’s woven. That’s one of the best parts of weaving; you never know how a pattern’s going to turn out. And people have started giving us rags. I weave a lot of bed sheets into placemats because they’ve been washed and washed and are really soft. And one of my best sellers is a rug I make using what I call a hobnail bedspread, with all those little puffs that make it like a foot massage to walk on.”
The only place Jan sells is at the Farmers’ Market. Word has spread about her products and she can hardly keep up. That’s why she waits for winter. The market on the Square shuts down on November 23, and that gives Jan time to replenish her stock for spring. It takes her about a day to weave a rug. It takes longer to get the rags ready for weaving. “A basic sheet will just barely make four placemats, so if I want a set of six I have to weave something else in with it. Decisions take a little while. What goes with what. And that’s before I have to cut it into strips. It makes me go to my rag room, and I do have a rag room. I have plenty of things in there, but there are times when you just can’t turn something down. I’ll think, I’ll never see this again, and I grab it.”
No one would fault Jan for taking the winter off, maybe heading to Florida and sitting on the beach. But that wouldn’t suit her at all. “It’s really good if you like to work and you have work that you like. That’s a real blessing for me.”
If Jan has one wish at all, it’s that others take up the craft. “I have people come by and talk to me. They’ll tell me they remember their grandmother weaving. And I always say, ‘Where’s that loom now? Is somebody using it?’ Oftentimes they’re stored away. I want people to keep the craft going. It’s not hard to do. And now there’s YouTube, so there’s really no excuse.”
With that, Jan returns to her latest project. She is smiling, sitting here at her loom, happy to be working, happy that she loves her work.
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Jan sells her products exclusively at the Fayetteville Farmers’ Market at 101 West Mountain Street on Saturdays from 7-2, through November 23. If you can’t make it, don’t worry, she’ll be back in the spring.
