Have you ever been several inches into a tapestry and had an overwhelming feeling that it just wasn’t working out? Maybe the colors are wrong or the forms just aren’t weaving well or you’ve chosen the wrong weft materials.
What do you do if you reach a point in a tapestry where you know you just have to start over?
On one of my recent pieces for the Pandemic Diaries series, I got about 3 inches into the weaving and realized I really hated what was happening with both the forms and the colors. I am weaving this piece as a way of cheering myself up at the end of a very long year and in the middle of a difficult election season in the USA. (WHY do our election “seasons” last so long? It feels like it has been an eon since this started.) To me, the piece is funny, though in a sarcastic, wry way, being a riff on the saying, “Going to hell in a handbasket.” The border of the tapestry is supposed to represent flames and though I did cartoon the forms I would weave I did not plan the colors beyond picking out a pile of warm colors and choosing them as I went. I hated the result.
First try on a tapestry. I started over after this.
It is possible that this scheme would have worked out fine when the piece was finished. This is the gamble with starting over. Sometimes you just don’t know whether something will work until the whole tapestry is done. I could have gone on faith and kept moving forward, but the pink especially bothered me and I wasn’t fond of the dark lines.
I redrew this part to look more like flames and chose a more cohesive set of colors in yellow, orange, and red. I also decided not to use the dark outlines but to use silk instead.
Here is what it looks like the second time around.
Second try on that same tapestry. It feels more like flames now. This piece is being woven sideways and from the front (gasp!).
I like this much better.
But of course, as usual, I still have questions. Will this wild frame detract from the center image? Is that yellow inside the center image at the top left too close to the rest of the yellow and should I change that? I think yes on the yellow, but I’ll just have to wait and see on the rest of it!
This is a double sett piece. It is warped with two thin warps at 8 epi and I separate them for some sections at 16 epi. I talk about why I do this in the Change the Shed episode on October 28th where I’m working on this piece. I am sure I’ll be showing this piece quite a few more times on Change the Shed before it is finished. More information about this free program I’m doing during the pandemic where we gather to talk about tapestry on YouTube Live can be found HERE.
Detail of the double sett, 8 and 16 epi.
Why would you want to start over?
I try not to have to do this to start with. Often I don’t like something momentarily but given time, it does work or I can fix it with a few simple tweaks and continue. It is rare that I’ll ditch an idea completely and start over as I did here. But if it has to be done, I usually do it for just a couple reasons.
The colors aren’t working. As in this case, I just didn’t like the randomness of the colors and that they weren’t really reading like flames in the design.
The forms are either not very tapestry-like or they aren’t giving the effect I want them to. In this case, the forms were easy to weave, but they didn’t feel like flames to me and that was important in this design.
In the case of this handbasket tapestry, I started over for both of those reasons.
Steps in “starting over” on a continuous warp
Looms like the Mirrix or the Schacht Arras are warped with a warping bar and a continuous warp. That warp turns around the loom allowing more clean warp to come down as you weave. As long as you have enough warp, you can just roll the part you’re abandoning to the back of the loom and start again as if you have a brand new warp. These are the steps I follow.
The new stretcher string on a Schacht Arras. This string does impede the ability to tilt the loom and I will cut it off soon so I can tilt this loom back and raise it a little bit on its feet because I’m hunching over as I’m weaving to see the 16 epi!
IF the part I’m abandoning has some redeeming feature such as I want to save it as a sample, I will put a header on it and a little waste yarn. Otherwise, I just leave it wherever I stopped and know I will throw it away. (Potentially you could unravel the weft yarn when the piece is off the loom and reuse it.)
Loosen the warp tension and pull the warping bar up the back of the loom, rotating the warp until you have a clean section on the front. Tighten the tension. If you have a bottom spring kit on your Mirrix, you need to take the warps out of the spring, but if you release the tension enough, you can put them back in after the woven part has moved past without even removing the spring.
Do whatever you normally do to prepare to start a piece. For me that is:
Put in a stretcher string to give me something firm to beat against—3 or 4 times across the loom.
Weave some waste. This keeps the tapestry together when it comes off the loom as I’m finishing it.
Put in my header and start the tapestry.
Start again and forget you ever had a misstep. It happens to all of us.
The first try rolled to the back of the Schacht Arras loom.
The new piece with the pink being waste and the old start at the back of the loom with free warp between them.
Why wouldn’t you unweave?
You could do this. In this case, unweaving 3 inches of work would have taken me many hours and absolutely wasn’t worth it to save the yarn for me. I have seen people cut out sections of weft and remove them more quickly and if you have a steady hand and sharp scissors, this is a good possibility. Just snip the weft between the warps and pull it out. If you cut a warp though, they’re difficult to fix on a continuously warped loom.
Things to consider
Do you have enough warp? This is the biggest one. I always have extra warp on purpose. I’d rather throw out some warp and have a nice weaving experience as well as having a bit extra in case I need to start over, then have to rewarp. If you don’t have enough warp, don’t consider trying to push it. Just rewarp.
Have you marked the cartoon on the warp with marker? If you are going to be weaving on the warp in an area that you have marked, this could be very confusing. Some people will make new marks with a different color marker and that is a possibility. If you can though, it is best to start with a clean section of warp.
If you are going to have some of the warp showing in the finishing either in a braid or in fringe, you also don’t want marks to show and they won’t come off. If you can’t get to an area of clean warp because you marked the whole cartoon on before realizing you wanted to start over, either unweave if the problem is just with colors and you’re not changing the cartoon shapes, or rewarp your loom.
I also changed the materials slightly on the second go of this piece. I decided I wanted to use some silk for outlines around the flames and I like the effect of that more than the dark outlines in the first try.
Practice is how we learn. The first try is now one of my Learning Experience samples.
Harrisville Koehler singles for the 8 epi areas, weaversbazaar 18/2 wool for the 16 epi areas, and silk from weaversbazaar used in the outlines of the flames.
What about on a floor loom (a loom with beams)
I weave my large tapestries on looms with beams. Starting over is even easier than on a continuously warped loom. When I warp my loom for a piece, I always include enough warp that I have about an extra yard or so. This is a just-in-case scenario and so I roll the weaving forward until it is past the front beam (or on a high-warp loom, until it is near the bottom beam out of the way) and start over exactly as I would a brand new warp. I prefer to just do that than to cut off the mis-start because on a floor loom I then have to retie the warp to the apron rod and do several inches of waste weaving to get the warps spaced evenly again. They’re already spaced well after the initial weaving so I don’t want to do that again.
I am more likely to unweave on my countermarche loom than on other looms because I am opening the shed with my feet and it is faster to take things out. But if I’m changing something drastically shortly after starting the piece, I have been known just to start over in this manner.
Starting over on a non-tensioned frame loom: Little Looms
If you are working on a very small loom, you’re just going to have to put on a new warp or unweave. It is unlikely that a tiny loom will give you enough room to start a new piece.
The Art of Tapestry Weaving: A Complete Guide to Mastering the Techniques for Making Images with Yarn by Rebecca Mezoff
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