It might be that we don’t talk about peri-menopause enough. I don’t know. I won’t belabor it, but I do think it can make a hilarious subject for a tapestry.
(A whole bunch of people just clicked away, didn’t they! I bet those of you left are over 40 and female… thanks to you my sisters).
In one of the Q&As I did for the Design Solutions class I was talking about the work of Pat Williams and how much I love it even though it is so different from my own work. And then I thought, why not? There isn’t any reason I can’t weave something funny and graphic.
I tend to do a lot of playing around with my tapestry diary/sketch tapestry practice. I figured that I could try a design like this, call it part of my tapestry diary which totally takes away any feeling that it has to be any “good”, and I’d see what happened. Then I decided I wanted to weave it larger and enter it in the American Tapestry Alliance’s Unjuried Small Format show, Renditions. So a 10 x 10 inch design was born.
Because, dear sisters, peri-menopause can be ignored for a long time if you’re diligent, but eventually your 47th birthday comes around and the hot flashes can’t be hidden.*
The Renditions show deadline has come and gone. I entered something else and now am working on this piece just for fun. Here is where it was a few days ago.
Rebecca Mezoff, Hot Flash (working title), 10 x 10 inches, wool, cotton
I am weaving it sideways with a doubled sett. that means that I’ve warped the loom for 16 epi but put two warps in each heddle so the shedding device pulls those two warps together and they’re woven as one. The largest parts of this tapestry (the yellow and light blue-green areas) are woven at 8 epi. But in the more detailed areas, I’m splitting those warps and weaving at 16 epi.
The design is simple—a foot sticking out of a flowered bed cover. After I started weaving I added a butterfly because the design felt like it was lacking something in that bottom right corner. And if there are no butterflies in your bedroom, maybe there are in your dreams. Better than a clothes moth anyway!
What you see here is the design marked on the warp.
Materials (because someone will ask): 20/6 cotton seine twine warp, Harrisville Koehler singles hand-dyed, weaversbazaar 18/2 wool, and weaversbazaar 60/2 silk. Loom is a Mirrix Big Sister.
Rebecca Mezoff, Hot Flash (working title) in progress
The detail photograph above shows a bit more of how this works.
I was working on this tapestry in some of my live Change the Shed broadcasts this week and will do so again tomorrow. I won’t answer all the how-to questions about how it works on the live broadcasts, but if you’re in my online courses, feel free to ask there.** I did talk about how it works to some extent in the first couple Change the Shed broadcasts.
Speaking of Change the Shed, it is going well. I’ve been doing it for a week now on YouTube and if you’d like to join in, it is at 10:30 MT HERE. There is more information about why I’m doing it and how it works on my website HERE.
*Never fear. I’ve done a lot of reading, diet manipulation, and added some things that are making a world of difference. I’m totally fine.
So far.
**Classes that I answer questions in, particularly Warp and Weft.