I’ve been weaving what I call my tapestry diary since November of 2016 when I did an artist residency at Petrified Forest National Park. I’ve had many posts about this practice over the last almost four years and I wanted to gather them all together here. I’ve also added category tags to many posts and these are tagged and can be found from the list on the blog. That list is on the right side on a computer and larger mobile devices (iPad) and is at the bottom of the blog list on a mobile phone. The tapestry diary posts are categorized Tapestry Diary and if you’re looking for something in another category, say, Looms or Yarn, that will help you out!
The Tapestry Diary
The tapestry diary has been a place for me to play, work through events, remember places, and mostly just mess around with small looms. These pieces have all been small because that is part of the point. I sometimes call the practice sketch tapestry and have taught workshops about it. But you don’t need a workshop to quickly understand the concept. Weave something from an idea or a quick sketch that is simple and aims to evoke a place, something simple you saw, or an emotion. I like to keep these very small so they are finished quickly and I don’t get hung up on making them perfect. Ditch the perfectionism with this practice. It helps let go when things matter more.
People often ask me what I DO with the tapestry diary pieces. This is an excellent question. For the time being, I pin them to the wall in my studio. Each piece is tagged with the date I wove it, a title, materials, and possibly a reminder of what the piece was about. These are also cross-referenced in a journal about the project. I have some intention of mounting all of them in some way and showing them as part of a solo or group show. The specifics of that haven’t materialized, so for now they remain on my wall as inspiration.
I do notice that my attitude about these pieces is quite different than my work on other tapestries. If I label something “tapestry diary” in my head, I am much freer in my making of it. The process is more about reflecting on whatever the subject is and evoking that in a weaving. I’m less concerned with getting colors or forms right and often the pieces are completely abstract. I have really appreciated having a place to weave where I let myself off the hook in terms of producing something beautiful or that I really have any expectations about. The funny thing is that over the last couple years, these are the pieces I most often talk about on the blog and in live events like Change the Shed. Maybe that is all part of the learning process: letting go of perfectionism and being okay with the joy of making things.
The list below is only intended to help you find content that might be interesting to you. These are also all linked under the “Tapestry Diary” tag on the blog if you want to read all of them.
Tapestry Diary blog post list
August 19, 2020. Tapestry Diary: Weaving about the Cameron Peak Fire. This is my first post about this fire and weaving about it including the tapestry I wove early in August while backpacking in this area.
August 6, 2020. Making tapestry designs from nature. Information about some backpacking weaving as well as tips for how to do your own tapestry diary in this style.
July 16, 2020. Weaving in the wilderness (nearby). Spinning and weaving in the backcountry. The piece I was weaving here was from spindle-spun yarn with mostly just a simple color gradation.
June 4, 2020. Listen: A Tapestry. This post is about a Fringeless piece I did. It started as a way to experiment with a new tapestry yarn and revisit one I’ve used before and it became a reminder to myself of the first thing I need to do to be an anti-racist. This comes from the Black Lives Matter movement this summer in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The post is mostly a gallery of images of the piece as I wove it.
February 27, 2020. Tapestry Diary: Agnes Martin. I visited the Harwood Museum in Taos when teaching there in January and wanted to capture the feeling of being in the Agnes Martin room there. This tapestry diary piece is nothing at all like Martin’s paintings, but it does capture for me the feeling of sitting in this room looking at them.
November 27: 2019. Yarn experiments and more little weavings. I finished a piece about my artist residency time in Georgia while visiting New Mexico over Thanksgiving. The red door piece was woven in wedge weave. This post also has an image of what I bring with me when I travel (and am not backpacking!).
October 21, 2019. Fall in Colorado: Weaving leaves. This post talks about my ideas for another tapestry diary piece based on foliage change in Colorado. This post shows some sketchbook images and talks about how I came to a design.
August 22, 2019. A tapestry weaving demo. This post has a video of me weaving one of the tapestry diary pieces while camping. For the most part, it is just me weaving. There is a version of this video with commentary about what I’m doing as I work in the Weaving Tapestry on Little Looms online course.
August 18, 2019. Little Looms and Ani. Back when we didn’t have COVID, I was able to hear Ani DiFranco at Rocky Mountain Folks Festival. I wove a little leaf tapestry while listening.
August 17, 2019. Process not product, Travel weaving. This post talks more about how I bring many colors of yarn along when traveling and has a finished image of a backpacking tapestry.
August 1, 2019. Wet feet and weaving in the woods with a new yarn. Solo backpacking in the rain, wet feet from slogging through marshes, and weaving in the tent.
July 10, 2019. Weaving the rainbow in silk: Tapestry diary fun. I did a couple pieces with weaversbazaar silk and wool The forms were fun and this might be the only time I’ve sat down to watch multiple sporting events on television: the World Cup semi-finals.
June 25, 2019. Tapestry diary: The cabin that burned. One of my favorite places to walk to at CSU Mountain Campus when I teach retreats there is a cabin called Far Away. In 2019 it burned down just before we got there. This post shows some of my process of deciding on what I’d include in this little tapestry.
June 13, 2019. Weaving poppies in France. I didn’t have much time to weave on my tapestry tour of France in 2019, but I did weave a tapestry diary piece largely on the bus of the poppies we could see from the bus windows.
May 2, 2019. Making ugly things. A 3-part tapestry diary piece that I was pretty disappointed in. But there is learning there too.
December 4, 2018. The light will come back. Holiday weaving experiments.
December 2, 2018. Bootsy: A yarn-y love story. Bootsy and her tapestry… the subject matter taken from a story and a book from Chick-fil-A. I wove this one on a copper pipe loom, Fringeless.
November 23, 2018. Black warp on black Friday. Weaving a Fringeless piece on black warp (and why you might consider it).
October 26, 2018. Weaving the sky, a studio visit. Weaving another diary piece with a new yarn (Mountain Meadows) and a little video of me working on it in my studio.
October 18, 2018. Weaving the fall chamisa bloom. Inspiration from chamisa and sage and how I interpreted this into an abstract tapestry, four-selvedge.
September 11, 2018. Inhale. Several new tapestry diary pieces inspired by places and the need to rest.
July 26, 2018. Weaving on the road. Weaving at Mirror Lake in Colorado. Several different ideas here including making a mostly black yarn after Harrisville’s Nightshades with handspun, and another of the “Redacted” tapestry diary pieces.
July 12, 2018. Fringeless and other four-selvedge adventures. Various projects including making a new four-selvedge loom and jig and a “Redacted” piece.
July 5, 2018. Summer is for weaving. A few more little summer tapestry diary weavings.
June 20, 2018. Weaving four-selvedge in the Wasatch. My spouse was presenting at a conference at Snowbird and I went along. I had to work, but I also did some weaving.
March 21, 2018. February’s weave-along, #thetapestryheart. Images from my tapestry diary as well as some hearts woven by others.
March 9, 2018. Designing for tapestry. Talking about some other tapestry diary weavers, a video, and another list of roundup links!
January 11, 2018. A new tapestry diary and is a practice like this for you? Talking about starting this tapestry diary with some experimenting with sock yarn. (!!)
December 28, 2017. Wishes, self-care, and a new year. A holiday video and more images of tapestry diary pieces in progress.
July 7, 2017. My Hokett kit. This post is about what I carry with me in my travel weaving kit.
April 18, 2017. The weavings I did at Hambidge. I had an artist residency at Hambidge in 2017 and I did weave a few tapestry diary pieces while there. One of them is shaped four-selvedge.
April 12, 2017. Flowers, tapestry design, and spring water. The other two small tapestries I did a Hambidge are in this post.
December 22, 2016. A Review of the A-I-R tapestries. This is the post that has all the Petrified Forest National Park artist residency tapestries in it. There were 27 of them, one for each day I was in the park.
December 13, 2016. Leaving the desert. I did a series of posts with more details about the pieces I was weaving at Petrified Forest. This is one of them.
November 24, 2016. Go for a good wander. Another post about the Petrified Forest tapestries and walking in the desert.
November 16, 2016. The healing power of nature and some more little tapestries. Another post with Petrified Forest tapestries.
November 13, 2016. Artist-in-Residence, Petrified Forest National Park. This post has the first tapestries I did in the park in it.
Rebecca Mezoff, tapestry diary weaving
Have you been weaving any small tapestries in this style? Tell us in the comments!
Happy weaving.