I love yarn in a fairly fierce way. I think some of that attraction to this material has to do with the deep nature of color expressed in yarn. Wool yarn especially takes dye in a beautiful, rich way. Wool being the primary material in my tapestries means that I get to use this gratifying material in all my work.
The second season of the Design Solutions course launched this month* and the first module has information on using warm and cool contrast in design. I had a lot of fun playing with these concepts as I put the course together and one of the last things I did for the first module was weave two tiny Fringeless tapestries. One was in warm colors, one in cool colors. I just wanted to see what the same sort of design looked like in two different colorways, one cool, one warm.
Samples being woven in warm and cool colors on two copper pipe looms for the Design Solutions for the Artist/Weaver, Season 2 online course with Rebecca Mezoff.
Much of my work utilizes cool colors. I’m drawn to violets and blue-violets especially and so my work is heavy in these colors. I’ve grown comfortable in the land of blue and have had some real resistance to making tapestries that are made of predominantly warm colors. I don’t know if that will ever change to a large extent, but this little exercise was a fun one.
Just picking out the warm colors proved challenging! I have a very large collection of weaversbazaar yarns because I’ve been using them for teaching color and design workshops for several years now. Since COVID I haven’t taught any workshops and I’ve been using those yarns myself. As I chose the warm colors, I kept trying to push them toward red-violet, even sneaking in some lavender at one point which I made myself remove.
I really like the resulting weavings. They’re just tiny samples, 2 x 3 inches, woven in wedge weave on a Fringeless four-selvedge warp. But they pleased me immensely. I loved how the feeling of the two pieces was completely different even though the design was quite similar.
I hope whatever you’re weaving, you are playing with color theory as you work. Tapestry is such a wonderful medium for learning about color! Next on my loom will be samples for simultaneous contrast. Nothing is more fun than making one color look like another!
The final 2 x 3 inch tapestries in warm and cool colors. Samples for Design Solutions for the Artist/Weaver, Season 2 with Rebecca Mezoff
*If you’d like to join Design Solutions, Season 2, registration is open through January 31 and there is more information on my website here: https://rebeccamezoff.com/design-solutions-season-2