I’ve been working on a design for a new large format tapestry. At this point I’m still calling it the “rock piece” and it is fortunate that I have been using that term in my notes in various places for years because that consistency allowed me to unravel a little mystery last weekend. I’m pretty set on the cartoon for this piece and have even enlarged it full scale as I consider final color selections and potential ways to realize this idea. Seeing it full scale allows me to really see what the forms will be like when woven and gives me another opportunity to play with the design if I want to change it. Most of my decisions will have been made by the time I start weaving.
Last weekend I got an adorable set of photos from a friend who took her toddler to visit some sheep. And I spotted a bag of fleece in one of the pictures in the back of her car where he was sleeping on the way home, all worn out from learning about wool. I got excited enough to wish I was also going home with a new fleece and then remembered that I have a couple partial fleeces in the small storage space under the stairs. I popped right down there and dug them out. In my quest to find any other fleeces that might be hiding in various corners and bins, I did a pretty thorough search. In a little nook where we keep empty boxes, I found an entire large-sized black trash bag (in the USA they are for big outdoor garbage cans or leaves) full of dyed yarn in a gorgeous dusty violet color. I had no memory of dyeing it.
This is what was hiding in that black trash bag tucked under the stairs with the empty boxes. Rebecca Mezoff hand-dyed wool tapestry yarn.
It’s story became clearer when I dumped it out and found a date taped on one of the balls.
Date found on one ball allowing me to locate the dye formulas more quickly in my dye book.
After I located my dye book from that date, that allowed me to figure out what I was thinking when I dyed the yarn. There were 10 colors in gradation both in value and hue. I dyed this yarn two years ago. And I dyed it just before we had someone come and spend two weeks remodeling a shower attached to the studio (Slow. He was SO slow!). There was drywall involved and I was afraid that it would get into all of the yarn. Thus the big black plastic bag and the yarn located in a cupboard under the stairs.
Where it stayed for two years.
The contractor left but the yarn stayed there and was eventually forgotten as I worked through the final book edits.**
Weaving samples
For large tapestries, I very often weave some samples. Sometimes the samples are just for color, sometimes I’m trying a couple techniques and deciding between them. For the current piece, I have several samples in progress. I’m sampling for color with that re-discovered violet yarn to decide whether I’ll use that or another set of yarn that is in contention. In the image below I’m weaving the dusty blue-violet yarn and testing some outlines that I also need colors for. The empty warp on the right will be a color sample for another area of the tapestry.
The image below is some samples from past tapestries. The one on the right was the sample for Lifelines. When trying various color combinations, I’m careful to put tags on the yarn tails (and not to cut them off!). The second image is of some of those tags. The other side of the ones flipped over contains the dye formula.
Rebecca Mezoff, woven samples for various tapestries. Mostly I sample for color.
Tape tags on a tapestry color sample. Most of them contain the dye formula in this case, but sometimes I’ll just use a code if I’m more confident about the colors I’ll use. Often I’ll just use masking tape to make tags like this, though sometimes I’ll use those little paper hang tags as is shown in one case at the top of this image.
As I dye yarn, I keep samples of the things I’ve tried. I often weave large numbers of samples and this is valuable information for the future. Most of those sample amounts don’t become full amounts of yarn for a tapestry. But they might be useful for another tapestry. Dyeing samples is so time consuming, not keeping a record of this would be folly. I have several of these books with yarn samples. The current piece has been in the works so long with so many different possibilities and decisions that it has its own 3-ring binder of information. I include the yarn sample cards, notes and photographs of various woven samples (which I also tag so I know what that sample was for years from now), and sometimes I do colored pencil or Photoshop mock-ups of the colors that also get put in that binder.
The sample book so far for the “rock piece”. Some of those sets of yarn have been rejected, but the samples will be here for the next time I need a bright teal or orange yarn!
I think that this record keeping system would work well for any large project even if you don’t dye your own yarn. It might be useful to keep track of the yarns you did use in a piece including manufacturer and any color information so you could purchase those yarns again should you want them in another tapestry. There are more details about this below.
Making yarn dye sample cards
I use plain cardstock to keep my yarn samples on. This ever-growing collection of yarns I’ve dyed along with their formulas is an important reference to my work. It means that I don’t have to sample so much. A lot of the colors I’m interested in I’ve already dyed and if I locate a sample that has a formula attached to it, I can just dye the yarn instead of going through a lengthy sampling process.
You could use cards like this to track commercially dyed yarns also. It is a nice way to keep a record of what yarn you used for a tapestry. Make sure to label the cards with things like the date, dye formula if you dyed the yarn yourself, company and color name of the yarn if you purchased it, and include the title of the tapestry on every card. Believe me, cards get separated as you shuffle them around in future looking for colors for a new piece. Make sure every card has the information you’d need to keep the set together.
The gallery below has captions if you want more details on how to make these cards. Click to enlarge and hover for captions. I am using a regular size sheet of cardstock folded not quite in half with holes punched for a 3-ring binder on one side and holes for yarn samples on the other two edges.
What is your record keeping practice? This system of mine was influenced by Kate Larson’s way of keeping track of her own work in spinning, knitting, and embroidery. She has classes about this system and will freely share about it if you take one of her spinning workshops somewhere. Many other people use similar systems for organizing their work in any medium. If you have some tips or favorite approaches, please share in the comments!
Rebecca Mezoff, working on a large format tapestry design.
*You can see that story saved in my highlights at the top of my profile HERE. The highlight is labeled “rock piece” of course. That is a working title and I doubt the final title will have the word rock in it.
**And before you start worrying about my memory, a sweet friend in response to this story on Instagram* replied, “peri-menopause is no joke.” And all I can say to that is, Amen, sister. Amen.