Designing for Tapestry

Color play at Harrisville Designs

Color play at Harrisville Designs

In late June I taught a week-long class at Harrisville Designs in Harrisville, NH. I love visiting Harrisville for so many reasons. I think the main reason is that it is a place full of heart. It is a beautiful small town filled with kind people. From the friendly greeting from the librarian to the chatty cooks at the General Store and the local mechanic who helped me after hours with a car problem^ to the oh-so-helpful postmaster who shipped my boxes home, the people are solid.

I can’t say enough good things about Harrisville Designs itself either. What a place of wonder it is. Any working mill is fascinating to me. Turning piles of fleece into yarn is magic.* The owners of Harrisville, Chick, Pat, and their son Nick Colony are so interested in what the students are doing. They embody the friendly, community-centered nature of the business and the town. The shopkeepers who will greet you with their knowledge of yarn, knitting, and weaving and make you feel like you’ve come home are all exceptional humans. I have to give a huge thank-you to Sara Parker who not only helped me run a successful workshop but she got me out of a self-imposed and potentially disastrous jam one night.

Designing palettes for tapestry weaving

Designing palettes for tapestry weaving

This month I had the good fortune of leading a retreat all about color use in tapestry. Our focus was designing color palettes for our work. I suppose we could say we were playing with the process of choosing colors. Color is a big part of designing and tapestry weaving has its own particular set of challenges and advantages when using color.

We do not have the advantages a painter does in that they can modify colors endlessly by just adding a bit more of this or that hue to the mix to shift a color. But we can use weft bundling to change the perceived color of a weft bundle. That is all about optical mixing which is always a focus in any tapestry color class.

Palette Scout: Choosing colors for tapestry and other fiber art applications

Palette Scout: Choosing colors for tapestry and other fiber art applications

I’ve been teaching color for tapestry weaving in Vermont and New Hampshire this month and I was excited to add this color tool to my toolbox just before I left on the trip. We were able to use the Palette Scout in both of the workshops I taught.

There is a lot of power in a color swatch tool like this. There are many color tools out there and I introduce many of my favorites in various online classes such as Design Solutions, but this one is different in that each hue is on a different card. That means that you can move the cards around as you create a palette and that makes all the difference.

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Learning design skills and having fun in the process

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Learning design skills and having fun in the process

Have you reached that point in tapestry weaving where you feel you have a decent or even excellent grasp of technical issues but you are unsure how to design your own images? This happens to almost all of us, so you’re not alone. Designing is simply a skill and it can be learned.

There is a lot of pressure in the art world. How many messages do we get telling us that you have to be born with some sort of special talent or that you have to go to art school to make “good” art? Those messages are everywhere in our culture and it is easy to let those messages keep you from creating.

The truth is that designing for tapestry or any art medium is simply a skill and that skill can be learned.

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How much of your tapestry warp is useable?

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How much of your tapestry warp is useable?

For many of us, not wasting things is important. When it comes to weaving and warp however, there will always be some warp you can’t use. How much is that?

The answer of course depends on the loom and your tolerance for easy versus not-so-easy weaving. As I discussed here on the blog a few months ago, the longer the loom is, the easier the weaving is. But it is possible to weave all the way to the end of a warp where you have no shed at all. If you’re willing to do that, you’ll get the award for most warp used.

I prefer to have some loom waste and have an easier time weaving. All forms of weaving except for four-selvedge methods involve some loom waste. The video below discusses how much extra warp you need to leave on a continuously warped loom such as the Mirrix or Arras. This concept will help you decide on loom size and warp length as you set up your next tapestry weaving.

The magic of colored yarn

The magic of colored yarn

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 when woven in warm and cool colors.

Season 2 of Design Solutions for the Artist/Weaver

Season 2 of Design Solutions for the Artist/Weaver

Last year I started an online course about designing for tapestry weaving. This is a subject that I find students frequently struggle with and there are many things about design that are particular to tapestry weaving’s techniques, tools, and materials.

We had a great deal of fun last year in Season 1. Season 2 of the course is about to start. The class is now open for registration with more information on my website here: https://rebeccamezoff.com/design-solutions-season-2

The course content opens on Monday, January 11th and you’ll want to register soon to maximize your time with Module 1’s material before registration closes the end of the month.

The video below is a short look at what you’ll see in the course.