Tapestry Weaving, Tapestry Diary
Rebecca Mezoff
Practicing color: simplifying by focusing on ...

Using colors we observe around us as subjects for our weaving or other artwork is something I find endlessly engaging. It has the power to pull even the biggest perfectionists among us away from self-criticism and dump us right into the joy of experiencing the color of almost anything.

Last week I on the blog I released a free mini-course where I talk about my sketch tapestry practice. Sketch tapestry is just my word for a practice of taking some time to observe something, make some notes about it, and then weave a simple tapestry about what I experienced.

The mini-course focuses on the colors of something. You can find the post, download your handout, and watch the videos from here: https://rebeccamezoff.com/blog/2025/5/8/practicing-color-a-free-mini-course

This week I wanted to focus on what you all are weaving. I haven’t seen a lot of finished tapestries yet, but I’m hoping many more of you will jump in and post your color weavings. Below are a few of the examples I’ve seen so far along with my own mini-course tapestry about a cactus flower.

Practicing color: simplifying by focusing on color
Tapestry Diary, Tapestry Weaving
Rebecca Mezoff
Practicing color: a free mini-course

Every year I run a class I call Summer of Tapestry. It revolves around a practice I’ve had for many years of bringing a small loom with me when I’m hiking or traveling and weaving something about what I experienced or saw. I call the practice sketch tapestry because my goal is to capture something interesting about the experience, not to replicate what I saw in a realistic way.

I find that the practice of really looking at something and then weaving about it makes me pay attention instead of just rushing blindly through the experience and more generally, my life. The inspirations I’ve woven something about are things that I remember months and years later.

Practicing color: a free mini-course

Julia Child

Art as a practice

I just saw the movie Julie and Julia.  I enjoyed it.  In case you haven't seen it, the premise is that a young writer named Julie Powell is working her way through all the recipes in Julia Child's French cookbook in a year and blogging about it (no, I haven't missed the irony that watching a movie about a blog got me blogging--something I haven't done in a month it seems).

My questions as I left the theater were simply these:
Can weaving be a practice that is done daily like Julie's project?  and what is the value in that?
Is a project like this a good way to learn focus?  Focus seems like a necessary ability for a tapestry weaver or nothing is produced.
How is it that I haven't woven anything since Emergence came off the loom in June?  How does life slip away like that?  We only have this one short and precious life.  To let the days slip by unnoticed is not the way I want to live it.
Tommye Scanlin is weaving a calendar tapestry--one block for every day in 2009.  This idea is perhaps starting to get at my nascent thoughts about focus and having a project that moves you along one day at at a time.  And her calendar tapestry is really interesting!

And there are more thoughts about art as a spiritual practice.  What else can it really be anyway?  Most of us aren't going to make a living off of it, and so I think we have to do it because it is what we love and making art is what helps us see our own soul.

Editor's note (okay, I don't have an editor, it's just me):  I wrote this post on the date you see but am just "finishing" it today... hmmm, lack of focus?  Too much going on?  I have finished a piece since this post.  Yeah!  Ready for another one.