Tapestry Diary

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Designing for tapestry

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Designing for tapestry

There are as many ways to design for tapestry as there are tapestry weavers. Everyone has to find their own way. But over the last couple years I have employed one particular technique that I find shakes my brain loose and helps me conquer the fear that comes up when designing large pieces.

I start small. I don't have any fear at all about making something that is only a few inches square. The warp goes on quickly and whatever comes out of it, I'll have gotten in some practice and learned something about color and design.

The video below talks about this process and even shows me weaving one of these small pieces.

A new tapestry diary... and is a practice like this for you?

A new tapestry diary... and is a practice like this for you?

I think any practice that gets you in the habit of creating is a good one. Only you can answer the question if doing a daily tapestry diary is the thing for you, but it is one way to get yourself going to your loom every day of the year. (Or make your own rules! Maybe you weave one bit every Sunday morning or once a month.)

I think the quesiton to ask yourself is do you have a practice of creating regularly right now? If you do, then another thing to do might not be the answer for you. But if you have difficulty making time to create on a regular basis, then making some rules for yourself around it might be helpful. A tapestry diary is one way to do that.

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Wishes, self-care, and a new year

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Wishes, self-care, and a new year

Intention setting for the new year is a healthy practice. In my own life I am working to increase the amount of time I spend in a special kind of self-care. Making art is something that feeds the core of who I am and makes me a better person. Finding time to create something every day is the trick in a busy life and for the coming year it is at the top of my list of private intentions.

The short video below talks about setting intentions around tapestry weaving for the coming year. I am not going to tell you to put it on your calendar (though that might be helpful for some of you) or to beat yourself up if you don't touch your art supplies/weaving tools for a month. What I am going to tell you is to consider making an intention for the new year around taking care of yourself in this special way. As humans we are creative beings, so please make sure to make time as often as you can to let your creativity fly. 

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My Hokett kit

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My Hokett kit

I get questions fairly often from people who know I backpack with a loom and want to know what I take. What I pack does vary depending on whether I am going backpacking or car camping or traveling to teach somewhere. 

As a lightweight backpacker, my total pack weight before food and water is between 13 and 18 pounds. The lighter the better as food and water can add another ten pounds to the total. Hiking becomes miserable with more weight than that. So any craft that I bring into the backcountry has to be both small and light.

The weaving I did at Hambidge

The weaving I did at Hambidge

After finishing the big design at Hambidge, I moved on to some small weaving projects. Of course I wasn't able to bring a big loom to this residency, so I worked on my galvanized pipe loom, a Mirrix, and a Hokett loom.

One of the things I wanted to work out was how to do a four-selvedge weaving that was shaped. Of course you can use a home-made pin loom to do this, but I don't like weaving that way as you don't have a shed. I wanted to use the method that I learned from Sarah Swett using a jig.

Flowers, tapestry design, and spring water

Flowers, tapestry design, and spring water

After about a week of hard work, I finalized this large tapestry design. You can see part of it in this image. This is the next large work you’ll see me weaving. I struggled with imagining how big the design was actually going to be, so I did a mock-up in paper full size. This allowed me to see what parts of the form were going to be more difficult to weave, how to adjust things to make the curves better, and decide what sett to use. It also impressed upon me just how big this piece of weaving is. It will be a massive dye job followed by a whole lot of weaving.

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A review of the A-I-R tapestries

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A review of the A-I-R tapestries

I thought I would put all the little tapestries I made at my artist-in-residence in one post. I have included links to prior posts at the end--some have more details about individual tapestries.

I wove one of these each day. Most of them took about 3 hours to complete. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it despite the amount of time it took to finish them and I ended up doing one every day of the residency. Here they are with their inspiration. Most of the tapestries were woven at 12 epi on a 6-dent Hokett loom. The warp was mostly cotton seine twine though there is some linen in there and the weft was mostly Weaver's Bazaar 18/2 wool though there are some wool singles and some handspun.