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Tapestry weaving can seem like a pursuit that requires A LOT. A lot of equipment, materials, and knowledge.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Weaving tapestry can be quite simple and your materials and equipment do not have to be complicated. If you want to learn tapestry weaving, below are some suggestions for how to get started. There are also many resources for people already deep into the tapestry experience, but this post is mostly for people who are pretty new to tapestry weaving.
I’ve been a sketch tapestry practitioner since 2016. I started making these small pieces which reference something I experienced when I was at an artist residency at Petrified Forest National Park. I had so much fun weaving simple things each day of that month-long residency that I have devoted blocks of time to doing them ever since.
Read the rest of this post for more about the free mini-course and sketch tapestry in general!
The current Tapestry Discovery Box* is about vertical lines. In it I talk both about how to create the illusion of vertical lines and how to do a variety of joins. In general, making lines that follow the warp is pretty tricky in tapestry weaving. It is much easier to create a line or curve in the horizontal direction because there are many more picks per inch than there are warps per inch in the other direction. It is all about the structure of the medium.
My first real education in tapestry weaving was at Northern New Mexico College in El Rito, NM. I was part of the Fiber Arts program which focused on traditional Hispanic weaving styles.* Our final weaving project of the course was to weave a large Saltillo.
Last weekend while reorganizing my studio, I found my Saltillo on a shelf. It is beautiful. And it is completely unfinished.
I have found weavers to be the most wonderful people. I suppose there are exceptions, but generally they are curious and able to ask questions. Sure, weavers also tend to like structure and can be slow to see around the rules they’ve made for themselves, but in general, the love of material and creating usually wins.
Weavers can generally also locate themselves in space. You have to have some spatial skills to figure out how to make weave structures, so the fact that they can also find their way to Taos, New Mexico from all over the Northern hemisphere doesn’t really surprise me.
There are only a few things that I’d say regularly frustrate new tapestry weavers and one of them is the final knot on the warping bar of a continuously warped tapestry loom. If that last knot doesn’t hold tightly, then your edge selvedge will be loose which affects your weaving. Using a double half-hitch knot allows you to adjust the tension on that last warp with a knot that will hold.
What does that mean? A continuous warp is one which wraps around the outside of a tensioned frame loom. Some common examples of this type of loom are the Schacht Arras and most Mirrix looms. These looms use a warping bar. The bar gives you a place to tie the beginning and ending warp securely as well as a rigid structure to help you turn the tapestry around the loom without distorting it. This type of loom can produce a tapestry that is longer than the loom is high.
