Dangerous living for a tapestry weaver!

Would you ever do this?

Have you experienced that moment where you look at a large piece in progress and realize there is a major error in color choice? It makes your stomach churn I tell you.

Yesterday I went to my loom and realized that I had woven about three inches with the wrong color in one spot. Three inches is a very long way to unweave and represents about a weeks worth of work. I couldn't leave the color as it was. It would be very evident once the piece was hanging on the wall. But I definitely didn't want to tear out all that weaving. The whole piece is hatched together making it difficult to unweave just that section...

...but that is what I did.

The offending color is marked MT5. It is the second light blue to the left from the dark line. It was supposed to be MB5. "T" is for top. "B" is for bottom. This was the bottom of the tapestry (it will hang from the weft).

At this point I was pretty nervous.

But the worst that could happen was that I'd have to take out all three inches.

So I kept going.

And going. The pile of fiber I took out is at the top middle. The ball next to it was the color it was supposed to be. See the difference?

I found the original splice, lay in the new color, and back together it went.

Of course the tricky part is getting the weft tension right in the needle-woven portions and maintaining the warp spacing. I had a little hack for that as the warps wanted to spread in the middle.

And a little hack to keep the warps behaving.

And there you have it. Before and after. I don't need to tell you that I was a little smug about this one. I think in the future I'll be more careful with my labels. It could easily have been an area that wasn't so simply fixed. I shudder to think how it would have gone if I had been using pick and pick or had a lot of other shapes interspersed with this one.

Nope. I got lucky.

My latest learning experiment: tapestry with fine handspun

I have been learning to spin for the last six months and recently have had my try at a Turkish spindle.

Yesterday was the day I started weaving. I am making a piece with multiple 2 x 6 inch panels. The fleece was a small bit of a rainbow fleece we dyed in a Maggie Casey spinning class last spring. I stuffed the fleece in a bag and forgot about it until I was cleaning my office a few weeks ago. Out it came.

I sorted the fleece into a gradation of colors, hand carded it into a rainbow of rolags, and spun it on my tiny Turkish spindle.

Yesterday I dug out my 6-dent large Hokett loom and warped up. I don't know how many panels there will be as I want to use the whole gradation in order. But I think it will be at least six. I finished the first two yesterday. All of the yarn is my handspun except for the deep purple and black accents which are silk.

Here it is in photos.

I am astounded at how lovely the hand is. There isn't any comparing it to my other work. I like my tapestries to be flexible and fluid--like a piece of fabric. Tapestry IS fabric after all. But this handspun exceeds my wildest expectations. It is soft and feels divine. I love the little bloom the surface has and I can't wait to spin more. You can see that the single in the first piece (to the left in the photo above) was thinner than in the second one. With time, I am sure I can learn to keep it consistent for a whole project.

I love how the dyed-in-the-fleece fiber changes color in subtle ways all the time. I strive for this variation in my hand-dyed yarns, but with this method of yarn creation, the options are so much greater.

Specifics
Fiber: White/gray local corriedale fleece scoured by Maggie Casey. Rainbow dyed with acid wool dyes.

Prep: Carded with hand cards after sorting by value

Spinning: Turkish spindle by Jenkins woodworking. This particular spindle was a very special gift from the master of spinning for tapestry, Sarah Swett. Best. Gift. Ever.
Size of single was inconsistent. More practice needed by spinner. Weft finished.

Weaving: Intermediate (9 x 10 inch) Hokett loom at 6 dents per inch. Doubled the warp for 12 epi. 20/6 cotton seine twine warp. Tapestry technique including eccentric outline. Double half-hitch used for header. I wanted to use wool warp but didn't have any small enough for this sett and this weft.

Other fiber: 60/2 and 30/2 silk from Red Fish.

Free webinar Thursday, September 3rd!

UPDATE: Link to the webinar is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_59HfXbpRA
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I have been invited by Mirrix Looms to participate as a guest in a webinar about tapestry weaving tomorrow evening.

Thursday, September 3rd, 7:30 pm EST

The link to sign up and gain access to this free event is here: http://info.mirrixlooms.com/mirrix-looms-talking-tapestry-webinar

Claudia Chase and Elena Zuyok will be spearheading the discussion and they've invited me to chat with Claudia about tapestry weaving.

We'll talk about some of these things:

• what tapestry weaving is
• how Claudia and I learned tapestry and a bit about our personal styles
• some discussion of tapestry weavers who work in non-traditional ways
• is tapestry weaving relevant in our fast-paced world today?
• tips for fixing those messy selvedges and warp spacing issues
• resources for learning about tapestry
• where to start with sett and materials
• looms that are good for tapestry
• Mirrix looms
• my online tapestry courses

And we'll answer some questions from you!

Here is some more information from the Mirrix blog: https://www.mirrixlooms.com/talking-tapestry-webinar-september-3rd-2015/

If you need some help converting the time to yours, here is a time zone converter:
 http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

My collection of tapestry looms, warped for student use at a workshop. Tapestry by Cornelia Theimer Gardella.

A day at Rebecca Mezoff Tapestry Studio, LLC

6:45. Alarm. Fuzz. I am so slow to wake up.
Then I remember. Whoot! Another day in tapestry-land.

Walk. Breakfast.

The grueling commute down the hall to the office takes all of two seconds.

Arriving at work, the team meets to review the plans for the day.

Today is a video day. Do I need wardrobe? Heck yes I need wardrobe. I always do, but alas, that position hasn't been filled yet so whatever is in my closet that doesn't have pizza stains on the front is what I will wear. I might even iron. But not today. Today the video includes only my hands (quick check for dirt or gross hairs, pimples, moles, or anything that needs to be covered with a bandaid... looking good).

Today I'm finishing a shaped pick and pick video for the Color Gradation Techniques online course. Then I'm weaving two transparency examples for another section of the same course. Think I can finish three small tapestries in one day? We shall see!

But before the video shooting commences, there is teaching to be done.
Heading to the classroom...

I answer questions for the ongoing online classes. Sometimes they are all-consuming and it takes me much of a day to do a good job addressing them. Other days, and today is one of these, it takes just a few minutes to catch up. Thursdays and Fridays are the slowest days in my virtual classroom.

Today it is just some feedback on a regular hatching sample (well done) and some tips about weft tension (warps drawing together for a few inches in one spot of the weaving which is beginning to cause other problems). I take a close zoom in on the student samples I'm examining looking for problems that they don't know might be coming down the road. If I can head off some frustration, I have a better chance of helping them feel successful.

Quick troll through the email inbox for anything that has to be answered right away. Another 2017 conference scheduled, a webinar outline reviewed, a few random answers to questions about upcoming online classes sent off and I'm done with the computer for a few hours.

Then I'm off to the video room in the basement for my day of weaving pick and pick and transparencies.

Some days include long long stretches of computer work. Mostly video editing and writing. My boss sometimes lets me do a little spinning or knitting when waiting for a video to upload or if I get too cranky.

8 pm update:
I had an unexpected trip to the grocery store (out of eggs, milk, cereal, vegetables, fruit, yogurt... pretty much all food). So the weaving workload was not completed. I made a good dent in it though.

I finished the pick and pick sample. See evidence below, and it was woven from the front(!!) Next sample I'll actually use a cartoon.

And I did 2/3rds of the first transparency sample. This is clearly the back.

All things considered, I got quite a lot done today.

I'm off to do some spinning and read a fascinating book by Deborah Chandler: Traditional Weavers of Guatemala. I highly recommend it!

Tomorrow is another day.

The teacher... tapestry mostly

I love weaving tapestry. I hope that much is obvious.

I also love teaching. I have been a teacher in one form or another for most of my life. My younger sister and I played "school" when we were kids*, my undergraduate degree was in music with a focus on piano pedagogy**, and my graduate degree and 17-year career was in occupational therapy. That is in-the-trenches kind of teaching in every sort of situation you can think of.*** There has been plenty of continuing education since then in teaching practices, but the actual work and feedback from students is the best instruction.

I love the two sorts of teaching I do now. The online courses are wonderful. I have the luxury of focusing on one student at a time without interruption. I love watching someone progress over months. Initial stumbles and frustration slowly move into a little confidence and finally to work they are proud of.

I will also admit that I love developing curriculum. I've learned a lot from my students and have a lot more to learn. Nothing I do is static. It changes and becomes better all the time. When a module isn't clear to someone, I make extra videos and handouts until they understand it... and eventually the whole thing is updated.

I also love teaching workshops. The chaos of twelve or sixteen people all interested in different results, all with different questions, and the challenge of moving all of them through a body of material I am prepared to teach in a few days is exhilarating... and exhausting. But I won't stop teaching workshops because I learn so much there. (I am particularly excited about the workshop line-up for next year and I can't wait to tell you all about it! But it'll be a few more months.)

Sometimes the stress of teaching online while developing new courses is pretty high. Right now I'm working as hard as I've ever worked to finish an online version of Color Gradation Techniques for Tapestry. I have taught this class in workshops for years and somehow I thought I could just basically teach a three-day workshop in front of my video camera and be done. Ha! Nothing could be farther from the truth. I should have known better. It took me over a year to make Warp and Weft: Learning the Structure of Tapestry (my beginning techniques course) and that is about how long I've been working on this course.

I'm the kind of person who likes to tackle big projects. This is dangerous when creating something out of my head because I tend to make things rather large. Those of you who have taken all of Warp and Weft online understand that I am like this. I can't just leave some particular explanation out. I have to weave it into a video or draw a diagram or somehow include it because someone is going to need that information.

This isn't always the best way to teach. There are people who like things shorter. Neat packages. In and out in a few tight videos.

So in converting the Color Gradation Techniques class to an online version, I have done both things. It will be offered in one large course. That is for those of you who are like me. Who want to dive into something big, revel in the commitment, and find yourself somewhere entirely different after you've put in the work of the entire class. You all are my soulmates and this one is for you.

For those of you who want the neater packages, I will also offer the class in another way. There are six modules and each one will be offered as a separate class. This has added a lot of time to my completion of the course as I'm now working on making each of those modules stand alone.

So know that I'm working as hard as I can. Some of you have been waiting oh-so-patiently for many months now. It will be ready in (she takes a deep breath) ... September. I promise. I will announce the opening date in my newsletter on 9/3/15. (Sign up HERE if you don't already get it!)

PS. Warp and Weft: Learning the Structure of Tapestry, my beginning tapestry techniques course starts again September 14th. You can find more information and a registration link HERE. Don't worry, you can take it in three separate parts and there are no due dates. You can take five years to work through the material if you want to!
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* I might have even let her be the teacher sometimes, you'd have to ask her.
** I wrote a preschool piano method as an honors thesis for goodness sake. It seemed ground-breaking at the time. People didn't teach three-year-olds to play the piano. It was 1994 and the computer graphics program I had to use was limited to basic shapes and text. You can image what it looked like. (Nevertheless, magna cum laude!!!)
*** New SCI (spinal cord injury) in the ICU? Been there. Rancho Level IV head injury in a 35-year-old on a locked unit with fifty friends and family members all individually wanting to know when she can get back to her job as a lawyer? Been there. Non-verbal autistic kid whose parents don't want "special" classrooms for their daughter but want her to function exactly like her classmates in the regular first-grade (and second and third and sixth-grade) classroom? Been there. The stories go on forever... or at least seventeen years.

Teaching Color Gradation Techniques for Tapestry in a live workshop in Michigan.

"What IS tapestry these days, anyhow?"

A few months ago I spotted a comment by Sarah Swett on the listserv for the American Tapestry Alliance, ATA-Talk. She had been to an estate sale of a weaver and found an issue of Interweave from 1979 which mentioned a woman named Marian Mezoff. Sarah brought the magazine home and wondered if Marian was related to me. The question Marian asked in the editorial was and is a good one.

Marian Mezoff is indeed my grandmother. She doesn't weave anymore, but I have discussed her past weaving antics on this blog. (And here.) I absolutely believe she was a charter subscriber to Interweave. That is exactly who my grandmother was. In on anything weaving from the beginning.

Interweave was the first magazine. Before Handwoven, long before F+W Media bought Interweave from whoever bought it before them, before there were a thousand daily emails and a hundred magazines... back when Linda Ligon first started the whole shebang. This issue was called Tapestry.

Here is the quote I am interested in in Linda Ligon's editorial (Spring 1979). Linda is talking about the column, Interweave is People, and wanted to talk about "some of the folks who have invested a piece of themselves in what you see before you."

Well, there's charter subscriber Marian Mezoff over in Tulsa who bothered to write a year or so ago and ask, "What is tapestry these days, anyhow?" And when that had simmered long enough to be announced as an issue theme, Nancy Crump, up in Whately, Mass., wrote up to say that she's been developing a lot of ideas about designing for tapestry, and could she share? And Ann Hunt down in Littleton, Colo. called to say she knew this neat lady working in the Gobelin tradition. . . . 

What I am interested in is my grandmother's question and also the fact that she asked it. We, as humans, always think that our time is the end time, or the worst time, or the best time, or that our ideas are all new. But clearly in 1979, questions about what tapestry is occurred to my grandmother. She was 56 years old then and about to start her bachelors degree in fiber art. (She graduated when she was 60.)

Aren't we still asking these same questions about tapestry? What is it? Why do we do it?

Archie Brennan is sometimes quoted as saying that tapestry is “an indulgent, elitist, economically farcical and frequently boring, 20th century activity”.* With the humor Archie undoubtedly stated it, I think we can recognize some of the truth in that. Tapestry is slow and many of us use practices that prolong the time even more (spin or dye our own yarn, work at very very small setts, make massive pieces we'll never sell, fill our houses with looms, work high on scaffolding, the list could go on and on). I know of few tapestry weavers who made a living just by selling their work (economically farcical?), and in the history of tapestry, it is clear that the art form was elitist... largely because only the rich could afford to pay someone to make such a labor-intensive work of art to hang on a castle wall.

For me, it all comes down to this. I can't NOT do tapestry. I suspect the answer, for those of us who choose to spend our days making and teaching tapestry, is the same. It is what we do because we love it and we can't imagine using another art form.

My grandmother had some strong opinions about what art is and is not. That definition undoubtedly changes with the times. Many of us who weave traditionally-based tapestry have questioned the new craze among weavers using frame tapestry looms, many of whom are young. It is easy to criticize the lack of skill (perceived) and the belief that seems prevalent that they invented this mode of expression. (If you are interested in seeing some of these weavings, look on Instagram under the hashtag #weaving or #weaversofinstagram.)

But it isn't new. There is nothing new under the sun. Tapestry has been around as long as people have been weaving which is a long damn time. Does it really matter that we follow certain rules? That we subscribe to a certain school ("I weave in the Aubusson tradition." "I use bobbins and weave up in shapes"). Tradition is likely important, but so is encouraging new interest in a very old art form.

How can we do that the best? How can a group of tapestry weavers who has been around for decades making gorgeous things, showing them in the same shows, loving each other's work, selling it for far too little, and teaching when we can, encourage a crop of newly interested weavers who want to make textiles that hang decoratively on the wall?

What is tapestry these days, anyhow?

It is a good question grandma. I don't know that there is ever going to be one answer. I think we have to embrace all of it, make what we need to make, teach what we know, and enjoy learning from each other. Is that too inclusive? Do we need to create a dichotomy where contemporary tapestry is a revered art form which came from certain European traditions (and I argue that that in itself is not the case) and push to have it auctioned at Sotheby's and shown more frequently at MOMA? I guess I don't know and each of us will have our own opinion on the matter. Those of us who make a living in tapestry certainly do want it to sell, and perhaps selling is linked closely to the image of the art form in the public eye. But I don't think we can push the professional image at the expense of the craft, if only for the sake of the new learners.

Perhaps some of an answer comes later in that issue of Interweave in an article called,  An Approach to Tapestry, by Laya Brostoff.**

Tapestry art serves a greater purpose than mere reproduction, whether abstracted or representational. It helps us understand ourselves and our place in the world. Each of us experiences reality in a different way and our realization of it, our weaving of it, in a tangible form, will also differ. No one style is right for everyone and new styles and their variations and mixtures with old ones will continue to act as avenues for new expressions woven in new ways....

Most contemporary tapestry practice is done by weavers who are also the designer of the work. That means that a tapestry weaver needs a huge skill set from the initial design idea through creating the actual design to being able to manage all the techniques needed to successfully render a design in tapestry. I won't even get into marketing the finished work!

Some people don't have or don't want all those skills. I maintain (don't shoot me!) that learning tapestry weaving as a craft and a hobby is absolutely valid and that most people who weave tapestry are not interested in having their work shown at the Tate. And that is okay. The difficult thing is how we talk about it. If professional tapestry artists talk about tapestry in reverential tones, it is not going to be attractive to new weavers. Why not knit instead? The knitters have their culture nailed. Knitters are everywhere.

I think tapestry has the ability to push people to learn about design and color and form. And it is just challenging enough to push the learner to expand themselves. And in that way it is a good thing for a hobbyist to pursue. My question is, can we as professional tapestry weavers embrace those newly interested and especially those who do not want to be professionals? Can we share the word tapestry with them and love their experiments and learning? I think we have to. At least it'll be a happier world if we do.

Thanks for asking the good questions grandma. I love you!

*I have heard Archie quoted thus before, but have never heard it straight from his mouth or found a written source. This particular quote came from an interview with Sarah Swett on Syne Mitchell's Weavecast.
UPDATE: Exact quote from Archie Brennan in the World Tapestry Today catalog in his artist statement is: "I work in a minor art form. Tapestry is an indulgent, elitist, economically farcical, and frequently boring 20th century activity." I bet this is the Archie statement that is most often repeated. The catalog is from 1988.
**Brostoff, Laya. "An Approach to Tapestry." Interweave Spring 1979: 27-35. Print.

A little handspun for tapestry

I never thought I would consider handspun that I made my very self for tapestry. Heck, I never thought I would be a spinner. I avoided all things spinning for about a decade. I was too busy with the actual weaving. And honestly, I thought my tendency toward OCD would kick in big time with a task like spinning. It is kind of true as is evidenced by last week's five day spinning bonanza.

It turns out that spinning is a fantastic way to learn about fiber. I have learned more in the last six months about how different fibers act than in the rest of my fibery life.

I had a little time in the mountains last week. And I took my new Turkish spindle. I love it more than I ever thought possible. In fact, I did little else besides spin and play with these urchins.

This particular get-up was my favorite. The backpack was mandatory and she was the one who wanted the hat backwards. And her favorite sandals with socks of course.

My niece and I are making willow weavings. This first one was for her Mom. For three and a half, she did a great job with the knots.

We took a couple hikes. I was pretty impressed these littles could hike a couple miles. The youngest is 19 months!

I took the spindle on the hikes of course. How could I not?

I even finished these little weavings from our last backpacking trip in preparation for doing a mini-tapestry with the handspun.

As soon as I can find some time on the deck with a Hokett loom, I'll start!

After five days of spindle spinning, I can definitely say that I'm getting better. I had a lot more trouble spinning the CVM roving (the brown) than the unidentified Brown Sheep Mill end roving (the blue) I think because the staple length of the CVM was much shorter and I had more trouble controlling the drafting with it. But I'm getting better and soon I'll have a little brown and blue tapestry to show for it.

Spending time with kids is a good way to remember this. A piece of bark was never so exciting as through the eyes of a toddler.