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.
In my blog post a couple weeks ago, I talked about how I learned to dye my own tapestry yarn and how dyeing the yarn and learning to weave tapestry went hand in hand. I enjoy dyeing my own yarn so much. And I’ve branched out into making variegated yarns for tapestry and knitting, painting roving for spinning, and dyeing fleece that I blend as I spin.
I’ve been focusing on my tapestry diary for the last couple months. I started doing these small tapestries based on things I see around me again because I am teaching an online course about this practice (see Summer of Tapestry). But I quickly remembered that the process of weaving small, quickly finished tapestries in which I explore something I saw or a feeling I had are a great way for me to remain grounded when the world feels a little haywire.
It has encouraged me to finish some of the tapestries from Iceland which, though a bit larger than my normal tapestry diary piece, are still in the same vein. I’ve planned a few more tapestries from Icelandic inspiration and I’ve also finished quite a few small pieces from Colorado inspirations. I talked about the rose tapestry in THIS blog post. I titled that post “What would you weave if you knew you could not fail?” because that is such an important part of weaving these small things for me. There are no rules. I have no expectation of ever showing these pieces. I am not worrying about technique or whether they are “good”. I’m just playing.
When I first started learning how to be a tapestry weaver, I took a semester-long college class about dyeing protein fibers. I never questioned that there was any other way to get the colors I wanted for tapestry weaving. In the weaving curriculum we were using a commercially dyed yarn and only had about 20 colors available to us, most of which were not ones I wanted. I was so excited to learn how to dye my own yarn.
. . . So I spent last weekend sitting still and doing some small weavings. I watched my judgey monkey brain say, that is too simple. That is too small. You’ll never express anything if you choose this. And I told that little voice to step off, grabbed the yarn colors of the roses in my back yard, and started weaving. These rose bushes were here when I moved in. They’re hardy. They have to be because I don’t do much besides occasionally aim the hose in their general direction and trim them back at the end of the season. They seem perfectly happy to offer up white and pink blooms year after year and I admire that persistence.
I can pinpoint the moment when I started my practice of sketch tapestry. I had just driven 70 miles from my childhood home in Gallup, NM to Petrified Forest National Park in early November of 2016 through a driving rainstorm. It was the kind of rain that the desert longs for. The rain that fills the arroyos to gushing almost instantly. The rain that makes the desert smell like sage and wet sand.
I arrived at the national park to start my artist residency just as the sun came out. As I was taking my looms and yarn out of my car and settling into the casita I would live in for the month, a rainbow appeared over the painted desert just outside.
For me, there is not much better than a day spent at the Estes Park Wool Market. It has been several years since it happened and I missed it. So I donned my N95 and headed up the mountain on Saturday. I saw so many people I haven’t seen in person for years. I chatted with fellow teachers and friends from the fiber world of Colorado and beyond. I ran into students I’ve only talked to online, students from past retreats, and even some Instagram friends and followers.
One reason for going was to get a fleece to use for teaching at SOAR in October. (Spin Off Autumn Retreat is run by Long Thread Media). I know. I’m teaching at a spinning retreat. But I’m not really teaching spinning. I’m teaching spinners how to use their handspun for tapestry weaving. I did manage to find many great fleece candidates, quite a few of which were already sold. But I came home with one complete fleece and three partial fleeces. Two of those are at least in part for the SOAR classes. Triumph! (Buying a fleece can feel sort of scary.)
Jóhanna Pálmadóttir has been working on a 46 meter-long tapestry since 2011. It’ll take 5-6 more years to finish the last 12 meters. To be sure she has had plenty of help. But the scope of this incredible project is rather mind-boggling and I didn’t really believe it could exist until I saw it in person.
The tapestry is based on one of the Icelandic sagas, the Saga of the People of Vatnsdalur. This saga took place in the area of Iceland where the tapestry is being stitched. It is the location of Jóhanna’s farm, the church she grew up in, and the monastery where the tapestry will live once it is finished.
The project is being stitched in the former women’s school in Blönduós, Iceland, Kvennaskólinn. This is also the site of the Icelandic Textile Center. Over the years, Jóhanna and her team of local embroiderers have taught many artist residents at the textile center, local residents, and tourists how to stitch.
