Tapestry Weaving
Rebecca Mezoff
Testing out the Duet tapestry beater from ...

It is no secret that I love my tapestry forks/beaters with metal tines. Many people make them with dog combs. The metal tines slide through the warp easily and if the handles are shaped well, they provide a nice snap for work on tapestries large or small.

Over the years I’ve purchased many tapestry forks from Magpie Woodworks, Thomas Creations (Threads Thru Time), and Timber and Twine. These are beautiful hand-crafted tools and every tapestry weaver should have at least one of these in their toolbox.

But I have had so many students who were unable to get one of these forks or had to wait many months just because when a tool is hand-made one at a time, it takes a long time to produce them and more people want them than can get them.

Testing out the Duet tapestry beater from Schacht

A fiber fiesta in Santa Fe, NM

A fiber fiesta in Santa Fe, NM

On that event-packed trip to Taos in October where I taught, went to the Taos Wools Festival, and saw the Horizons show in Santa Fe, I also had a couple hours to visit the Mountain and Valley Wool Association show at the fairgrounds in Santa Fe. This is the show that used to be Taos Wool Festival. It moved to Santa Fe some years ago now and I hadn’t been able to visit since their move.

MAVWA in Santa Fe is very different than the one that happened for decades in Taos, but I found it interesting to see the new Taos Wools festival and MAVWA to visit back to back.

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Horizons show in Santa Fe

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Horizons show in Santa Fe

On the same trip to Taos for the Taos Wools Festival and my tapestry workshop, I made a quick trip to Santa Fe to see the Horizons show at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. The show is titled Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles. I had previously acquired the catalog for the show and knew I had to see it in person.

As I pulled up to the museum on a Sunday morning, I heard singing and then saw the dancers. What a wonderful addition to the trip to the museum. These were Apache tribal members.

Weaving a tapestry version of Taos

Weaving a tapestry version of Taos

I really enjoyed teaching a three-day workshop for Taos Wools Festival in October. I taught in this same room last year but they’ve expanded it and now there are some windows. The class was fun and funny and they wove a lot in three days.

We were working with Taos Wools Chica yarn. This is a gorgeous churro yarn that is hand-dyed by Joe Barry himself. For this workshop there were piles of little skeins in all sorts of colors. It was definitely like being in a candy shop!

Taos Wools Festival 2024: Squirrel, squirrel!!! (In which Rebecca chases all the fiber)

Taos Wools Festival 2024: Squirrel, squirrel!!! (In which Rebecca chases all the fiber)

The first weekend of October is festival time in Northern New Mexico. This year I was at the Taos Wools Festival in Taos the first Saturday of the month. I was there to enjoy the beautiful festival and to teach a three-day tapestry class. The festival was a riot of fiber and beautiful woven things, sheep, yarn, food, and lots of chatting among fiber lovers. The class was three packed days of weaving, learning, and laughing.

The small festival is held on the grounds of Revolt Gallery in the shade of some beautiful big trees, just a small skip north of the Taos plaza. Joe Barry who owns Taos Wools organizes this festival which he started when the original Taos Wool Festival moved to Santa Fe. Joe hated to see the popular festival leave, so he replaced it with an event that has a lot of soul as well as wonderful fiber fun.

Sublime Light: Tapestry Art of DY Begay

Sublime Light: Tapestry Art of DY Begay

DY Begay’s retrospective show at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC opened in September. She has been working on the show for years or perhaps we should say an entire lifetime. I haven’t seen it yet, but the catalog that accompanies it is wonderful. Calling it a catalog is a little misleading. It is a celebration of a weaver’s life, the places she comes from, and the experiences she has had that have shaped her work.

In which two dear fiber friends come to visit

In which two dear fiber friends come to visit

September has been a marvelously creative month for me and that is largely because two of my dearest tapestry colleagues came to visit a week apart. Cornelia Theimer Gardella was here for a week-long joint residency and then Sarah Swett and her adventurous dog Beryl stopped for several nights.

Having fiber friends is important and these visits remind me why that is. Both Cornelia and Sarah have had a big influence in my own tapestry life. I met Cornelia 20 years ago at Northern New Mexico Community College where we were both students in the fiber arts program. And I got to know Sarah through a little fan-girl following and then an American Tapestry Alliance retreat in Colorado almost ten years ago now. She wrote the forward to my book, The Art of Tapestry Weaving.