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

Practice More: A red Sharpie and 28 days

Practice More: A red Sharpie and 28 days

The first day of February, the author Austin Kleon posted a simple downloadable PDF on his Substack newsletter. I downloaded it because I thought, maybe this is simple enough for me to follow. The idea is to take the thing you want to get better at and do a little bit of it every day. February is the shortest month and also 28 days makes a nice 7 x 4 grid. I thought I’d try it and the fact that I was trying to finish the rocks tapestry didn’t hurt my motivation.

As Kleon’s poster says, you just practice every day and when you do, you put an X in the box. No rules about how long you have to practice or what practice even means. Just do it.

Marking Time. Tommye Scanlin's newest book.

Marking Time. Tommye Scanlin's newest book.

The image at the top of this blog post is a snapshot from an interview I did with Tommye Scanlin when we were both residents at Lillian E. Smith Center in Georgia. Tommye encouraged me to apply for that residency among others and I was fortunate not only to be able to spend two weeks in the Georgia woods one April but to find that Tommye herself was at a short residency during part of that time. Tommye’s fierce love of making art and her incredible skill at inspiring and teaching others to do so as well is one of the things I admire most about her. I did the interview as part of my Design Solutions for the Artist Weaver, Season 1 online course and you can watch it there.

The quote above is one that I think about frequently. One of Tommye’s considerable talents is inspiring students to make art. One of her most frequent comments is this one: Weave every darn day. You get better with practice and my own work and teaching have experienced this wisdom from Tommye over and over again.

Tommye has been a friend and mentor to me for many years. She is a dedicated artist now working mostly in tapestry. She is also an author and a committed educator. This review is about her third book.

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Getting started in tapestry weaving: looms, tools, and yarn!

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Getting started in tapestry weaving: looms, tools, and yarn!

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.

Join me on Patreon

Join me on Patreon

I can hardly believe it has been almost five years that I’ve been running Change the Shed, my free YouTube tapestry weaving live event. I still do it twice a month and plan on continuing that. I have had so many people support this program through donations and I appreciate all of you more than you’ll ever know. But the time has come to get some more consistent support so this program can continue.

To that end, I’ve started a Patreon page. Patreon is a sort of membership site created to support artists and creators. In general, creators ask for support from people who follow them in exchange for some sort of learning or community opportunity. The membership rates are low and the funds help the creator continue their work.

Many approaches to tapestry weaving | Taos in January

Many approaches to tapestry weaving | Taos in January

There is a lot of joy in getting together with a group of people who love the same things you do. I think we can safely say the people who came to my Taos retreat this month love yarn. Everyone has a different reason for weaving tapestry and those differences are always interesting for me to observe and ask about when I’m teaching. But generally we can all come together around the love of creating and yarn.

In the workshop this month I had a lot of different approaches. One student was motivated to study tapestry for historical and sociological reasons related to her family and their place or origin. Another student was very interested in Norwegian weaving and using that style to express personal images. Someone else was working on recovery from the death of a spouse and the feelings of loss and recovery that brought up. There were students who were interested in three dimensional tapestry, depicting water, interpreting dreams, interpreting life events, or working from inspiration other tapestry artists’ work brought them.

Winter Trees Weave-Along Re-cap

Winter Trees Weave-Along Re-cap

If you wove along with me in the winter trees project in November and December, thank you! I know some of you are still weaving or are just starting your winter scenes now. I wanted to post a little update with my finished projects and a link to those of yours that I’ve collected so far.

If you’d like to join the project, there is a free PDF in my blog post on November 13, 2024 you can download for ideas and guidance. You can find that blog post HERE.

I wove two projects. The first was a pine tree in the snow.