Wednesday, March 04, 2015

My Calendar Tapestry

I started a new tapestry on my Big Shannock at the beginning of the year; a variation on the weave-a-day theme which other tapestry weavers have been doing.   My rendition is slightly different; although I have an area of the tapestry for each day of the year - I generally weave the entire past week on Monday due to the nature of my design.

While January (piectured above) started with lots of sun (yellow)
it ended with days of rain (green) and cloudy skies (mottled green). 

 From a design standpoint, there are three layers or levels to the tapestry; local, worldly and celestial. The finished tapestry is to be a contemplative piece where no one layer  speaks louder than the others.

  • The background is composed of squares; one for each day.  The color of the square indicates the overall weather looking outside my studio window; the top and bottom of the square represent the high and low temperature.   
  • To continue with my love of words in weavings, I will be adding 3-4 phrases  to the tapestry to represent key happenings in the world during the quarter (e.g. Je suis Charlie).
  • The last layer represents happening outside our atmosphere such as the phases of the moon. In the photo the exposed warps represent a new moon. 

There will be four tapestries; one for each quarter. It should be interesting to see how the background varies by quarter and how the worldly phrases hold up with the passage of time.  I am already surprised by the variety of weather we have had this quarter...

You will see more once the first quarter comes off the loom.

3 comments:

Rebecca Mezoff said...

This is really cool Nicki! I can't wait to see a finished quarter.

Unknown said...

Ditto what Rebecca said! Very interesting and fun.

Tommye McClure Scanlin said...

Nice version of daily!
Tommye