Starting to Pull - Layer One

I have started to pull my tapestry spiral. Here is how it looks at the first layer...fourteen more to go.

Golden Rectangles & Color Triads

Things have started to calm down. It always seems the time between September 15 and December 15th are the busiest for me.

This year the focus seemed to be on tapestries; largely finishing tapestries. My definition of 'finishing' starts when the tapestry is taken off the loom and is completed when I can hang it on a wall...assuming it hangs. Off the top of my head I think I have recently finished eight tapestries. All have been assigned to various exhibits I would like to be in over the next six months.

This is one of my tapestries I designed and wove in the James Koehler workshop I took in Colorado last summer. The focus was on golden rectangles and complementary triads. We could design and weave anything we wanted.

I use golden rectangles in my designs but I am not exactly a fan of golden rectangles. I find them too narrow on the short side to be pleasing. I prefer the size of the boxed frame in the photo to the size of the tapestry itself.

I am also not a fan of complementary triads. I find them harsh. Particularly when they are at such a saturated state as in the yarns I created for the workshop. It was difficult selecting the colors as well as weaving with the colors. To make it 'interesting' to weave I decided to avoid slits at all the edges so I did the entire piece in hachures and interlocks. It was interesting for about an inch. Then it was a 'death march' to weave.

So obviously with all these things against it, this tapestry is not one of my favorites. However, with the extended lines added upon finishing and the grey background, I surprisingly do like the end result and it currently has a prominent spot in my studio.

It is always good for me to push myself outside my comfort zone...pushing my color selections beyond what I would normally use...using designs which are not my favorites...and weaving in new ways. I try to do this on every tapestry I do. It makes my body of work grow in different ways than I expected and keeps me balanced.

Fortunately, I normally enjoy the time creating tapestries on my looms. It is a rare tapestry that is the 'death march' like this one. I think I will just blame it on the high altitude in Colorado. I weave best at sea level.

Spiral Tapestry Off the Loom

I started weaving this tapestry piece back in late August and I just finished weaving my last triangle section today.

Hard to believe that there is actually 13+ yards all rolled up! You can see the cardboard darts I put into each section...there are close to 200 of them. Quite a bit of weaving there.

I think this took more time to weave than anything I've done before. I timed how long it took to do one section - 12 minutes is my best time...196 sections...2,352 minutes...that means 39+ hours for the entire piece...of course I usually only wove 2 sections per day. But today I did 14.

My next stage of this project is to remove the cardboard triangles and pull the warp into what should be a wonderfully colorful spiral. I just have to figure out how to psych up to do all that pulling!

The Second Brim

It's taken about a month with some steady weaving over the last week to finish my contribution to our collaborative tapestry hat. This is for the Celebrate Color! Fashion Show at the Color Connects fiber conference in Riverside March 2009.

This is my hat brim. There are actually two brims for the hat - an inside and outside brim. I did one...my collaborator did the other. We haven't figured out whose will be inside and whose will be outside. Who knows perhaps the hat will be reversible. Both are woven in dyed silk and cotton since both of us are allergic to wool. My brim has three hummingbirds going for the nectar in the red and orange flowers. The other brim has an entire flock of colorful birds - weaver birds undoubtedly.

Those yellow strings on my brim will be snipped and hopefully will look like delicate stamens. I may put some beads on the ends too. It's bit tough to see since one must look through the warp. I haven't taken the piece off the loom yet. I need to consider how to finish off the edges before I allow all those warp ends to be loose and run away.

This was fairly tough to weave. You may think it was the doughnut shape that made it difficult to weave - but not really. The worst part was the tension. It had to be the worst tension I have ever woven on - extremely uneven. If I had had an empty loom of the appropriate size I would have started over with a new warp. But no empty loom so I persevered with this one. It will be interesting to see how it looks after finishing.

Ahhh...now that this hurdle is completed, I feel a productive week coming up...

A Tapestry Hat

I am working on a joint project to create a tapestry hat for the Fashion Show at the Color Connects conference taking place in Riverside in March 2009. We need to have it completed by January 15th the point at which the entry forms are due along with a picture of the piece.

Here are the pieces we need to make...actually we need to make two brims...one for each side of the hat so the wearer can flip the brim towards the top. This is a big floppy hat - the brim measures 22 inches across so it is not inconsequential to weave. It is also...obviously...curved.

We want to have a bird theme and focus on the conference colors. My friend dyed the cotton weft and has woven her side of the brim with a flock of parrots. I am starting to weave my side of the brim with three hummingbirds getting nectar from some colorful flowers.

Here is how far I got on day one of weaving - -

I have just started the first hummingbird. I am hoping to have green be the primary hue in the hat along with a white background. The first hummingbird is green with some bright orange. I think it will have a stain glass flavor since I am avoiding shading, not worrying where the light is coming from and there are large blocks on a single color. The colors are saturated and selected to pop when next to each other.

We needed a loom that was somewhat portable and had at least 22 inches weaving width. We borrowed the one in the photo. It met our basic requirements but it's fairly difficult to weave on since if I make the tension as tight as I would like for optimal tapestry weaving - it is near impossible to move the bars that hold the mulitude of string heddles. Plus, I need to be careful not to let the heddles slide off the bar when I change sheds. There are lots of heddles...let's see 10 epi and warped 24 inches wide... 240 string heddles - all hand made. And its a pain to put them back on...I have already had to do it once.

It's also tough to see how things are going, in the photo as well as when weaving, since I am weaving from the back and the other woven brim is one the back side of the loom. That was another nice thing about the loom...we were able to put enough warp on to handle both brims that we are weaving. We only had to warp it once.

When I weave from the back, I normally check the front every 10 minutes or so to see how things look and then consider whether I should modify something. With this tapestry I will just have to go with the force - no peeking & no pondering. My goal is to complete my part of the weaving in November. Looks quite doable.