Practice tapestry curves sampler

After helping lead a workshop on tapestry weaving, I thought about what we might cover next with the group (since they want to continue). Curves came to mind because they are hard. Rebecca Mezoff's book, The Art of Tapestry Weaving, has some exercises for weaving curves. I grabbed some yarn totally inappropriate for tapestry weaving and got to work.

Pattern: None, I did employ a "cartoon" to guide my weaving
Weave structure: Plain weave
Loom: Mirrix Tapestry Loom
Warp: 12/6 cotton seine twine (I think)
Weft: Some fingering weight samples from a natural dyeing workshop. I doubled the yarn for this piece.
EPI/PPI: 8/?
Ends: 42
Finished size: 23" x 5" (not including excess warp)

First, I just winged it, creating curves and outlining them as I went.

Then I clipped on a cartoon (using WonderClips - love them!) and wove line by line.

Next, using the same cartoon, I tried weaving the shapes first, then filling in later.

Finally, I turned the cartoon on its side and tried weaving vertical curves.

I decided what I would probably prefer to do is weave a few rows of a shape, then fill in the rest of those rows before continuing. That would help my old eyes keep track of the rows more easily. As it turns out, this is how Marcos Bautista (mentioned in my previous post) weaves!

Working with doubled yarn was tricky. I'm guessing it was sock yarn, which is usually superwash and/or contains nylon. It won't felt, so the doubled yarn would not "stick" together. Invariably, one of the plies lagged the other, creating selvage problems. Sometimes a weaver will lightly twist a "bundle" of yarn, but I don't think that would have worked in this case. Plus, sometimes the weaver may not want the plies to twist, for design purposes.

This was a good experiment - I learned a lot!