A successful meetup

I am the "outreach coordinator" for the weaving guild and have been acting like one for the spinning guild. Hence all our demonstrating in public to raise the awareness of both guilds. This seems to have helped the spinning guild - there were 30 people present at our last meeting - but the weaving guild? Not so much. It seems to be withering away.

So I decided to try something different, form a fiber arts group at a local gallery called Artlink. This happened to coincide with another person's desire to do the same thing, so we have been working on it together. Today was our first meeting.

There were 18 of us, representing all kinds of hand working skills - knitting, crochet, embroidery, sewing, quilting, weaving, etc. I wore my weaving guild tee shirt even though I brought only knitting to work on as I anticipated being busy with organizing things. Only one other guild member showed up, which I found disappointing, but the group is great, all ages, all interested in learning new things. The topic at our next meeting will be spinning, so I'll bring my wheel and wear my spinning guild tee shirt and try to convince some other spinners to show up.

Knitting: Started a second pair of anklets, from the same yarn.
Weaving: Preparing for the next weaving guild meeting where another member and I will teach some tapestry techniques.

Refreshing my tapestry skills

Yesterday I also participated in a Zoom session out of the Austin guild I belong to, on natural dyeing. I have done a fair bit of that myself but am always interested in learning more... and I did pick up some tips and ideas. For example, I have a LOT of gray handspun which I now plan to overdye with marigold or goldenrod this summer.

I'm still recovering from my cold, but almost there. I'm also becoming a bit resentful that I am involved in lots of fiber activities without having time to DO much fiber work myself. Hopefully, that will change as winter is the perfect time to hunker down with some wool.

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!

Wait, wait....

I'm not the kind of person who leaves the TV on all day, or even the radio. But yesterday, as I was working on a weaving project, I found myself getting a bit restless. So I tuned into NPR. Their Saturday morning lineup is amusing and distracting, and it helped me stick with the weaving long enough to feel like I accomplished something. Maybe I'll try a book on CD next.

Knitting: Finished one dishcloth, started another. I may just keep going until I run out of Peaches & Creme.
Weaving: Started some tapestry samples, practicing curves. For the first one, I just winged it. For the second, I am following an exercise in Rebecca Mezoff's book, The Art of Tapestry Weaving. The yarn is from a natural dyeing workshop where we gave red onion skins a try, with different mordants.

Otherwise, this week was a wash. My doctor prescribed a statin. After two doses, I felt so sick I had to discontinue that little experiment. About the time I recovered, it was time to have one of my wisdom teeth extracted. The pain reliever kept me inert on day one, then it took me another day to regain a semblance of normalcy.

Hope your week is full of normalcy.

Agnes Martin swatch

Agnes Martin was an abstract artist whose work frequently featured grids. When I view these paintings (in books or online, alas), I can't help but think, I could weave that. I wasn't sure how, so I made a swatch as a practice piece.

There is more than one way to weave a grid in tapestry. The horizontal lines are easy - two passes with one color of the weft - but vertical lines are created by alternating colors with each pass. It is not so much a vertical line as a vertical line of dots. In this grid, the vertical lines are spaced apart, so I carried the line color across the back. Some weavers want the back of their tapestry to be as tidy as the front, but that is impossible using this technique.

Another way to create a vertical line in tapestry is to use a particular soumak stitch, so I may try that next, although I fear that will create vertical slits that I may have to sew up. Ugh. I'll have to meditate on that for a while.

(I pretty much HATE the new Blogger interface, but at least I figured out how to resize the photos so that they fit on my template.)

Four suns tapestry

Reminder to self: Do not weave in black or dark blue because your eyes are too old to see what you are doing.

That is not completely true. With pocket weaving, one can create four-selvage pieces. The problem is that once one is in the homestretch, it is really difficult to keep the warp covered with weft. An argument for matching the color of the warp to the color of the end weaving.

I really like "kindergarten colors" - primary and secondary on the color wheel. Hatching comes in handy for blending the colors. Cartoons (what weavers call the paper guides behind the weaving) help with shapes and such. I'm still perfecting my circles.

I kind of pooped out by the time I reached the fourth sun. Then I struggled with the final rows. Then this piece sat around for a long time, waiting to be hemmed. What should have been a quickie project languished quite a bit.

I consider my pocket weaving to be samples or swatches, a way to try out an idea or some colors. And when I'm done, I have a nice rug mug to add to the pile.

Chocolate and Vanilla sampler

The actual names for the colors in the tapestry sampler are 'Sable' and 'Creme', but they look like chocolate and vanilla to me, albeit fuzzy chocolate and vanilla. Lambs Pride yarn includes mohair, which creates a bit of a halo effect.

Source: Tapestry Weaving: a comprehensive study guide, by Nancy Harvey
Yarn: Lambs Pride Bulky, in 'Sable' and 'Creme'
Loom: a frame loom I purchased on our trip to Nashville, built by Bob Gustin, husband of the Homestead Weaver.
EPI/PPI: 6 EPI and I don't know PPI

I really had no idea of where to begin, so the book I used was instrumental. It included instructions for a variety of looms, including a frame loom. Otherwise, I would not have known to use dowel rods at the bottom to beat against. I was able to do some weaving with shuttles, but most of the time I had to create butterflies of yarn.

The previous tapestry I wove used a cartoon for one section, but this author's instructions included a cartoon for the whole project. I had to use three separate pieces of graph paper, so implemented the patterns a section at a time.

Note the use of Clover Wonder Clips to hold the cartoon to the tapestry. They are like little binder clips for sewers and other crafters. One of the best purchases I ever made.

One disadvantage to using a cartoon is, if it is not exactly the right size, designs that should be symmetrical may not be. I wish I had counted warp threads to make the shapes match better.

Tapestry weaving is weft faced, which means the weaver hides the warp threads by beating the weft. I tried to use a tapestry sword to beat the weft, but that did not work well with this loom because, without heddles, there was no way to prop the shed open. The tapestry beater worked fine, though.

The resulting fabric was rather dense, like a rug. I wonder if I needed to beat quite as hard as I did. One drawback of being basically self-taught is there is no one looking over my shoulder saying, Do this, don't do that.

I sent the following pic to Chris Gustin (the Homestead Weaver), so she could see I was actually using the loom. She posted it on the Homestead Weaver FB page, and it received some nice comments.

To finish the piece, I added wood beads top and bottom. At first, I mixed three shades of beads, which I liked, but not with the two-color tapestry. I replaced them with all dark beads. The supporting stick is from one of my apple trees.

The pics of the finished project make the top and bottom look narrower than the middle, which is not the case. The tapestry lays nicely on the floor, but when hanging, curls a bit at one corner. I may steam it so the yarn will full a bit and I can flatten and shape the fabric. Then the question will be, Where to display it?

Psychedelic tapestry

We are very fortunate to have the Fort Wayne Museum of Art in this town. I am fortunate that my SO purchased a dual membership so we can go whenever and see whatever, then leave the rest for another day. For example, a week or so ago, we stopped by to view a quilt show. There was also a Chuck Sperry show of psychedelic art, but we didn't spend much time with that. However, my SO returned later and discovered that three of the pieces in the show were tapestry weaving! We went back yesterday so I could check those out.

Tapestry

There were three HUGE tapestries, each about 14' x 7', facing a freestanding wall that made it difficult to photograph them; that's why I shot just one. We spent a fair amount of time up close and personal, to the point a guard seemed to be hovering nearby, poised to keep me from getting too close and personal. I'm not a fan of psychedelic art, but the workmanship was just exquisite. Usually, when we visit museums and art shows, my SO is the expert, but with fiber arts, I get to do the explaining.

When we turned around, we discovered that the tapestries had originally been poster-sized silkscreen prints.

Silkscreen

Fiber artwork simply MUST be seen in person, especially if the pieces are of any size. This one was woven with something sparkly intermingled with some of the wool. I would love to see these works in progress - did they use metallic thread? was there a cartoon behind the work? how do four people work on a tapestry at one time? - just to get a better idea of the process involved.

Tapestry sampler

I finished weaving a tapestry sampler a while ago (June 5, to be exact), but I had to return the book the design came from to the library (after renewing it five times). Then someone else checked it out, so I ended up purchasing a used copy (Rigid Heddle Weaving, by Karen Swanson). I wanted to make sure I had the sections labeled correctly before posting, hence the delay.

Plain weave

Plain weave in two colors (vertical stripes)

The book is actually about how to use a rigid heddle with a backstrap loom, but I decided I could make the sampler on my Ashford rigid heddle loom. That was true, more or less, but per usual, I learned a lot in the process. For one thing, I had the yarn specified in the pattern, but not the 5-dent heddle, so I warped up my 7.5-dent one with 8/4 carpet warp. Alas, that did not work well with the rug yarn. While contemplating how to resolve that issue, Liz Gipson gave me the idea of using worsted weight yarn instead. I have a lot of naturally dyed Lamb's Pride worsted, in colors I don't wear, so that fit the bill perfectly.

Pile weave - flossa

Pile weave, loop flossa

Pile weave, rya

Tapestry weaving is weft-faced, so the weft must be beaten down to cover the warp. This cannot be done with the heddle. Initially, I used the shuttle from my inkle loom because it has a beveled edge, but was too short to do the entire width of the piece. Eventually I ordered some swords from the Woolery, which made things go much easier.

Tapestry, split weave (bottom) and clasp weave (top). Rolling under on the bottom is soumak.

Another problem I encountered was losing the shed as the amount of fabric on the front beam grew. I tried compensating for that by adding weights to the warp, but that didn't really help. Toward the end, it was a real struggle to insert the weft. Maintaining even selvages while learning something new is a challenge, too, leading me to reweave a significant amount.

Trying to maintain tension

Curve form - "cartoon"

Curve form - split weave

The darker yarn was dyed with walnut. The lighter yarn is pomegranate, pomegranate and tumeric, and tumeric. Some of the color changes between the light colors were a bit abrupt, but don't show a lot. Or look like part of the plan.

Weft twining (bottom), weft chaining (middle), leno (top)

Top sample is brocade

Despite how slow the weaving went, I really enjoyed tapestry weaving. It's much more interesting than simple weaving. My plan is to do more of it.