Each day I notice the studio space evolving in parallel to the weaving. Things gravitate gradually into the right positions. The system gets better, smoother, more organised.This morning, I was reading Small Woven Tapestries by Mary Rhodes. Looking at the work of others propels my knowledge forward. It has given me ideas about inserting additional warps, geometric patterns and textures.
There are two distinct conversations happening in my samples. One is textural, the other pictorial. I feel that they will naturally merge with time. With the current sample, I am looking for balance now in bringing the design to a close. Looking at what has gone before, and seeing what I can do with the remaining weft from the workshop.
I love the combination of wrapping and plain weave. It allows me to showcase the warps. I found a better way of wrapping a single warp to maintain integrity of weaving: weaving independently behind the single wrapped warp avoids creating slits. This is straightforward if the background on either side is the same colour. If not, the two background colours could be interlocked behind the single warp, which would create a floating wrapped warp on the front of the tapestry with no vertical slit.
A cartoon behind the warp, with some of the major shapes marked onto the warps, plus a small colour image next to me as I weave would be a good combination for weaving a design. It would give the right combination of structure and freedom. I may experiment by scanning a design into the computer to reduce it down to its main components.
Future project
- Squiggles (‘taking a line for a walk’) possibly combined with horizontals and verticals.
2 comments:
Hi Steve
I like your blog. I have used the technique of weaving behind the single wrapped warp, and it's nice not to have a slit, but I find that it makes the single wrapped warp kind of pop out toward the front. Maybe this depends on the thickness of the weft a little. How about "half tapestry," where there is a very thin neutral colored extra weft that goes selvedge to selvedge. That's another trick to avoid slits. Jan
Hi Jan
Thanks for your feedback. I very much like your idea of running an 'invisible' weft across the tapestry (I haven't heard the term 'half tapestry' before - thanks for that one). I can imagine that this technique would be important in a tapestry with lots of single wrapped warps to add much needed structure and to avoid distortion. Perhaps this technique could be combined with weaving behind the single wrapped warp to avoid the popping out effect. I look forward to experimenting with this. Do you also have work online? I'd be interested in looking. Best wishes, Steve
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