The good news….
I’m no longer a beginner tapestry weaver and my instructor challenges me to improve my skills.

The bad news….
I’m no longer a beginner tapestry weaver and my instructor challenges me to improve my skills.

  Tuesday I brought my newly finished sample to class.  Alastair’s comments were, “Nice straight selvages and the slits are good (Yea!), but you need to pack it down a bit more.”  (Darn… not done with this yet.)   OK… so I began packing.

Low and behold….. my lovely circle is now a lovely oval…..arg!

Alastair’s comment that it took him 7 yrs to perfect doing circles made me feel a lot better and really appreciate the skill necessary to create tapestries with nice round circles in them.  I wove a bit more – making sure I was beating FIRMLY – and drew another circle with the plan of trying it again as the week went on.

The large scaffold frame had been warped.  (Yes… we are talking about a seriously heavy-duty frame that would normally be used in construction!)

  Since I do not have easy access to work on one of these at home I jumped at the chance to weave on it…..

…which also meant I’d be sitting on the floor for the next few days.

Because the back wall was painted white with a white heating unit… there was no way I would be able to see my white warp yarns against that…..

      ….so I used my raincoat for a backdrop.

I decided to work on a landscape for my next project because I’ve struggled with getting a sense of depth in my fiber work.  Using one of my photos as my guide, I selected my yarns and began weaving – making sure I was beating FIRMLY as I went.

  By the end of of the day, this tapestry was solid.

Wednesday, I continued working on the landscape.  One of the techniques tapestry weavers have used for centuries when weaving a large space that’s basically a solid color is to weave a shape rather than simply going straight across.  This breaks the monotony and gives some texture and interest to the weaving.  We had seen this technique used in some of Alastair’s work and I wanted to give it a try.

This involved a lot of weaving….  un-weaving……  weave it again…. un-weave…..
but FINALLY….. by the end of the day after multiple tries…. I got it!!

Landscape 4″ x 5 1/2″

I really like the effect this gives the sky and will definitely be using it in other projects.