For several reasons, my past week or more has been spent working on the Tapestry Weavers South collaborative tapestry that we used for demonstrations at the "Southern Yarns" exhibit, Southern Highland Craft Guild's Folk Art Center Main Gallery. The exhibit was held from January 12 to May 13. I set up one of my looms, took it to the exhibit in early February and left it there for a series of demonstrations we did over the following three months...mainly on weekends. I picked up the loom when the show ended, brought it back to my studio and have been working on it since then.

The view on the right is the piece as I picked it up on the last day of the exhibit. The second view, with the TWS logo, is what I've woven since then (with a small section on the left side done by a student of mine here in Dahlonega).

The piece is nearing completion, it's 18" wide x about 32" long. One of the TWS members, Jan Hart, has volunteered to sew slits and finish the ends at the back! I'll finish the piece tomorrow, I think...have to level up the right side and decide about hem or not.

This has been a wonderful learning experience for me! Talk about taking a journey in tapestry with no preconceived plan--well, this has been one! Since we had several people to work on the piece over the demo time it seemed that it would be best to just play with the tapestry...make it a "crazy quilt" in a way...that way anyone who was able to come for demonstration time could feel free to do whatever she wished. Also, it was easy to ask visitors if they wanted to try their hand at it. There have been at least a dozen hands weaving on this tapestry...maybe even more!

The weft used has been mostly bits and pieces of my past tapestries--mostly Spelsau and Vevgarn since that's what I use mostly in my work. I filled zip lock bags arranged in color groups to leave with the loom at the Center. Because there wasn't much of any particular color combination to choose from the multi-color/small shape approach was the one that best adapted to yarn available. The warp sett I chose was 6 epi because I thought it would show up best for demonstration purposes. The weft was used 3-fold and caused us to sort through my excess yarns to mix and match a bit. As I finished off the tapestry in my studio I kept to my "rule" of using only the yarn I'd given for the tapestry. This has caused me to really dig through the yarn bags to find enough of particular colors! But that's added fun to the challenge.

Tomorrow I hope to finish this, cut it off and send it on to Jan. Then I need to get serious again, tackling the black walnut piece in earnest before Thomas and leave for about 10 days on June 4.