Delivery of a tapestry

This afternoon I passed along the tapestry that I've woven for my niece.  She was at work nearby so I took it to her.  We don't have a title for it yet so for now it will just be "Green Guy"... here she is with it:

Here's her painting from which the cartoon was designed.  It's gouache and about 9 x 12" in size:

The color in her painting is more greenish in what appears the yellowish areas of forehead, cheeks and neck, though. 


Onward to the next thing now!

Spring is coming!

These flowers were shining brightly in my studio yard today.  And am I ever happy to see them!  Trees are also beginning to bud.  There's a young gingko tree in the yard and last year there were several leaves at eye level that I kept under surveillance from bud to full leaf.  What fun to see the new growth begin.  And it's almost time for a new tapestry to begin.

The loose ends that have been bugging me for weeks now are almost tied up--tapestry finishing is completed for the most recent couple of pieces; the loom is cleared of remaining ends from the last tapestry; yarns from the last tapestries are put away and more has been gotten out in preparation for the next piece; tapestries are packaged and ready to ship on Monday to a couple of shows; and a new warp is almost ready for the beginning wefts to be entered.

Bring on the Spring!

Video and more

I was contacted in January by someone from a church in Atlanta about being filmed at my studio while weaving with the end goal for a short video that would fit their theme of Woven.  Over the next couple of weeks the videographer came to my studio and shot several hours of weaving and spinning.  Yesterday he sent a link to the video.   I was so surprised at how he'd edited all those hours into the short video that's linked here.  This other link takes you to the video stories the church has on their website.

Other studio work is getting done.  Mostly I'm in a "between" place now... that place that's between the ending of tapestries and the beginning of a new one.  I've gotten parts and pieces pulled together for the completion of Megan's tapestry (the green man) and the small stones & moss piece.  Parts and pieces are mounting frames and fabric, for instance.  I have those now and will be completing both of the pieces today, I hope.  Maybe I'll edit this post later with some photos of the finishing.

Ok... later now and I've finished the mounting boards for the two tapestries.  But I'm going to wait until tomorrow or the next day before stitching the tapestries onto these.  My hands take a beating when I'm stretching and stapling the fabric.  Here's the stones and moss double sett piece with a bit of the background fabric (dark green) showing.  It's 15" x 14.25" and I'm mounting it on a 16" square board.

Speaking of stones, tomorrow night is the book release of the next volume of The Stonepile Writers Anthology.  The book is published by the University Press of North Georgia and I'm happy to have a poem included--and also to have had one of my photos selected for the cover.  The stone steps in the photo are at the Lillian E. Smith Center and the photo is one of the hundreds (maybe thousands now) that I've made while in residence at the Center during the past several summers.  

Seems fitting to post the stones and moss tapestry along with the cover of the anthology since both were inspired by my times at the Center.

A little closer now

I really like the surface quality of the double sett.  Here's a close up of what's happening:

The path grows longer

Oh, maybe that post title needs explanation!  The stones from the painting shown in the previous post and from which this cartoon came are from the stones in the one of the paths at Lillian Smith Center.  I always enjoy seeing these stones and the mosses growing on them.  The spaces between the stones are always filled with pine needles and the colors of gray, green and dark, dull red-orange make me happy to see them.

New tapestry is underway

This one is an experiment in using my Shannock loom with four heddle bars set up as a 1-2-3-4 threading.  This would be the same thing as threading a straight draw on a four shaft floor loom.

With this arrangement a "double sett" can be woven in which plain weave (alternately one up, one down in the warp) may be used, and also what's usually called a basket weave in the fabric weaving world  (alternately two warps side by side are up or down).  Woven in this weft faced way the basket weave is essentially an enlarged plain weave.

To weave plain weave with every-other warp either up or down, the heddle bars threaded on 1 and 3 would alternate with those on 2 and 4.  For the other "basket weave" arrangement of paired warps the heddle bars 1 & 2 are used alternately with 3 & 4.   In this on my loom, both 8 ends per inch and 4 ends per inch may be woven by my choosing to use either 1-3, 2-4 or 1-2, 3-4.  Of course, one could do this selection by hand.  Threading for this arrangement just sort of speeds up the picking of the sett (speed being a relative concept in tapestry weaving).

Here's the loom with the heddle bars arranged in a stacked way to have the warps threaded through 1, 2, 3, 4:

With the 4 epi sett I'm using six strands for the weft bundle--two of 20/2 worsted wool and four of Vevgarn.  For the 8 epi sett there are three strands, one of 20/2 worsted and two f Vevarn.

The design is based on the lower left part of this painting that was done when I was at Lillian Smith Center last summer:

Thanks, Mary Lane, for suggesting that the Shannock loom could be set up for the double sett!  

Missing my friends from West Dean today ...

I enjoyed my grand experience at West Dean College in the fall of 2010.  Most of the time the memories of my six weeks there are buried amongst the good times I've had at places I've been.  But today I was emailing a friend about a particular solution to holding spools of yarn that I'd come up with while I was there.  I said I'd send her a photo of it, if I could find one on my computer.  So I started digging through the hundreds of photos I made while I was in England in November & December of 2010, and the more I scrolled through the images, the more nostalgic I became.

In my last weeks there, I had quite a nest built in the center of the room, using a portion of a large scaffold loom.

Pat Taylor, our tutor, was demonstrating something for Diana Scarth... I was looking on, curious as always.

I hope my friends and acquaintances I made while I was there are all fine.  I wish them many happy weaving hours to come.  I miss y'all!