Winter Trees--finished, mounted and ready for the auction

this one's off the loom... now to finish it

I cut off the small tapestry of the trees and waterfall a short while ago.  I'll let it rest overnight (or is that I'll let myself rest overnight?)--anyway, some resting will take place before the next steps of the finishing process.  Here's the small tapestry ... raw from the loom:

This will be mounted onto a natural color handwoven twill fabric that I'll stretch over a board; I'll cut the board to be slightly larger than the tapestry to leave have about 1/2" on all four sides or whatever amount will allow me to use a frame I have on hand.  I haven't measured what I've got yet but I think I have an 8 x 10" shadowbox frame and that would work just fine for this piece.

Before stitching the tapestry on the fabric covered board I'll use a half-Damascus edge to complete the end finish.  That will take the warp ends to the back of the piece.  I might block the tapestry before doing the ends; I'll decide on that tomorrow after seeing how it looks after relaxing for the night.

This piece was woven at the end of a warp threaded on the Tissart loom--I'd mentioned that before but thought I'd show the loom with the several smaller weavings that are happening side by side.  Cutting this one out has left a gaping hole but there's several inches of weave-able warp remaining.

I'll tie it back onto the cloth beam bar, by lashing on like I did for this part, once I've woven the other sections up to that point and cut them off.

I don't always have enough warp remaining on a wider piece to use for smaller things but when I do I try to squeeze as much out of the loom as I can.

A fantastic web exhibition of tapestries!

I just have to note this link to a web exhibit of tapestries by Inyul Heo, a Korean artist.  It's curated for ATA by Barbara Burns and please visit and experience movingly beautiful art works!

next tapestry underway...

... this is a small one I started last Saturday.  I'm doing it for an auction that will be held on December 5 during the annual Festival of Trees to benefit Challenged Child and Friends, an organization in north Georgia that serves children with disabilities and their families.  My husband and I have taken part in fund raising auctions with this group for several years now.

The tapestry will be 8" w x 10" h.  The sett sett is 8 epi, a cotton seine twine warp remains from a previous large tapestry woven on my Tissart loom.  For weft I'm using 4-fold of the 20/2 worsted wool from Norway that Kathe Todd-Hookers sells at Fine Fiber Press .  I've used black, white and grays for a few tapestries in the past and was inspired by Kathy Spoering's recently completed piece that's primarily black, white and gray to do this piece in monochromatic.  Link here to see Kathy's tapestry at her blog.

The tapestry is at the half-way point today and I hope to finish it before the weekend.  I'll also be taking a tapestry loom to the event venue the day before when artists who have donated works will be setting up to demonstrate with their techniques.  Most will be doing drawing or painting, I think; maybe having the loom there so one can see how it's actually done will make the little piece more appealing for bidders--at least I hope so.

The design was based on a very quick, loose sketch I did last summer at one of my favorite places in the world, the property at Sapphire owned by my friends, Noel and Patrick.  A couple of waterfalls there are ones I've photographed and drawn many times through the years.  The sketch I'm working from didn't have much color information to guide me along and I didn't want to refer to one of the photos since I'd hoped to make the tapestry more stylized.   I made a line drawing of the sketch by tracing basic outlines, leaving out a bit and adding a few other lines.  I then added value to the simplified shapes by filling in with pencil, scanned and opened in Photoshop.  I used various filters to manipulate and simply further.  I don't keep good notes about filters I go through to get the final image--just play around until my eye seems to like what I see.  This was a cutout filter but was done after other filters had been used to change things around a bit.

Because the piece is so small I was able to print out the design on regular 8.5 x 11" paper to use as the cartoon--it can be seen stitched at the back of the weaving.

P.S.  Here's the tapestry as I leave the studio today, 11-25-09.  I rotated the photo so it's seen in the direction it will hang.