What is tapestry?

For a brief moment I wondered what the official definition of tapestry was, so to “The Tapestry Handbook” by Carol K Russell came:

Tapestry is the interweaving of discontinuous weft yarns with tensioned warp yarn through two alternate sheds, resulting in a firm, weft-surface textile constructed concurrently with the description of its design. Taken as a whole, this definition identifies tapestry’s distinctive elements.

Uh huh, ok well fine… I knew my first little sample was not tapestry, but I wanted to see what weaving on the little toy loom was like. There are a lot of disadvantages, like hard to tension evenly, no shed to open, it was more like needle weaving, but I still think I can get the techniques down, and convenience factor was high – I could carry it anywhere.


“discontinuous weft yarns” In most hand-weaving techniques, a weft yarn is passed continuously across each row of weaving. Since the direction of the weft is reversed only at a selvedge (an outside edge), weft colors are all interchanged vertically. By contrast, tapestry technique involves several wefts in each row of weaving. Because they can be entered, deleted, or reversed at any point in the row, color can be shifted horizontally.


My little stripe weaving does not meet this criteria.

“two alternate sheds” Tapestry weave is the simplest of all woven structures, universally known as “tabby” or “plain weave” – that is, each weft is woven over and under successive warps, in opposite order to the weft preceding it.


Definitely fits this.


“weft surface textile” Horizontal rows of tightly woven weft completely cover he vertical warps and thus form the surface of the textile.


Ditto on this one.


“constructed concurrently with the description of its design” In most visual arts (painting, for instance), the artist adds an image to an existing surface (in this case, a canvas). In tapestry, however, the artist constructs the image and the surface at the same time. This last criterion helps differentiate tapestry from other types of textiles. Embroidery stitched onto a woven surface may be fiber art, but it cannot correctly be defined as tapestry, it does not form the essential structure of the textile.


Ok, there is not really any image, but it does form the “essential structure.”


My sample is a pretty weak attempt, but others will follow more fitting of the definition of “tapestry.”

A weekend of stitching

What a great weekend, I got so much done! Really helps to get the New Years Eve thing over with on Thursday night so there is still 3 days (assuming you didn't over celebrate) left to get work done before going back to the job.

I spent a number of hours stitching the layers of burlap together on 2 pieces, played with my little loom for my self-imposed tapestry lessons, read a bit and still had time for a couple of naps!


Both of these art pieces have a water/river theme, in one the water is actually blue, curving and swirling around a rock, in the other the water takes on more of an acid color like some horrible toxic accident. I keep trying to limit my color pallet and not use the whole rainbow, and I was successful in the one piece, but couldn’t help myself with the other and just had to use the secondary colors together to see if they would clash – I love color and to play with it in all its glorious forms.

I’ll update the photos as the pieces move forward, they still have a long way to go.

Tapestry beginnings

I have taken upon myself to learn tapestry, I think the skill will be useful for my next art exploration. This thought is coming to me with a bit of reservation. I like the idea of creating the cloth as I add the design rather than just "attaching" it to the already manufactured cloth, and I also know this will also be a way to add texture to what I create. My reservation comes from the fact that it is SLOW, it can really take a long time and I want to make things with some size to them. In the past I have dabbled in tapestry a couple of times, but did not have the skills to make it look good, so now it is time to learn. I feel you should learn the technique - the rules before you can break them and I am certain to break them. I don't have a desire to "paint" pretty pictures by doing tapestry, but I do think it may be a good way to build my abstract ideas.

I have a book called "The Tapestry Handbook" by Carol K Russell that I will follow as well as I can follow any written instructions. Books like these always want to teach techniques by having the "student" make a sampler. I have no desire to make a sampler and follow along in the book in the order prescribed. I think that will just frustrate me, plodding along making something I don't want. So I have come up with the idea of using a very small "no frills" loom. I can take each technique and create a tiny work and then cut it off and throw it away if I hate it -- with a sampler I would be stuck looking at something I hate the whole time. I can also redo a lesson or skip one at my own pace.



The loom I have chosen is a Good Wood Loom, as you can see it is more of a toy than a loom, but I think it will work for what I have in mind. I want to be able to carry it around and use it when I have bits of free time, like lunch, or breaks at work, maybe even riding the bus if I want to deal with the questions. The loom measures 5" x 7" and creates a weaving approximately 4" x 5.5".

Happy 2010

I started this blog to journal the year in the U of W Fiber Arts Program. After we had our final show, the blog came to an end, but with a new year I think it's time to start again.

The update on the class: some of us continue to meet once a month to see what we're up to and to give encouragement and advice. We are currently planning a show for the month of March at a cafe in the University district. There will be eleven of us participating. We started a "portfolio blog" that shows the final projects of the remaining 11 members and it gets updated whenever someone has a piece in a show somewhere.

I am going to continue to work on the burlap pieces until I get a "body of work" or feel I have taken the idea as far as I can. I think parts of this work will move forward into my next exploration, but how that will play out, I can only guess at this time. (at right; "Canyonlands," 30" x 32")

One of my goals for the year is to explore other related fiber techniques. It may include card weaving, inkle loom, kumihimo, finger weaving and learning tapestry trechniques. My thought behind this is that you never know what will spark an idea and I think it's important for me to have a variety of techniques to draw on.

Final show - Topo Map: Ridges

Two days after the class final show I was off to Bryce and Zion National Park for get-away time. It was nice to finally have a break from deadlines of work and class and only have to accomplish what was in front of you, be it sitting and looking out the window at the passing scenery, hiking up a trail, or just sitting down for a nice dinner.

Now it's time to catch up with what we all produced for the final fiber art show. I may not post all of the projects, but will put up the ones I feel will show well on the blog. Almost of these look better "in person" my cheap camera can't capture the detail many of these have.

I'll start with mine, it's called "Topo Map: Ridges" rather than go on with a long discussion, I let you read the artist statement and come to your own conclusions. The size is 48" x 30" and is made out of dyed burlap in several layers.

The detail photo shows a bit more of the 3-D aspect of the piece. The topo lines are perpendicular to the rest of the burlap. Sometimes I would cut and pull out fibers to let the layer below show and in some places I would add dyed burlap parts to the top layer to get the effect I wanted.



Artist Statement

I create maps to help people explore new places.

I grew up on a farm in the Midwest, and I feel a real kinship with the land. I like the way the machinery imposes its crop-growing grid upon the land, but I like even more the way natural features such as rivers, boulders and trees break up that grid. As a child, I’d curl up on the couch and pore over maps from around the country. What were those places like? How were they different from Minnesota? What would it be like to travel there?

When I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I saw my first topographical map and learned that all those squiggly lines show changes in elevation – what an interesting way to show information. When I flew, the view from airplane windows gave me three-dimensional information about the land. When I rode my bike cross-country and in other states, I learned first-hand about topography as I climbed mountains, battled headwinds, smelled the salt air and felt the changing weather.

Today, I make my own version of topographical maps. I see narrowly spaced multiple lines and I feel a sharply ascending mountain or a dizzying canyon; languidly spaced lines show me the open plains.

I invite the audience to explore the world as I see it. Walk over the earth’s crust, travel through canyons, peer over the edge of the crater, or feel the coolness of a forest.

My maps show more than roads.



Flying home yesterday from Phoenix we ended up going over what I think was Canyonlands National Park. I snapped a few photos from the plane (the only good reason to be on a airplane) thinking this will maybe help explain where I'm coming from.

I plan to produce more of these "maps" for awhile, exploring the idea and materials.

Group Project

For our second project spring quarter we were assigned a group project. I was not real thrilled about the idea of getting together with a group to get something done, not that I didn't want to work with a group, it was more the logistics of getting together. Plus I really wanted to save my weekends for working on my final project, gardening and bicycling. Sally and I were talking and thought maybe if we got people together that all worked downtown we could meet at lunch if we had to and leave the evenings and weekends free.



I thought of doing some kind of round-robin art where one person adds something and gives it to the next person and they work on it from there and pass it on until we run out of time or declare it finished. When we finally got a group together we brainstormed for awhile about my idea, then Sally's kite idea/skydiving and somehow ended up doing a parachute idea, maybe because Nancy said we could get little parachutes cheap at the army surplus store. I liked that idea; cheap, nothing to construct, we just needed to decorate the 'chute.



Sally volunteered to make baskets for all of us if I dyed her parachute. Hattie went shopping for the parachutes the next day and we were in business. We all had the task of finding a place to launch them from and finally ended up in the inside atrium at the Library.



We were all working on the concept of trusting in ourselves and what we had learned in class, moving on after class, growth, launching ourselves etc. Some decorated their parachutes with imagery of these items or wrote quotes or sayings on or in the basket.



Wednesday morning we gathered at the Library and let our parachutes float down from the 10th floor to the third floor. A few technical problems, but generally worked just fine. It was fun! We had a few people taking photos for us to document the event and then unfortunately we had to go to work. I think we all would have rather stayed and played with the parachutes a few more times and then gone out for coffee. Reality bites.



Project-wise I think it was good, documentation-wise trying to photograph a small moving object in questionable light in a large space made for a challenging task. Thanks for all who participated and Photoshop for its editing.

I'm in ANWG!!!

I know it's been forever since I posted... Spring is such a busy time even without school projects to work on. But...

I was notified today that I'm in the Juried Show at ANWG (Association of northwest guilds) in Spokane at the end of May. yea!!! I actually designed the piece last summer before taking the fiber arts class, so I think my stuff is more interesting now, but hey, who cares, it's a good thing.

Work on the final project is progressing, I'm pretty happy so far how it looks --- it's sort of a fantasy topographic map -- more later.

Our group project is due before that -- we're doing mini parachutes and launching them inside the Library in the atrium on Wednesday, May 20.

I feel like I'm being pulled many ways -- class projects, gardening, bike riding, getting stuff ready for the conference, plus work and day to day stuff -- somehow it will all get done... maybe.