Regular readers of this blog may think I've given up weaving entirely in favor of sketching. I'm the first to admit an obsession with drawing, but weaving has been bubbling away in the background.
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| these tapestry cartoons are 8 " high and meant to be woven side to side |
In order to create a larger group of work for my Substitute Tales idea, I decided a year ago to work on a few tapestries with groups of students from my daily substitute teaching journals. I worked with those sketches, combining groups by cutting out crayon drawings and moving the pieces around, finally drawing three strips with a black crayon.
At a loss of how to continue, I decided last summer to do watercolors of the 3 drawings.
The only thing this did was create more confusion. Adding color didn't seem to help move this idea forward.
I spoke with a few people who's opinion I value greatly and two of them mentioned that they preferred the black and white approach. I filed the watercolors away and focused on the neutral.
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| I chose to do a 6" sample of the 8" high drawing...I'm staying with the 8" /10 epi for the final piece |
Fall 2018 began and I knew I was not ready to start weaving. I sorted through yarns I had dyed during the summer, organized them into value and realized I needed to weave a warp of samples. I put a 6 inch warp on my pipe loom and completed 4 samples by the first day of 2019.
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| I tried weaving on the horizontal for this final sample, but will stick with the vertical |
I learned so much weaving those samples: yarn value choices, weaving with new types of fiber, leaving holes, horizontal vs vertical. I think I might be ready to start weaving the first piece.
So guess what I did this morning?
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| it's warped! |
I am excited to see this series develop “in the wool,” Ruth. Thanks for letting us peek at your process.
ReplyDeletethanks so much Molly, you can look forward to not only wool, but cotton, metal, paper and linen too. Should be an adventure in the next few months.
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