I would have liked to have more of this tapestry woven by now but I found the first 15 cm including the hem hard going as the loom is low to the floor and I had to sit on my feet to weave. I am now up to a height 
that I can sit on a low stool that I have borrowed from Coen to weave and this is much better and easier going. It feels good to work on a large tapestry but the decision making
process is quite different to the smaller pieces that I have woven in the past. I was a bit concerned about the blue in the plate at the bottom looked a bit flat in colour but I kept looking at the original painting and that is what it is like in that area. I feel happy now that I have begun the blue on the left side and started to vary the tones of of blue. The original plate is hand painted so the depths of blue vary throughout the plate. I wanted to show this in the tapestry to give the plate some life as the blue areas are large and could appear to look a bit flat and lifeless. When I look at most of my art I think that I have a bit of a background obsession as they are often more patterned than the objects that I choose to feature in the work. The lime leaf that I am weaving now is a large area in the work and I keep thinking that it is a bit too much one colour. But asI sit and weave, I look out at the tree that the leaf came from and it is very much one colour with little or no variation's in tones. I had woven quite a lot more than the pictures show but after much anguish I pulled out a large area as I noticed some ridging that I had not noticed as the bobbins hanging covered it over. I decided that rather than regret it later as it would always bother me I decided to pull out and reweave the problem area that I felt that I had such a dislike to. Although this has set me back in the weaving I am not at all sorry as it would have always eaten away at me that it should have been corrected. Because I have never woven anything to this scale before I am fast running out of dyed wool. But it is all a learning curve and I am enjoying the weaving when I can get to it.
Hi Debbie!
ReplyDeleteI was so happy to see your new post & photos of your tapestry in progress! You have been busy & it is already gorgeous with its vivid, glowing colors.
I had a problem when weaving my cereus expectations tapestry, because it was larger & the colors a bit abstract-- I couldn't "see" it as I wove, unless I got up & moved far away from the loom. Another weaver I talked to said she uses a reducing glass to look through when she is sitting at the loom if she is having trouble visualizing her colors & shapes. The reducing glass looks like a hand held magnifying glass, but it functions like looking through the wrong end of binoculars (& one probably looks less strange using that than backward binoculars!). I haven't found one yet, but I'd like to give it a try.
I'm looking forward to seeing this tapestry completed... what are its dimensions?
Lyn
Hi Lyn. Thanks for your comments. Sometimes when you weave with lots of bobbins they tend to cover the work and you notice mistakes when it gets a bit late. I think that I need to put the bobbins up more often and stand back and look at the tapestry.
ReplyDeleteOften you don't notice ridging until you get the light shinning on the side of the work. Weaving at night when the colours are dark is also difficult. The tapestry is 100 cm wide by 80 cm high. Or 39 1/2 inches wide by 31 1/2 inches high. The design is in an older post called progress 2. Debbie.