"EXPLORING THE POETIC NARRATIVE THROUGH FINE WEAVING"

My days at Tapestry 2008 The Fine Art of Weaving began with a two day Master Class with Aino Kajaniemi. Aino's tapestries are like no others that you see here in Australia. Woven on a close sett fine linen warp, some feel more like a textile than what I think of as tapestry. { Weft face, woven on cotton seine twine warp, tightly beaten down with no warps visible and wool used as the most common weft material }
The tapestries are just beautiful, poetic in imagery, weft yarns are carried like pencil marks across the tapestries. Limited in their use of colour , tonal values are often achieved by eccentric weaving or wefts not beaten down to completely cover the warp. Weft materials include cotton, linen, viscose, silk, hair, wire, ribbon, un spun fleece, hemp, jute and even hay!



I chose to take with me a brush and ink drawing of my son Coen that I had done when he was about two years old. It is difficult to see in the sample the areas that I chose to do some eccentric weaving. I don't think that I could leave any of the cotton seine twine warp showing especially as I always ink my cartoon on to the warps. It was nice to see other tapestry weavers that I know and to meet Linda Wallace in person, as well as some new weavers. I must thank Aino for the class and I hope that she is feeling much better as she was so sick during the time of the Symposium and it was very difficult for her as she should have really been in bed.