Twisp of Fate

My 3-day tapestry weaving class with James Koehler was intense but rewarding.  He normally teaches this “Introduction to Tapestry Weaving” as a 5-day workshop, and tried to cover all the bases for us in 3 days.  This made for some long days but we got through a lot.  We each wove a sampler that would look something like this when done:

James Koehler's tapestry sampler

He brought his full range of yarns (which he dyes himself) so we had a lot of colors to choose from.  I went with a “southwest” color scheme:

my sampler underway

At this point, we had warped our looms using his (very cool and new to me) method, woven a header which allowed us to practice laying in the yarns with “bubbles” of slack to keep it from drawing in, did a twined edge and hem with the cotton warp, then a wool hem and soumak turning row.  Then we practiced 3 kinds of vertical joins before moving on to angles.  Later on we did a curve with a smooth outline, variations of hatchure, and the beginning of color blending techniques.  That’s pretty much where we ran out of time.  I finished my sampler at home this morning and have it off the loom.  Once I do all the finishing, I will post a picture.  It has its problems, but hey!  it’s kind of handsome and my first tapestry.

Most of my other pictures look like this:

clasped weft, move #1

Hopefully these will help me remember the details of some of his methods, which are pretty hard to describe in words.

Since Ruby Leslie’s 3-day workshop (“There Must Be 50 Ways to Use Your Color”) was being held in the conference room on the main floor of our dorm, I was able to visit and see what they were up to.  I must take this class some day if she offers it again at a conference.  I think the basic idea was to take a color scheme and explore what you could do with it using different materials (cottons, tencel, silk, silk/wool) and different weave structures.