Rebecca Mezoff's The Art of Tapestry Weaving

It's been a banner year for books about tapestry, and one of the most anticipated books of the year came out last week. I've read every word of Rebecca Mezoff's book The Art of Tapestry Weaving and I can report that it not only meets our expectations, it exceeds them.  It is a vital introduction to the art of tapestry for beginners, and a valuable resource for intermediate and advanced weavers as well.  We haven't had a good instructional manual for decades, and this book is the updated guide we need.  It is essential.  

I was eager to get this blog post out and so I was tempted to skim or skip sections that covered aspects of tapestry weaving that I thought I knew.  But as I read I continually found that I was picking up new tips, some of which solved nagging little problems I had struggled with for years.  (Some these are rather embarrassing to share, but I do so in the knowledge that we are all lifelong students of tapestry; there is always more to learn.)  I have learned for example, how to construct a butterfly better so it doesn't fall apart.  I have finally learned to sew slits in a way that doesn't create the appearance of little zipper teeth, and why it can be better to sew slits as you weave.  I have learned why beating too hard, with a weighted beater (one of my favorite tools up to now) is not a good idea.  And so on.  I imagine many readers will pick up similar tips.  

In her forward, Sarah Swett recommends that readers work through the book with a warped loom nearby, to try things out.  Good advice!  I'm planning to experiment with weaving a curve both line-by-line (something I've never loved to do) and by building separate shapes.  It will be interesting to see if the results look different.

It is immediately obvious that the book is the fruit of years of teaching tapestry.  Rebecca has taught thousands of students in person and online, and she is intimately familiar with the questions and stumbling blocks new weavers face.  Daunting choices about looms, yarns, and techniques (weave from the front or the back?  butterflies or bobbins?) all need to be made before you make your first pass of weft through warp.  Rebecca walks new weavers step-by-step through these choices, clearly explaining the reasons behind each recommendation she makes.  And yet she is not dogmatic, allowing that there are several possible choices at each juncture, and outlining the pros and cons of each.  The book logically moves through the steps from warping the loom carefully (whatever kind of loom it is), bubbling and weaving straight lines, to color blending techniques, managing slits and joins, and weaving shapes and curves. She concludes with useful advice on ways to mount and hang finished work.

One of my favorite sections was about choosing yarn.  I remember as a new tapestry weaver being completely flummoxed for awhile about how and where to get yarn appropriate for tapestry. Experienced weavers would say, "you can weave with almost anything," and while that is true once your mind and fingers have built up a muscle memory for the process, weaving with a wide variety of yarns at once can introduce one more source of technical frustration that beginners don't need.   Rebecca wisely offers four "anchor yarns" as possibilities, and recommends that new weavers choose just one to work with exclusively as they learn.  This simplifies learning so much. 

Perhaps most importantly for new weavers, Rebecca makes it seem possible: 

"Once we know a little about tapestry weaving, it feels unreachable from our living rooms and home studios,  I'd like to challenge that notion,  Start at the beginning, allow yourself to play with simple design, and embrace sampling.  Step by step, you can definitely do this."  

I love that Rebecca urges weavers to experiment, to make samples, to follow those "what if" ideas.  Yes, they might not all succeed, but you will definitely learn something and your weaving will improve.  Tapestry can seduce us with the promise of perfection (square!  flat!  straight edges!), but Rebecca urges us to remember that it's a textile.  The weft "bosses the warp around" and the yarn has memory!  Perfection is elusive.  Rebecca's chapter on designing for tapestry, using a cartoon, and the special challenges posed by small-format weaving is totally solid.   

As a book, this is a beautiful volume.  Photographs and even diagrams are in full color, and clearly illustrate each point.  More than simply a how-to manual, the book offers inspiration by showing examples of tapestries woven by contemporary artists.  I am honored to be one of the artists whose work is pictured.  

There is also an index which I expect to use frequently, as a forest of post-it notes can only go so far!  Additionally, an appendix at the end covers all the knots used in tapestry-making (thank you!!), how to make leashes, and how to build pipe looms.  Just having all this nuts-and-bolts info in one place is incredibly helpful. 

Many of you have already ordered your book and are impatiently awaiting its arrival.  I understand an electronic version is available on Kindle if you just can't wait, but do buy the physical book too.  It's worth it for those photos and diagrams.  

Rebecca mentioned during one of her book launch events that Storey Publishing held her to a strict 300-page word limit.  I asked whether there were things she had had to leave out, and whether someday perhaps, after she recovers from the years-long effort of making this book, she might write another.  She said that yes, there were a few techniques that she simply didn't have room to cover in detail (hachures, for example) and that she would like to cover designing for tapestry in more depth.  I am hopeful that we will have more of Rebecca's experience and clear insight on that subject in book form someday.   

How does travel impact your work?

Summer is a season for travel, and it seems like a good time to raise a question with you, dear readers, that I've been mulling over.  How does your travel impact your creative work, in fiber or any other medium?  Do you try to take what you've seen and translate it into your own work?  Or is travel more inspiring in a general way, allowing you to step out of your daily life, refresh your mind and spirit, and broaden your visual horizons?  I, along with many weavers in the US and around the world, have recently enjoyed following the textile-oriented travels of Robbie LaFleur and Rebecca Mezoff, and I am excited to see how their travels and research impact their work.  Their generous sharing of images and insights has already been helpful for many of us in the weaving community.

My own recent journeys have not been quite as far afield or as intensely fiber-focused, but I've taken a couple of fun trips so far this year, one to Guatemala and the other just over a week ago to the Four Corners area of the U.S., encompassing Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks and Monument Valley Tribal Park.  On each trip I took dozens, maybe hundreds, of photos, and my mind was whirring with ideas as to how I might take what I'd seen and use it in tapestry somehow.

In the Four Corners region I was awed by the scale and patterning of natural formations.  At Zion, desert varnish painted the cliff walls with shiny areas and with abstract expressionist drip patterns.  I learned that in geological terms the wedge weave pattern in the cliff faces is due to crossbedding of different layers of rock.

Rock walls at Zion

Rock wall with crossbedding (or wedge weave) at Zion

At Bryce Canyon I was intrigued by the weird and wildly detailed hoodoos formed by erosion.  Scores of spires and narrow fingers and canyons made cities of orange and white rock.  It was spectacular, and yet seemed impossible to try to weave, at least for me.  If you abstracted the detailed forms enough to weave them you'd lose the impact, I think.  (I'd love to see a tapestry inspired by Bryce that proves me wrong!)

"Fairyland" section of Bryce Canyon

 The formations of Monument Valley are truly monumental.  In movies and photographs the monuments are often pictured all together in the landscape, and thus they can look smaller than they really are.  In person the scale is immense; the tallest formation is 1000 feet high, the height of a 100-story building.

"Big Eye Hogan" at Monument Valley.  The same forces of erosion that shaped the monuments are at work carving the eye in the ceiling of this giant alcove. 

We love to look at the strange and unusual in the landscape--but does it make for good art?

In Guatemala, the landscape was gorgeous,  but I was most enchanted by the vibrant colors and the exuberant mixing of patterns in traditional Maya clothing.  I admired the incredible workmanship in the dyeing and weaving.   But since I returned, I've not found a way to directly translate any of that into my own work.  It could be that Mayan weaving is Mayan and not for me to emulate.   I have, though, continued to explore and research the ways in which color, culture and place intersect.  (If you have any books or articles to recommend, please share!)

Market in Antigua, Guatemala

Woven huipil, or blouse, from Guatemala

But the question remains--how do you take what you've seen on a wonderful trip and use it once you're back in your regular environment?  I know that there is no one answer that could work for all artists, all trips, and all ways of working.  And yet I want to somehow integrate these experiences into my work.  I want them not to be isolated experiences.  It could be that they are influencing me in subliminal ways I'm not even aware of, which would be great!

In all these places I feel shrunk down to my right size, very very small in the grand scheme of things, and that is oddly comforting.  (Another way to say it is that I'm getting out of my studio and out of my own head!)  Perhaps this is the feeling that I can try to convey in my work, rather than a literal depiction of any of these places.  Hmm, how can I depict in visual terms the feeling of being small in a vast, diverse, and mysterious universe??  I recently read an article about British textile artist Claire Benn who is doing exciting work along these lines.

I did make sketches and notes of ideas after my trips; I will revisit these and see what "has legs" and is worth pursuing.  I'm curious about how you respond to travel once you're back in your studio.  Have you taken a trip where you've seen or done things that resulted in new work, perhaps even a new direction for you?  Or is it enough for travel to be a chance to rest and refresh your mind and spirit, to refill the well?  I'd love to hear from you, in the comments below or on Facebook or Instagram.  

Enchanting Color with Rebecca Mezoff in Taos

I'm just back from a wonderful retreat with Rebecca Mezoff and a crew of talented and lovely humans who share a passion for tapestry.  We were at the historic Mabel Dodge Luhan house in Taos, New Mexico.  Taos is justly famous for its artistic culture and history, and Mabel Dodge Luhan and her circle in the early 20th century were one big reason.  It was a blast to stay in this old New Mexican house, in rooms named for Mabel's illustrious guests.  (And the food was fantastic.)  The MDL is booked much of the year for workshops and conferences, but B&B rooms are sometimes open--if your travels take you to Taos, it doesn't hurt to check for availability.  You won't be sorry.

Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos

Each plate of flourless chocolate cake was decorated differently!

Fabulous desserts aside, for a tapestry weaver the main draw was the chance for total immersion in the mysteries of color in tapestry, with an accomplished artist whose work is powered by gorgeous color.   Rebecca familiarized us with the basics of color theory--RGB and CMYK, color in light vs. color in pigment or dye, color harmonies, Itten's seven types of contrast, and the crucial role of value.  We examined specific tapestries to better understand how weavers have used color to create certain effects.  And we did lots of hands-on work:  exercises on paper, yarn wraps, and sample weaving.  Rebecca's famous tables stocked with yarn as far as the eye can see were there, available for sampling and practicing various ways to blend and contrast color.

One exercise was to arrange colored squares in value sequence from light to dark.  
This black and white photo allowed me to check my work. 

The classroom at Rebecca Mezoff's Color Use in the Land of Enchantment Retreat

Two of the three Tables o' Yarn we could choose from to sample with

For me, the chance to experiment with yarns I hadn't yet woven with was really helpful.  I developed a better sense for how the size, twist, fiber and method of dyeing yarn really determine the look of the woven surface and thus the image being woven.  In my sampling, I fell in love with the blending possibilities that weaving with Weavers Bazaar Fine (18/2) yarn presents.  I discovered that if you lay the strands in more or less parallel to each other, you get more of a linear, streaky effect (at top in sample below), versus the speckled effect that results when you twist the plies.  (If you're not careful, you also get draw-in, as my sample demonstrates).  This exploration helped me begin to design my next wedge weave sky tapestry.

I also explored the color red at some length, playing around with shifting the basic hue of a given red yarn by blending it with other colors, both in the weft bundle and, near the top of the sample, using tapestry techniques such as hatching and pick-and-pick.  I had a particular piece in mind that I plan to start soon, and I believe I'm better equipped to choose the red for that piece now.

So. . . huge thanks to Rebecca Mezoff for planning and teaching a really wonderful retreat.  Yes, we learned a lot about color in tapestry weaving.  But the most important weaving we did was weaving community.  It is easy to see why so many students (many of them repeat students) traveled from across the country in January to study with Rebecca.  It was privilege to meet and weave alongside you all.   I hope to see you all again soon.

Fireplace in the dining room 

Weavers gather in a sitting area 

New Mexico in January

Sunset on the retreat's last night 

Tapestry Diary 2017 complete! (almost)

It being the end of the year there's been a flurry of interest lately in the tapestry diaries some of us are keeping.  When I posted my completed December weaving online last week a few folks asked for more information about the year's work.

Molly Elkind, December, Book of Half-Hours, 2017 tapestry diary

I've also had some queries about how to get started on a diary.  (Shameless self-promotion:  If you want a look at many artists' diaries and a guided tour of how to get started, consider signing up for my class at Convergence in July:  Plan Your Tapestry Diary.  The class is filling up but there are still several spots left.) 

When I started the 2017 diary these were my self-imposed rules or guidelines:

   

• weave each month's piece to finish 5" high x 7" wide; 
• weave an indeterminate amount each day, responding both to the day and to what has been woven before;
• when away from the loom, do not weave; 
• choose a palette of colors for each month but be open to adjusting the palette as necessary. 

In addition, I decided on a sett of 8 epi on a 12/6 gray seine twine warp.  I used my copper pipe loom and had to warp it twice over the course of the year.  You can see that overall these rules are pretty loose; the most specific guideline is the overall size of each month's piece.  My plan was to join each month's panel together to make an accordion book. 

For the first few months, January to April, I did respond to what I saw on my morning walks, the colors of the sky, of blooming plants, the street itself, and so on. 

Molly Elkind, January in progress, Book of Half-Hours, 2017 tapestry diary

In February I marked off each day's weaving with a half-pass of red.    

Molly Elkind, February in progress, Book of Half-Hours, 2017 tapestry diary

In April I decided to take a big risk and included a found object in the weaving, a red mailbox flag I picked up off the street.  This was a learning experience!  I should have used half-hitches all around the flag to stabilize the warps as they were stretched around the thickness of the object. . .but I didn't.  Live and learn. 

detail, April-May-June, Molly Elkind, Book of Half-Hours, 2017 tapestry diary.

In May, our schedule called for us to be away from home every weekend, so I devised a complicated system of colored squares and slits or interlock joins to indicate sequences of days spent at home or in another place.  I tried to weave each day as a perfect square . . . but (another learning experience) noticed halfway through the month that my third woven week was developing a wavy top edge.  One of my unspoken rules for the diary is not to un-weave if I can help it.  So, I inserted a corrective strip of weaving in gray.  Hey, I'm the artist, I get to make the rules, and re-make them, right?!

At this point it was becoming clear to me that the diary was evolving into a kind of tapestry sketchbook, in which I was trying out new ideas and techniques without much worry about whether they would make a cohesive whole or even always succeed technically.  And that was fine.  For me the important thing was to have a place to play and experiment.  

At the beginning of June I had just returned from a wonderful retreat with Tapestry Weavers South, at which Connie Lippert had generously shared the basics of wedge weave.  I set myself the challenge of weaving wedge weave, and changed the orientation so I'd weave that month from the side.  

Molly Elkind, June in progress,Book of Half-Hours, 2017 tapestry diary

In addition I decided to use only yarns from my scrap bag.  This actually turned out to be one of my most successful months of the whole year, I think.

When I started the July diary the Fourth was looming and our national political situation was on my mind, so I decided to weave a heart composed of hatched lines of red and blue on a gray background.  

Molly Elkind, July, Book of Half-Hours, 2017 tapestry diary

In August I returned to the idea of incorporating objects I found in the street on morning walks.  This time I chose thinner objects, and arranged them in a composition of sorts.  The tweedy background was meant to mimic the texture of the street.  I think now I've got found object weaving out of my system!

Molly Elkind, August, Book of Half-Hours, 2017 tapestry diary

In September I chose to use only scrap yarns again, and only horizontal lines.  Partway through the month, though, I saw a discarded sunflower in the street on my morning walk and decided to incorporate it too.

Molly Elkind, September, Book of Half-Hours, 2017 tapestry diary

In October I adapted an old watercolor sketch, changing up the values and colors and again using scrap yarn.  Only darks were left in the scrap bag, so that's what I used.  I was happy with how this one turned out too.  

Molly Elkind, September, Book of Half-Hours, 2017 tapestry diary

In November I decided to do a study of textures, seeing how many different techniques I could use to create texture.  I also limited myself to a light palette this time.  Techniques included twill, twining, double and triple setts, countered soumak, slits, rya knots, eccentric weaving, twining, and plain weave with lazy lines. 

Molly Elkind, November, Book of Half-Hours, 2017 tapestry diary

In December, I happened on a diagram of regular hachure and hatching in Kathe Todd-Hooker's book Line in Tapestry (available here.  While you're there check out Kathe's blog as well).  

(c) Kathe Todd-Hooker, Line in Tapestry, p. 26.  Reproduced with permission.  

Upside down, it looked like a Christmas tree so I decided to practice this technique, using green Churro singles for the tree and fine tapestry wool for the background.  In a nod to my 2016 diary which tracked the colors of the liturgical calendar, the background moved from purple to white over the course of the Advent season.  You can see this image at the top of this post. 

I still have to do the finishing work on these last several months and join them to the January-July segments to make a complete book.  

Meanwhile, I've warped up my Mirrix to be ready to start the 2018 diary in a couple days.  Like the new year, an empty warp is pure potential, don't you think? 

2018 tapestry diary warp:  12/6 seine twine, 10 epi, 5" wide

If you are thinking of starting your own tapestry diary, it's a good idea to give a little thought to your starting guidelines.  To quote a previous post: 

Settling on these initial guidelines is an important and subtle part of the game.  You want to have rules, as it were, to govern the game and to make the artistic choices you face each day limited enough to be manageable.  On the other hand, you want those rules to be spacious and generous enough to allow for spontaneous creative responses to circumstances and inspirations. . . and for those inevitable days when you just can't get to your practice.  You don't want to set such strict rules that you get bored or frustrated. 

For further information about tapestry diary practices, check out these links:

Tommye Scanlin approaching the end of her 2017 diary 

Rebecca Mezoff's recent forays into the tapestry diary

my review of Time Warped . . . and Weft exhibit of tapestry diaries and other time-based weaving.

An expanded version of this review will appear in the next edition of the American Tapestry Alliance's member newsletter, Tapestry Topics.  If you're an ATA member, you'll see it.  If you're not, and you're a tapestry weaver, consider joining ATA!

Let me know if you plan to start a diary (it doesn't have to start on January 1 or even run a whole year!).  And share some pictures, below in the comments or on find me on Facebook or  Instagram.  I'd love to see what folks are doing!

Time Warp. . . and Weft: Tapestry Diary exhibit

I had the pleasure of viewing an exhibit of time-related tapestries last week in Athens, Georgia at the Lyndon House Arts Center.  A number of tapestry weavers have been making tapestry diaries and other pieces exploring the passage of time, and this exhibit highlights those weavings.  As always, it was great to see work in person that I had previously seen online or in printed publications.  You can appreciate the techniques, the textures, the physical presence of a weaving so much better in person.  

Perhaps the best surprise though was the sheer variety of approaches that is possible with what seems like a fairly straightforward idea:  mark the passage of time by weaving.  If you are interested in tapestry or in a daily practice of any kind, do yourself a favor and go see the show.  It's up through July 29, 2017.  And if you want to know how to get started on your own diary, read to the very end of this post for an exciting announcement!

Geri Forkner's daily weavings in foreground; Kathy Spoering's calendar pieces in background.
Photo by Jean Clark.

The pieces were beautifully installed in a spacious gallery.  Each artist's work was hung together so works could be compared from year to year.  Geri Forkner has been doing daily weavings incorporating found objects and non-traditional materials since 2005!  Her long narrow strips were hung from the ceiling and on the wall behind, making an visually rich environment that invited viewers to walk through and among them, studying individual details.

Geri Forkner, daily weavings, suspended and on wall

One of my favorite details was the comb which formed a miniature loom!

detail, Geri Forkner 

It was also interesting to see how Geri experimented with a different finish for the edges of some strips:

detail, Geri Forkner 

Several artists have taken the diary aspect literally, weaving a small defined bit each day.  Every artist sets up her own rules of the game, deciding in advance how colors will be chosen, what techniques will be used, and the overall size of the finished piece or pieces.  Janet Austin, Janette Meetze, and Tommye Scanlin have all created traditional wool (or mostly wool), weft-faced woven tapestries this way. Sometimes the month or the date is indicated; sometimes it is not.  But often events from the artist's life or the larger world make an appearance in the weaving.  The daily inventiveness of these artists' approach really impressed me.  And their craftsmanship inspires me as I continue to refine my own technique.

Janet Austin, Tapestry Diaries 2015 (left) and 2016.  Apologies for the askew photo. 

I love the way Janet Austin has outlined each day with a thin black line, setting it off and alluding, perhaps, to the calendar format.  And each day is a delightful miniature in itself.

detail, Janet Austin, 2010 tapestry diary 

Janette Meetze made her 2013 diary in three panels, with each day a distinct and detailed rectangle.

Janette Meetze, 2013 Tapestry Diary Triptych

detail, Janette Meetze, 2013 Tapestry Diary

But for 2015 Janette adopted a more fluid approach, in which the days flow into each other, and the journey through the year is like a hike through the hills.  Red squares on the sides indicate the months. 

Janette Meetze, 2015 Into the Hills

detail, Janette Meetze
Photo by Jean Clark

It was especially interesting to see how several artists' approach to the project changed over the years of their practice.  Tommye Scanlin has been weaving diaries since 2008.  You can see the evolution of her pieces below.  A weaver can choose to weave one loooooong piece, or several smaller pieces. She can choose to leave the warps unwoven when she is away from the loom, as Tommye has done in Year Two 2010 below.  In another year, she chose to weave a solid "filler" color for those days. 

Tommye Scanlin, left to right:  Month of May, 2008; Year One, 2009; Year Two 2010

For the past few years, Tommye has woven a small image related to the season for each month, and has indicated the passage of each day with squares and rectangles that surround each month's image. As long as each month's image and surrounding shapes are completed by month's end, it's all good. 

Tommye Scanlin, Year Seven, 2015 (left) and Year Eight (2016)

Kathy Spoering completed a calendar series, weaving a pictorial tapestry for each month of the year.  As I understand it from her blog, this was a project requiring several years' work, and the detailed imagery and thoughtful designs attest to that.

Kathy Spoering, January (top) and May

Kathy's pieces were hung in a grid of three rows of four pieces each.  Here's a detail of June:

detail, Kathy Spoering, June 

Finally, Rebecca Mezoff took yet another approach to the theme of time.  In a recent artists' residency at Petrified Forest National Park, she took her small Hokett loom outside each day and wove a 2" square piece in response to the landscape around her.  She mounted several of these pieces together on fabric-covered stretchers.  

Rebecca Mezoff, the Petrified Forest Tapestries 

These intimate pieces invite the viewer to come in close to appreciate the details.  Rebecca has also made a book available with photographs of the tapestries in the landscapes that inspired them.  I may have to treat myself to this.  Research, you know!  

detail, Rebecca Mezoff Petrified Forest Tapestries

I am mid-way through the second year of my own tapestry diary practice. (Go here to read about last year's diary and my plans for this year's.  My most recent post updates you on June 2017's diary.)  I am still fascinated by how this daily activity of sitting to weave a bit every morning has been such a spur to creativity--and a way to practice and refine my technique.  As I write this it is July 1, and while I have woven the hem of this new month's piece, I still don't know what my approach will be.  But tomorrow morning, I will find out.  Stay tuned.

P.S. I have just learned that I have been selected to teach "Plan Your Tapestry Diary" at next year's Convergence conference in Reno, Nevada.  If you're excited by the possibilities of any kind of time-related weaving (and isn't it all time-related?), join me there.