Category: Tapestry Weavings

I chose to theme my tapestry after a song, and make it purple hat cheetah print! I decided to start this assignment by creating the base layer for the purple hat.

I wanted to make the purple hat loose and warm looking, so I decided to keep each stitch of the weaving loose to get that visual effect.

I had issues ensuring that my cardboard loom had even tension. I had to redo the warp for a few inches, but it’s working fine now.

My latest issue is that I made the mistake of weaving an entire section of color while attempting to interlock two yarn wefts. This divided my loom and made it impossible for me to use the center warp to weave the other half. The picture above is what it looks like now as I’m currently “un-weaving” the rest of the orange so that I can try again 🙂

I’m excited to incorporate more techniques, textures, and fabric types as I progress through my tapestry.

I have been really just experimenting with all of the weft techniques I saw on the glossary- trying vertical lines, diagonal lines, the Swedish knot, rya knots, leno, and interlocking normal weave. What ties the whole thing together right now is just the colors I have been using. I like the Swedish knot because it makes the yarn pop out more, and introduce more texture and dimension. I also thought it was fun to do the leno weave.

I did spend a lot of time just figuring out what to do next to keep a good composition, so I have spent around 6-7 hours on this so far. There have been times when I make slits and they get too big, so I have to bring it back together with a base of normal weave next, or when I did the leno and I had to try to make the spacing of the warp even again.

For the first few inches of the weaving, I chose to explore different geometric patterns. I also experimented with leaving empty spaces. I spent about 4.5 hours, with the pile (rya knots) being the most time consuming.

I chose to do a tapestry of Bilbo Baggins’ house from The Lord of The Rings because of the very homey feel that particular setting has, which made me think that creating a tapestry of it would be appropriate since a tapestry is an old form of art as well as something that can be done in the home. This took me about 5 hours to do.

Here is the picture reference.

Here is my work so far. I used several interlocked wefts to create the stairs and surrounding greenery.

For my tapestry weaving I am trying to make Scotty. I found it a bit challenging to work with multiple colors at once, especially colors in the middle, but I like the way that it has turned out so far. It is also a bit difficult when you run out of weft and have to start integrating a new piece because the old piece often sticks out still as can be seen in some spots above.