After finishing Road to Mamers it was time to plan the next tapestry. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective I have more tapestry ideas and enthusiasm at this point than skills.
I admire the work of tapestry weavers who also draw, sketch and paint, like
Tommye Scanlon,
Sarah Swett and
Janette Meetze. Alas, I do not draw or paint. I did take a gazillion pictures when Rachel and I were in Arizona though. Each day we were surrounded by gorgeous vistas that took my breath away. I blogged about it
here.
So I went through all the photos, chose one and played with enlarging it and isolating an interesting piece of the picture.
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| The view from our room at Sky Ranch Lodge. |
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With some computer manipulation I isolated the part I wished to weave and used the cartoon effect to edit the image.
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| I pulled out my Navajo weaving books for inspiration. Should I border this with some stripes or Navajo motifs to honor the region and culture. |
The next step was to determine the size of the tapestry, the yarn to be used and the desired sett or number of warp threads in an inch. I really wanted to use yarn I already owned.
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This is my collection of single ply Churro yarns, definitely the choice most in keeping with the Navajo weaving materials. The colors were somewhat limited though.
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Eventually I settled on the collection of linen yarns I purchased from tapestry weaver Martha Matthews' estate.
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| I decided on the linen yarns I purchased from tapestry weaver Martha Matthews' estate. |
I don't want to take all the credit, I had help. Montana has a keen color sense.
With the linen, I decided on a sett of 8 per inch and decided to use my Mirrix Zach loom. Time to get warping.
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| My yarns and cartoon. |
