I finished a tapestry this week.

It’s an unusual one for me. I think I’ll call it “Once Upon a Time.”

The story behind this weaving begins when I first got this beautiful loom. It has a weaving width of six feet and I wanted to experience the feeling of working over that full width. We have a lot of sliding glass doors in our home (five) and it was my plan to weave a wide - but short (!) - piece to go above the doors in my studio.

I didn’t have a firm cartoon in mind, just a series of sketches. I filled my journal with blank boxes approximating the size and shape of the tapestry and just played with whatever popped into my mind- or wherever my pencils traveled was more like it.

That first piece became Immersion Through Time; you can see details and read more about it here.

I had put on a pretty long warp so I had room to do another tapestry of about the same size.

Around the time I was working on this piece, I was also involved in learning photoshop techniques which led to a desire to do this next piece as a kind of sample for where those designs might lead me.

Using the same format, I also had a strong impulse to create something resembling a row of images (like a contact sheet- from my earlier photography days)- of five frames. I guess it’s call a pentaptych?

So again, I drew out lots of empty boxes the same size and shape as the previous one, and started filling in the blanks. There were many variations. This was the period of severe blank “warp” syndrome setting in. It took me a very long time to “feel” close to anything I was coming up with. I knew I wasn’t ready to weave the design from the photoshop tutorial- but I did want to play with the imagery… sort of; it was all still very vague in my mind.

When I finally settled on a sketch I felt drawn to, I started weaving.

All I can say now is that once I finally began, it just evolved. In surprising - to me - ways. As it deviated from the original drawing - mostly involving colors- I would revise the drawing (becoming quite messy in the end) to kind of check myself.

As I have said before… Sometimes we just can’t explain where a design comes from - or how it evolves.

I learned what I set out to learn. To experience the immersion - and I have to say I am (head-over-heels) in love with this loom. I feel an immediate connection when I weave on it. It’s unlike any feeling I’ve ever experienced weaving on any other loom. It’s a feeling of completeness, total immersion with the warp threads. Like I’m stepping into it, powerfully merging somehow in both a physical and spiritual way.

A Tale of Two Tapestries