I found my three tapestry books by Kathe Todd-Hooker. Whew! As I have been weaving this small piece with the slit section, I have been wondering how to twist that black section for a three-dimensional effect. Well, it’s in Kathe’s book Shaped Tapestry. That brings me to another issue. The method used in the book is to unknot the affected warp threads, twist them, and retie them before starting the weaving again. Guess that will require preplanning, huh?
Probably the quality of this slit has something to do with my warp sett (8 epi vs. 4 epi). If all the slits looked like this, well … There is a light blue piece of cardstock between the warp layers.
I’ll know more about how much warp I will be able to use after I weave this small piece on the loom now, but it might be possible to tie on to the warping rod as one would do with a “regular” loom, and weave whatever that fixed length would be. More to learn. The Grand Experiment continues! It’s nice to have this small project, since I am having to spend so much of my day on finish work, muslin wrappers, steaming, cloth labels, etc. By the way, Kathe’s blog is here and her American Tapestry Alliance page is here.
Yesterday-I cut the warp ends of the black section, added more to the warp ends, and tied that section onto the warp bar separately. I quickly realized that in order to twist this section, I will also have to do the heddles again. I’m going to weave several more inches (perhaps in a different, more showy color), then untie the section, twist, re-heddle, and tie on again before weaving again. Thank goodness there are only 8 warp ends in this section! A suggestion was made by Merna that a second warp bar might be useful for a section which will be manipulated.
Addendum to warping: I just realized last night after looking at the written directions again, that I had the warp bar in the wrong location. No wonder it kept falling out! Will try the correct way next time. My only defense is that I put the warp bar in based on what I thought I saw on the DVD. How embarrassing!
I’ve finished listening to Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell. Very interesting take on China, especially in light of an article in today’s paper. Here’s one version of it from NY Times. I’m listening to Shanghai Girls by Lisa See now. Really did not intend the Chinese connection–it just happened.