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WEAVING TECHNIQUE; advanced tapestry

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Dec 4, 1999

WEAVING TECHNIQUE:advanced tapestry by Lili Pintea-Reed

We've looked at many different ways of embellishing cloth to add charm and artistic interest. Another way to add to fabric is with representational images woven right in to the cloth. To achieve this effect one needs to have the capacity to make crisp edges on the images even if you don't always use it.

The manner to create a crisp line when building adjacent images in the cloth is to abutt the contrasting colors or overlap them. If you abutt the colors you will create a tapestry which is reversible -- the images will be the same on each side. If you overlap, unless your technique is utterly flawless, you will create a right and wrong side to the cloth. Most weavers using the overlap techinique work with the wrong side facing them, so that all the joins and stray edges are where they can be seen and kept track of.

METHOD:

To create an abutted edge of tapestry image, bring the two colors through the warp and at the place where they touch, pull foward and let hang. To finish, thread all the colors used that row through the warp, pulling them forward to be used for the next row. Complete the next row the same way. See this link .

To make an overlap join at the point colors collide use the same method as above but overlap the yarns before threading through the changed warp. This makes a much firmer textile and is best used when tapestry is part of a garment as opposed to a wall hanging. It does add time to the weaving but tapestry is time consuming work. However, it produces results seen by no other method.

To see some wonderful tapestry work go to: Archeology and Slit Woven Tapestry http://www.weavingartmuseum.org/home.html

Danish Museum of Textile Art http://www.jewelry.dk/museum/kim/gobelin...

Gallery Eye:textile show http://gallery-eye.com/artist/weaving.htm

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