On my last post I talked about my visit to the Scottish castle of Stirling to see its tapestries. This has ended up surfing YouTube to falling in love with this technique. I discovered the Canadian youtuber withwendy and with her my latest obsession: tapestries. She had given an initiation class on the tapestry (Tapestry Weaving) and had not given her time to finish it, so she continued it at home while teaching you what she had learned. Several different ways of knitting with wool and thick, fine, fluffier yarns or even colored ribbons. The result is somewhat chaotic and I love the mix of textures. An interesting piece of textile art.
I found my old sewing kit at the back of a closet (everything is kept in my parents’ house) and there was a fabric with snails, rabbits and a turtle to finish embroidered with special cotton threads for upholstery. The threads are perfect, spotless, resistant and in a beautiful color range. I remembered the video of wendy and I said to myself: “Why not! I only have 3459 more projects underway, another one will not hurt ”.
How to start wall tapestry?
I looked at some tutorials and started my wall tapestry creating a cardboard loom and tightening the base threads. Then use a random colored string at the base to go watching. A lot of laps later you feel like trying to mix colors and I did it although in a somewhat regular way. It’s overwhelming when you have a ton of pretty colors that are perfect for your tapestry, but you don’t want to use them all to be able to use them in the next one. To learn you have to practice.
It is not finished yet, and looking at Pinterest can help you lose yourself very easily. Thousands of combinations, textures, finishes and many ideas to get it right. What although it is sooo fun and you spend your time flying, doing it well (or as well as I would like) is another song. I spend all day taking time to weave it, and I am dying to see finished my wall tapestry.
Have you hooked on any embroidery or craft techniques? tell me 🙂
