Thursday, February 25, 2010

Great ideas!

Tommye,
I think those are terrific ideas!! I will just have to learn how to post pix and other things. My husband and I have been taking Lynn Pollard's class, "Weaving Fabulous Cloth" this quarter. I am learning quite a bit from the class but I am exploring Moorman technique combined with shibori instead of tapestry for this class. The interesting thing is that it makes me think of tapestry. I have found that weaving has many "Ah So" moments for me and I'm weaving those characters. Naturally, there's a lot of "Ah So" in tapestry. This class is over at the end of March. I am really glad I'm taking it. It's helping me with focus as well as just plain learning a tremendous bunch of new stuff.
I am also working on tapestry but not very quickly. I'm finding tapestry very closely allied to photography in my mind and translating some photos into tapestry. I'm slow as Christmas but having a wonderful time.

Terri

Thursday, February 11, 2010

a website with small loom shown -- and a plug for Weavolution

This website was noted on Weavolution today:


Although written in Spanish (which I don't read) the photos showing how to set up a small, wooden frame loom are quite informative.  The loom seems to be one that could be easily constructed, if you're handy with saw and drill.  The advantage is the tensioning of warp possible with the moveable top bar.

And, by the way, if you haven't yet discovered Weavolution you might want to check it out.  It's a social network for handweavers and free to sign up to be able to post comments.  However, there's quite a bit of information you can see and read without signing up.  I've been a member for several months now and one of the things I like about it is that there are people of many different interests in weaving who read and post to it and quite diverse experience levels, also.  I learned about the website above from a Weavolution posting, for instance.  I've also just bought a loom from someone who noted it as for sale and in the fall, I posted a couple of tapestry looms for sale for friends.  There are several special interest forums--for instance, there's one for Georgia Weavers; others forums for those interested in tapestry, for Navajo looms, for backstrap weaving... almost anything one could imagine being interested in you'll either find a forum where a few other people are also posting--or you can create a forum to seek out like-minded folks!

I hope everyone is staying warm and warped!

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Greetings -- hope everyone is happily weaving tapestry!

I hope you're doing well with life and weaving as we get well underway into the second month of the year--can you believe it?! I also hope all of you are getting a small piece ready for the ATA small format exhibit. Entry deadline has already passed, so if you didn't send your intent to participate already, sorry you missed it! Actual pieces are due by March 15. I'm entering--haven't missed one of these small non-juried exhibits since they began in 1996... BUT I have to get it designed and woven!!

I'd love to hear news from everyone. I read Lauren's blog so am keeping up with her adventures through that. Terri just got in touch by e-mail a couple of days ago. I follow Jennifer's blog, also and loved her documentation of the New Zealand adventure she and her husband recently had.
Any one else have a blog or other web presence that shows what you're up to? Please share, if you do.

I'm wondering how we can use the blog with the intent with which I started it about a year ago--to share ideas and to learn from each other. Any suggestions from anyone about that? One of the things that I've done during this year is to have another blog that I've set up with my ATA mentee--we've been sharing back and forth through that private blog since September and we're finding it a great way to communicate. She posts images and asks questions; I reply within the posting, sometimes adding images in response in addition to my written comments.

We could do something similar with this blog, among those of you who are authors to the blog... you could open a posting an edit within it to make comments that would show up in the posting rather than just by doing a comment that's in a pop up.

Here are some ideas I have for possible Q & A things:

--a warping tutorial for frame looms (specifically those like the Brennan-style copper pipe looms)
--a set of photos for setting up heddles
--mounting small tapestries on a fabric covered board
--warping a larger upright tapestry loom

Any other suggestions??