Cindy Owen returned to Chicago after taking my workshop in Milwaukee in November and finished up her trillium beautifully.
This is what I wrote about her experience in class:
Cindy Owen from Lake Forest, Illinois, was interested in weaving a trillium, and was pleased with her design for the blossom and leaves, but that was just the start of her process. She changed her ideas about her borders and backgrounds almost by the hour during the final two days of weaving. That was a good thing! She played with colors and shapes. For example, she started side borders of rectangles and circles and decided after the first yellow circles that she didn’t want that much yellow. Instead, two circles will be on the bottom border, and two at the top. They will echo the trillium center.
All her border-pondering led to such a great result!
In class we discussed the fact that the weft threads at the edge of a long horizontal line above open warp will have a tendency to sag — gravity at play. I have solved that by using sewing thread in the same shade as the yarn to pull the top border threads together when some tend to pull away. Cindy used an even better technique: twining using a crochet hook.
Cindy wrote this about finishing her tapestry:
1. I started the piece with some solid stripes at the base, but I was itching to start the open warp work so I stopped the stripes at about 3/4″. When I got to the top, I wished that the bottom strip was wider. By that time the bottom had scrolled around to the back of the Mirrix loom, with the earliest picks being at the top on the back side. So I wove on the back side of the loom to make that bottom stripe bigger. It shows because there is a little fuzz from the warp that shows on the tapestry. But I’m glad I did it. Next time I will think more about how I want to finish the tapestry and just do it right the first time.
2. When I started the top solid stripe I was not happy with how the weft drifted down into the open warp area. Coincidentally, on that very same day, Gist Yarn sent out an email with a great video about twining. So I conflated those two events and decided to use twining to secure the weft. It was tricky because I was twining BELOW the stripe, but I used a crochet hook and it was not that difficult. I attached a photo of that, too. I also twined at the top of that stripe, and then I turned the loom to the back and did it above and below the bottom stripe, too. Maybe not entirely true to the Frida Hansen method, but I’m glad I did it, I’ll do it again, and I like to think that maybe Frida would have done it too if she had thought of it.
The twining video from Gist Yarn is found here.
In each workshop I teach I marvel at the creativity of my students and the insights I gain through their work and observations.