I am so pleased to be one of the artists receiving a grant to create a new work in linen for an upcoming exhibition. The project is described on the Three Rivers Fibershed site:
“Living Lineage: Linen in Scandinavian Folk Art and Modern Innovation is a collaborative initiative led by Three Rivers Fibershed in partnership with The Weavers Guild of Minnesota and The American Scandinavian Foundation. The project seeks to reanimate Scandinavian weaving traditions by supporting Upper Midwest artists in creating new work with linen, a fiber central to Scandinavian folk life and to the cultural history of our region.”
I will create two tapestries in Frida Hansen’s open-warp transparent tapestry technique. Normally, the warp in this technique is wool. Part of the magic is that the woolly fibers of the warp cling to the woolly fibers of the weft, holding the woven areas in place so they do not slip into the open, unwoven sections.
Here is an opportunity for experimentation. I feel quite sure that I can use a tow linen—with roughness and “grippiness”—along with wool weft, to create a tapestry in which the beauty of linen yarn is highlighted in the open areas.
The exhibit will be held in December 2026 at the Weavers Guild of Minnesota, in the Open Book building in Minneapolis. You can follow along on my blog as I investigate materials, design the tapestries, weave them, and figure out how to hang them to emphasize their open and airy feeling. They will likely hang freely in the gallery, not against a wall.
Step one is to experiment with various linen warps. What is the right thickness? Will the wool woven areas stay in place next to the unwoven sections? How will the piece hang when the tension of the loom is taken away? I started by making samples on a small pipe loom.
I will write more about design later. In broad terms, I am planning to make one tapestry with a historical bird taken from Norwegian pictorial tapestry, or billedvev, and another with contemporary Minnesota birds. For the Minnesota bird tapestry, I investigated which birds might be found near flax fields. While looking at photos, I was struck by the pretty flax flowers. It might be beautiful to include a field of flax in the design, so I decided to weave flowers for my samples.
For the first sample I used linen from my cupboard, fairly thin and a lovely unbleached color. Takeaway? Too thin.
I made a second sample with a heavier 8/4 Irish linen. The color was not as engaging, but the thicker warp was more pleasant to weave.
In my cupboard I also had several cones of very thin linen from Finland. My third experiment was to make a warp of five thin strands used as one. The colors are the most beautiful of my samples. The combined colors are so pretty, but it was an exasperating experience to weave. I was picking the sheds and, despite my best efforts, I kept putting my fingers in between the bundled warps. The result looked nice, but it was an unpleasant process.
The Next Step
Talented spinner Wendy Johnson is going to ply the thin linen threads of beautiful colors. I have high hopes that the plied yarn will maintain the same slight variation in color. But will the resulting yarn be too stiff?
Wendy Johnson (@sagahill) of Saga hill Studio is cultivating a field of flax at Gale Farms. I will visit the fields when they are in bloom later this month so I can take my own photos of the beautiful flowers. I wonder if readers of this post noticed the mistake in my samples—the flowers have only four petals. A friend pointed that out. “People will notice,” she added.
When I told Wendy about my idea of weaving birds that might be found around a flax field, she said she thinks of creatures in the fields, like bumblebees or dragonflies. Another friend mentioned that goldfinches eat flax seed, so they might be good to include. More ideas are welcome!
This weekend, while teaching a workshop in Michigan, I hung the three completed samples in the window, alongside one of my wool warp tapestries. I would say that in all three linen cases, I could make the technique work. The weft didn’t seem to slip in any of them. Still, the experiments are important to find just the right combination of thickness and beauty in the material.
