Catching Up

The llamas have settled down, my son moved out, my daughter & boyfriend moved in.
They moved out, the year got busy, and then my son moved in again!!!

That's what happened to 2013.

In the middle of all that, the Black Pearl Textiles group of weavers had an exhibition at the Living Arts Space in the centre of Bendigo.
Of course the large tapestry 'Revolt' took pride of place.

This is 'us', and below is the tapestry with the original painting alongside.

Later in the year I started 'upgrading' a small tapestry frame I've had for many years. In fact I built it in a woodworking class as part of a weaving course back in 1984.

It was a basic timber frame, quite tall, which I clamp onto a table.

Here you can see the tensioning device I have added to the frame. I got 2 threaded rods and used them to suspend a dowel from the top of the frame.






Then I added a heddle bar support
 and the bar.

Due to the space between the top of the frame and the dowel, it is easy to warp with a continuous warp.

The next step is inking the design onto the warp using Drawing Ink and a special wide dipping pen. It's an old fashioned way of doing it but I like it as it is very quick and far more accurate than either using a marker pen or stitching the cartoon to the back of the tapestry.

I am weaving this one sideways as it has a lot of verticals in it.

You'll see more next post (I promise it won't take so long next time!)