Sunday, January 24, 2010

Weaving the Days

I am really excited about weaving the Tapestry Diary that I described in the last post.  Every day I can’t wait to get into the studio and do my shape of the day, but I try to wait until I have a few hours free.Jan12-14

That’s because after I’m done with the daily entry, which only takes 5 or 10 minutes, I always feel like weaving some more. In this photo you can see an area where I wove 3 days simultaneously, because they have to be interconnected. I wove that section over 3 days, but the middle day (red and white stripes) is formed by hatching the red with the white.

On January 10 I sat down and casually wove a plain, solid colored parallelogram without thinking of the date.

The next day I realized that January 10 is my daughter’s birthday, but since she was far away on vacation, we were not celebrating until the next week. Jan10

So I unwove (Penelope-ed) it, and rewove it with her name. I am experimenting with fun ways of weaving text so I hope it’s readable.

On January 20 I had the first meeting of my new tapestry class. This is also the first time I have held a class in my own studio, so after class I did a “loom tour,” and when I explained the Tapestry Diary, one student asked what I intended to include to remember them, my new students! So I wove the letter T for tapestry, and the number 1. Austinweek3

Here’s what it looks like after 3 weeks. January 1st is on the bottom left. Then right above it is January 8. Each row is a week. I have a different color scheme for each month, and February will be pretty dismal looking, in keeping with the month itself.

Meanwhile I’m trying to finish up a bunch of UFOs…UnFinished Objects. Maybe this time I’ll actually make some progress……?

6 comments:

Jennifer said...

I loved watching Tommye Scalin with her tapestry diary last year. What I love now about seeing yours is how unique each person is making them! The parallelograms are striking. Looking forward to seeing it progress! I can also imagine that it does help in getting the tapestry bug started - 5-10 minutes just wouldn't be enough would it???

K Spoering said...

I keep telling myself that I'm out of the exhibit organizing business- but there's one more I want to do, even if it's just an Internet exhibit: I want to do one about marking passing time. But I'll wait until you and Tommye have this year's done! (And until I have a few more calendar months woven.)

Jan said...

Glad you like my parallelograms (and I'm so proud I figured out how to SPELL them!). They are just lazy lines, but in different colors! You're right, 5-10 minutes is just whetting my appetite!

Kathy, I love your exhibit idea! I've always been intrigued by your calendar month tapestries.

Tommye McClure Scanlin said...

Jan... glad to see the tapestry diary here!
Some fun, huh?

Unknown said...

I love the text that you are using! It is amazing that you can do so much with so little space!

Jan said...

I spent a few hours sketching ways to fit text into these shapes, without having to make skinny little lines. I am pretty happy with how Lucy turned out, but some of the others are a little messy. So hopefully I'll improve.