April Tapestry Diary

April was supposed to be yellow, but I couldn’t resist adding some light green too.

I was away for a week in early April, taking care of my 6 month old grandson, Silas. So when I came home, it was obvious what I had to do to fill up those days! I love designing and weaving text.

While I was away I visited the Textile Museum in Washington DC, and saw a wonderful tapestry by Archie Brennan (see the previous post), which inspired me to try different patterns in April. I am still thinking about ways to include small bits of color in my black and white tapestries, so this is good research.

I did tiny thin stripes, and one pick spots, and pick and pick spots for fatter dots, and color blends with dots, and dots created by alternating 3 colors of weft.

The dark shape on the top row, and the one just like it, one row down from the top, on the right, is dark gray wool mixed on the bobbin with a black and white cotton for the background.

Then there are small and bigger dots of light green, at irregular intervals, also mixed with the black and white cotton, and some dots that are pure green. I like the subtle, variegated effect. You can click on the photos to see them bigger.

What to do with May? I guess I’ll find out tomorrow…..I was too busy to weave it today, and now it’s almost midnight and I’m too tired.

Did I mention I have color-graphemic synesthesia? That means I associate certain colors with letters and numbers. It was much clearer to me when I was 5 or 6 years old, but there are still certain letters and numbers that are very clearly one color.

May could be green, because the letter M is green, but then I already did green for March; probably for the same reason. I was thinking about how I will weave the number 5 on the first day of May, then realized that May could be blue, because the number 5 is definitely blue (just like the letter S; must be something about that shape).

Anyway, blue and green will do nicely, and I can practice weaving the sea….I’ve been thinking about that lately.