TAPESTRY WEAVING: WEAVING IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS

Tapestry weaving is a quintessentially slow craft. Every pass must be thoughtful, each technique chosen carefully, and all colors well contemplated. Even learning to weave tapestry is a slow process. Over many years of teaching, we’ve learned to discourage students from taking on too much too soon. Your first tapestry will not be perfect. Your selvedges will not be straight. You will not successfully jump headfirst into double-weft interlock or other complicated techniques unless you first learn the basics—the building blocks—the simple techniques that take time to perfect. The word tapestry is often used as a metaphor for life, and it fits in so many ways: from the importance of unweaving when you’ve made a mistake to the need to hone your skills slowly and carefully.

By Elena Kawachi and Claudia Chase

For the first project in our series on the basics of this beautiful art form, we will focus primarily on one very important skill: weaving in opposite directions. This technique allows you to build shapes without tangling yarns. Mastering this technique will open the first door to weaving tapestry. Slit tapestry, which we also employ in this piece, is simply creating a slit between color areas to form a crisp, straight line. In this tapestry, we will explore both techniques by creating a square inside a square. Grasping the concept of weaving in opposite directions, also known as meet and separate, is essential to understanding the essence of tapestry weaving. When you insert your wefts in opposite directions, a weft can cross into a neighboring area while staying in the correct…

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Little Looms (Digital) - 1 Issue, Spring 2024

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