3.5 x 2.5″
cotton yarn, cardboard, brown paper, shipping label, ink

See this post for the story behind it.

I jammed up my printer playing with this brown paper and I think that I killed it! But I do like the effect it made on the words. The “prettier” side is actually the back of the card. It is supposed to have my contact information on it and I have to figure that out. I have a blue gel pen at work that might do the trick.

This is my first artist trading card. There are only two rules for ATCs - they must be 2.5 x 3.5 inches (baseball card size) and they must be traded or given away, never sold.

This was a lot of fun and I think that I’ll keep it up. Hopefully I’ll have plenty to trade when I go to Art & Soul in early May.

The Take It Further Challenge for February had two options: a color combination and/or a concept prompt of “What are you old enough to remember?”

I wanted to do both, but blanked out on how to do it until yesterday. My concept had more to do with technology - the phone system, mimeographs instead of copiers, etc. I thought about collage and I might still work with this idea, since I have a great secretary’s manual from the 1930s to work with. (By the way, I’m a secretary, and I’m the daughter of a secretary.) But I ached to do some more with tapestry, so I began by pulling out yarns that were a close match to the color challenge.

I couldn’t find the shade of brown, and it irked me because I felt that it was so familiar that I must have it somewhere. I stopped and took a few moments to straighten up my studio, and there it was - my cardboard box that I used as a loom for the tapestry bag. I decided to incorporate a small cardboard loom into my project for the brown color, and I cut the box into small pieces. One piece had the UPS shipping sticker on it, and I thought, I remember when there wasn’t a bar code or number on every single thing that was sold or shipped, and you didn’t have a different password or ID number for every different purpose, and the technology that is supposed to make our lives more efficient has complicated our lives in many ways.

Then I realized that this was the piece that I would use for my loom.

The bar code is meant to look like the weft on that side, but I am so tempted to weave the whole thing. I’ll upload the finished object when it’s done.

(Later that evening…)

I wove a frame around the bar code. I’ll finish this tomorrow night. The weaving is done. And it was fun.

I finished the tapestry bag on Sunday afternoon. The closure is a drilled pebble button, and there is a piece of cardboard in the bottom to hold its shape between the lining and the bag.

Don’t…ask…how I did the lining. Dumb luck with much cursing and sticking pins in my fingers. It was a lesson in persistence and pain, and I finally resorted to an iron and Stitch Witchery.

Next time, I will make the lining darker, although it does help me find things in my bag. Also will make the inner pockets bigger. The straps are perfect!

Dimensions: 6″ wide on short sides, 10″ wide on long sides, 6.25″ tall.
Linen warp, wool weft.

The weft is mostly discarded wool given to me by other weavers or weaving teachers. Much of it is the product of beginning dyers, as there are many spots where the wool was tied too tightly in the dyepot and it created a resist. I decided to use these random spots as abstract sparkles in the water or reflections.

Here’s what the inside of the box looks like. I really love the backs of tapestries, so it’s a bit of a shame to line this, but I’ve decided to make it a functional handbag. The lining will be attached with velcro so that it can be removed and laundered.

Left to do: Weave two straps from the brown wool on my inkle loom, and sew in. Figure out how to sew lining. Sew lining. Attach lining. Attach a stone button for the closure. Maybe embellish with a few more stone buttons. Wear with joy and attack every day with a lint roller to keep the cat hair from embedding in it.

Tapestry - in terms of time, it may be the ultimate “slow” cloth. Especially for artists who raise their sheep, shear and spin the wool, dye it, and weave it.

There’s a wonderful interview on the latest podcast of Weavecast with my very favorite artist, Sarah Swett, she of the instructions for the tapestry box below and many, many exquisite tapestries. When you visit Sarah’s virtual gallery, and really you must, be sure to move your mouse around the tapestries and click on any spot where your cursor changes. It will take you to a close-up of the spot. Every tapestry is a glimpse into a different world.

So much of what Sarah said in this interview resonated with me. Tapestry is one of the most mindful arts there is - it is plain weave, simple stuff but so complex. You do not undertake tapestry if you are in a hurry to finish, but if tapestry undertakes you, you will live in every place that you lay the weft.

I just read a little book called “Craft to Heal.” The author talks about flow, the state you find yourself in when you are so totally absorbed in the present moment that time disappears. That is what I often experience when I am weaving a tapestry.

Listen to the podcast even if you are not a weaver. If you are a creative soul, it will speak to you.

Here’s the latest progress on my tapestry box! Whee!

(This project is following the instructions for a tapestry box or bag woven on a cardboard box, as written by the marvelous Sarah Swett in the Jan/Feb 08 edition of Handwoven magazine.)

The yarns sticking out are where I sewed the ends back in behind with the needle. I snip these tails off. It’s easier to pull the needle out through the fabric that to try to poke the weft ends down behind the tapestry.

Progress up the sides of the box. This is the FUN part! I am having a blast, and it is hard to tear myself away from it.

About the yarns: most of these yarns were given to me by a weaving teacher. Apparently what happened was that a student had wound the warp for a large rug, and then had abandoned the project. Once a warp is measured off, you can’t really wind it up again because it will become a terrible tangle. Since she knew that I weave tapestry and can use cut lengths of yarn, she gave it to me. I cut off the ends and wound the lengths into balls. I can’t remember how long this took, but I must’ve had the patience of Jesus to do it. The wool is very coarse and must have been hand dyed, because there are undyed or lightly dyed places where the ties on the yarn were too tight. This wool would probably have been thrown out had I not taken it.

One of the yarns is leftover from an old tapestry that I wove many years ago. I remember that I dyed it on the porch at Lake Waccamaw, during a week when I was at the lake without a car, phone, or TV, with only the company of our dog, Janet Planet. It rained buckets non-stop for days, to the point that the rainwater rose up through the kitchen floor, the house having been built directly on top of a cement slab. It was one of the best weeks of my life.

This is an example of Slow Cloth, which I’ve been thinking about a lot, and will eventually post about. I’m thrilled that fiber artists are extending the philosophy from the Slow Movement to cloth. Of course, many of us always have, but I never thought of it in those words. How perfect!

The bottom is almost finished! I’m only stopping because it’s bedtime and I’ve sat in the same spot too long.

Since this is weaving in the round, like a basket with spokes, you need to put in an extra warp so that you have an odd number of warp ends. Here I ran it down through the edge of the woven part, turned it around, and pulled it back up through the cloth so that it would hold the tension and not pull out later under stress.

Those bottom corners are going to be tough. The top corners are already taking a beating because they were already worn before I started. I’ll put some T-pins in them and hope that will help. Next time I’ll be a little more careful when I choose my box.

Snow coming down now, and the temp has dropped ten degrees. ABOUT TIME.

Almost following the instructions in Sarah Swett’s article in Jan/Feb 08 Handwoven (note to self - buy an awl), I cut slits in my little cardboard box while listening to this podcast, starting at the beginning with Pride and Prejudice. I drew a swoopy kind of design on the box to follow if I feel like it, or not.

This kind of project proves that you don’t have to be rich to take up weaving as a hobby. I started with rags on a wooden frame with nails across the top and bottom. But as you start seeing what others are doing, it does make you want a “real” loom and more equipment and yarn, etc. I bought my first loom as a kit from Harrisville when I came into a little money. Then I traded it up for a 8 shaft Schacht table loom (which I don’t like) and bought a used 4 harness Baby Wolf from a friend’s mother. Now I’d love to get rid of both of those and buy one 8 harness Baby Wolf. But not for a while.

Anyway, I have no excuses for not weaving for a while, with a pin loom ready for weaving, an inkle loom mostly warped up, a floor loom warped with a scarf underway, and now working on this box loom. It’s my problem of getting things going - all ideas, little action.

Moving right along…

It’s helpful to see both the inside and outside of the box here.

Sarah uses a wool warp, but I’ve chosen to use a thick linen (or hemp, it is not labeled). A wool warp will blend into your weft much better, and would be much better if you plan to felt the bag. But I don’t like the stickiness of a wool warp, and wanted to try it this way. It’s like a recipe, I have to change at least one ingredient.

What about warping the sides, you ask? Well, you warp it as you weave the bottom of the box!

Sarah uses sacking needles, which would be perfect for this, with their flat tips and curves. However, I cannot find my sacking needle. This is typical. I can never find the kind of needle I need for these projects until I have given up and bought some more or have finished the project with a less useful needle. Then I put the new needles in a spot where I know I can find them the next time. Then I rearrange the studio. Does this happen to you? Ergh. So I may take up this project again after a trip to the store.

A 90% chance of snow tomorrow and tomorrow night, 1-3 inches expected, the last I read. That would be nice. I’d kind of like to make a snow sculpture. It’s been so long since we’ve had the right kind of snow to do that. Guess who I’ll make the sculpture of?

Perfect timing to run to the grocery store too, because everybody would have wiped out the bread and milk on Wednesday night in preparation for the ice on Thursday. This is a Southern cultural tradition. So when we made our beer run to the Teeter tonight for my 3-day weekend, there were no long lines and I was able to score a loaf of bread. And munchies. Wheeee!

I hope that it won’t stop my milk delivery tomorrow though. They have to drive a long way to the rendezvous point. Oh, it’s so mysterious and exciting - the life of a raw milk consumer!

I really do hope that I will manage to get at least one tapestry project started tomorrow. A recent article in the Jan/Feb 08 edition of Handwoven by the amazing Sarah Swett has very clear instructions for making a tapestry bag using a cardboard box for a loom. The bag is shaped as you weave it. She first covered this territory in Spin-Off several years ago and I always meant to do it. It is the PERFECT use for all this coarse wool yarn I have been given over the years by other weavers, back when I was doing a lot of tapestry and my back had not given out.

The little pin loom tapestries actually grew out of that back blow-out. I couldn’t do anything but lie down or walk for a while and a foam core pin loom was something I could manage lying down. I had this big tapestry project on a weighted warp loom (Navaho style) for years because I could never finish it because of back pain. I finally cut it off and most of this yarn is part of the leftovers that I never used for it. It was an abstract of a sandstone slit canyon.

My chiropractor and yoga finally repaired my back. I can definitely weave around a box, I think!

I’d like to hang out in the studio this weekend, but I’ll probably cozy up to the wood stove in the house. That’s another plus for this tapestry bag project - portability. The studio is too cold for comfort when it is not sunny because the little heater just can’t handle it. The electrical system has been acting very funky so I don’t want to overload it with another heater, although that’s what Sandy says that they used to do when he used it as his war gaming room with the boys.

(Seriously, don’t leave without checking out the Sarah Swett link.)

I also ordered some supplies from Eclectic Etc. Beads to make some earrings, since I assume that I’ll be hearing from Focal Point Gallery soon once they get ready to open, and it would be nice to have some new work. I don’t really care much for making earrings. What I love to make is intricate beadwoven bracelets and little bags. But I’ve got a pile of those already. The earrings sell. The bracelets, some, but not so much. The bags, not at all. That’s probably just as well until I get some bifocals!

Another project would be to photograph these bracelets and load them into my Etsy store, which currently boasts NOTHING for sale. In a way, that is appropriate for me, eh?