WIP

Today studio time was broken up between frantic tidying and sorting and returning many many items from bags full of confusion to their real home, and getting my mind reorganized about all the moving parts in many bags.  Llama wool background, butterfly makings, Dorset button makings, and that was only a few.  Now sorted, feels much better. All my scissors are now found, and my three needlebooks. The thing is that each project feeds the others, and in some cases is part of the others, hence the many parts.

And some of the real work of art took place, today, too.  Here are a few shots of the weaving with the circular piece temporarily showing where I'm weaving as I work down.

The saw blade is 12 tooth to tooth tip, which makes the weaving about an inch smaller.  In order to estimate the placement of the round piece on the tapestry, I cut out a paper template of the sawblade, and wove it in  as you see.

Then testing the placement here.  

 
And a longer view of it, still with the paper template in place.  This is where it gets to be very much fun!  The circular weaving is now back on the wall out of harm's way, the paper stays in place as a guideline, and who knows what might transpire.

You'll see that I am starting at the top.  Usually you start at the bottom and weave up, but I didn't see why I shouldn't reverse the procedure for this piece. 

The bias tape you see across the top, the yellow part, will not be visible in the finished work. That will be folded back and stitched down to create a rod pocket for the dowel on which the piece will hang.  

The next section, the green tape, is the couple of establishing rows.  After this, the width now being more stable, weaving being a moving target at times, planning becomes much less a factor.  Except that at the end I'll repeat the yellow tape idea so that I can slide a dowel through the bottom of the piece, too.

I have a lot of materials in mind to add into this work, involving sequined fabric, dyed linen strips, yarn and various other bright ideas.  And other inserts, too, just thinking about that. That's why I had to tidy, so that other works and ideas didn't get buried in the doings for this one. That way madness lies.

To work around the circular motif, I'll do short rows, where the weft thread turns back on itself instead of continuing across the work.  And the c. m. will be attached in place at the end.

I mentioned earlier that this is a tapestry: that's a weaving in which the warp threads, the ones you start out with, are covered by the weft threads, the horizontal ones, as you go, unless you deliberately leave some open areas, which I probably will. It's why I chose a color for the warp instead of a white or neutral.

This sounds as if I do a lot of thinking, but most of it is plunging in, really!  and the nice part about the loom holder upper is that I can unclamp and reverse the weaving when I want to, top to bottom, or even side to side.  So that I can be standing to weave the bottom part, too, easier than crouching about.  Much more flexible than your classical, engineered loom.

And I must remember to change the date on my watermark, as well as when I write checks in a couple of days' time.