Working on my Tapestry Piece
The guild I belong to is 75 years old this year. One thing we are doing to celebrate is a group tapestry. We have a picture of our Parlement Buildings in the autumn, divided it into 24 pieces and 24 members are doing one square each, in whatever technique they would like. The picture is heavily pixelated to blur it and make it easy for people to use different techniques.
They are due March 4 2024. I thought I better get started. I am the one organising it so I shouldn’t be late with my piece. I should credit Jan Scott here, it was her idea. I also have to credit her with great cunning as I am not sure how I ended up being the organiser.
Anyway, this is the square I have. It is off to the side of the picture. Because I have put off doing it, I was wondering why I didn’t pick just sky or trees for myself.
I had to go look to figure out what the dark piece sticking up was. I thought it might be a statue but seemed too tall. It is a pointed crenelation on the west block of the parliament. The building is hidden by trees and the angle of the shot. The pixelation and then enlarging added a white pixel where there shouldn’t be one.
I wanted to wet felt and nuno felt a piece so I started with some prefelt. A thicker piece of white with orange-yellow for the sky and green for the trees to start, then added some fibres
I realised this was going to end up too big so I moved everything in, then added the silk for foliage. I want them to have texture. I had to root through 3 large bins and a small bin to get all the colours I wanted. I do not know why no matter how much fabric you have it’s never the colour you need. I wet the background first and I wet the silk before putting it down. Wet silk stays where and how you put it.
This is what it looked like when I quit for dinner and the next morning dry. Everything looks so much darker when it’s wet.
The next morning I rinsed the soap out with hot water and started some hard fulling to get it shrunk to the right size.
ready for cutting
And finally the cutting. You can sort of see how much it shrank. The whole piece started out the same size as the red mat. the cut pic is 6.6 inches (16.75 cm) long and 6 inches (15.24 cm) high.
and the picture and the piece side by side. You can see one section of double layer silk didn’t stick down so I will fix that with a needle. I need to add in the crenellation as well with a needle.
With any luck by my next post, I should have it done.
And to lift everyone’s spirits and as proof spring will come here are early (sneaky ram) lambs born just a few days ago on a lovely warm and sunny day. they are not great pictures but the moms were sure I was a secret axe murderer or perhaps a wolf in people clothing and the lambs pick up on that and no one will give you a decent pose. and then add a very scary phone camera and there really is no hope. Good thing they are cute anyway.
