Since coming back to tapestry, I’ve been especially daunted - or call it “haunted”- by color. Specifically, color in tapestries.

In designing a tapestry, we make many choices before we ever begin. What warp to use. What weight of warp. What fiber to choose for warp. What sett to warp it at. Then, what size will the tapestry be? Or maybe that comes first. We might even have to decide which loom to use if we have more than one. Do we work from a cartoon or wing it free-form? What techniques will best portray the desired image? Decide before or wing that, too? Fiber choices also come into play. What weft do we use and will we bundle it or use single strand. If bundling, how many strands and what weight. Solid colors or bundled with other colors?

And here, I come to a screeching halt. Every weaving. It often takes me weeks to decide on color combinations and the balance of tonal values.

I discovered the work of Maximo Laura early on in returning to tapestry weaving and it had a life-changing effect on the way I think of color in tapestry. There are many wonderful tapestry artists out there with gorgeous color palettes, but Laura’s work just blows me away. It’s as if his weavings are alive. They seem to breathe life. I’ve read every article I could find on his process and my biggest take-away was that he never uses a solid bundle. Never. Must be true; I’ve read it in several places, not just the one lone article.

I’ve always thought I had an intuitive sense of color. I still believe that to be true, but discovering Laura has encouraged me to want to take a deep dive into studying color. To know “why” I choose the colors I choose. I expect this dive will carry me through the rest of my life…

I learned color theory in college- briefly - or maybe I should I call it superficially. Since I was majoring in photography at that point - and black and white at that, I guess I didn’t pay that much attention to all the color talk.

But I did absorb some of it. And I do remember being particularly struck those many years ago by Alber’s color study where he put the same color on two different backgrounds to show how the color is perceived to be an entirely different color when the background color changes. This continues to fascinate me to this day. Maybe a tapestry series in the future?

So I got the books…

And I’m working on getting through them a little every day.

Choosing colors for each tapestry may still take me weeks, but I’m learning loads about why along the way! In my readings, I’ve made lots of notes. I continue to make lots of notes to this day.

I share some of these with you here.

How do YOU approach color choices in tapestry?

Anything you see I’m missing from my book shelf?

I’d love to hear from you.

Color in Tapestry