When I returned to tapestry in early 2018, I felt an urgency to make up for lost time. It had been 26 years since I had completed my last tapestry. So much had happened in the weaving world since that last piece. 

For that matter, so much was happening even while I was still weaving. But without the connections at the time; I had remained unaware. I had never heard of  weaving from the back, Archie Brennan, or the American Tapestry Alliance. 

I quickly joined ATA and started reading through their expansive website, one Tapestry Topics issue at a time.

I remember discovering and reading about Muriel Nezhnie and how she had worked in isolation throughout her life, unaware of what was going on around her. That hit home. That was me. 

Back to early 2018… My husband made me a little loom for tapestry, which I still love to this day. A few months later, for my birthday, I gave myself the largest Mirrix available, Zeus, with a 35” weaving width.

My earliest tapestry days were the days of Magdalena Abakanowicz and Sheila Hicks. My previous loom had been a 60” floor loom made for me in Germany, where I was living at the time. It was a beautiful loom with a majestic presence in our home. But one I no longer owned. 

While I was working on that first tapestry on my shiny new Zeus loom, I continued to read everything I could find on tapestry’s history, making up for lost time, and saw the appeal of smaller looms… smaller tapestries. And then I saw an advertisement for ATA’s small format exhibit. 

So, one by one, my work turned to the smaller scale.

It was a valuable learning experience. 

I had to adjust a number of things, like …

• Learning to Simplify!

  I couldn’t get the detail I was used to in such a reduction in size. I fell into the trap of trying to “squish” too much in and my first attempt suffered miserably!

• Working with finer setts and materials

  My previous choice had been 8 EPI and sometimes working with a dual warp at 4 EPI - so I began to work at 16 and 8 EPI. I discovered I actually really like working in this sett and even warped my latest (larger) piece on the Zeus loom at 16. I love the flexibility the dual sett offers.

• Discovering new ways to get the detail

  Hello, Soumak!  Soumak was a definite game-changer for me. I have spent the past few years diving deeper and deeper into Soumak techniques.

• Presentation

  This continues to be a constant adjustment! No wait… a constant challenge. I know how important presentation is, but I struggle with this aspect of small format the most. Planning it down to a ‘T” before I begin doesn’t synch with how I work and my tapestries evolve.

While there are limitations to weaving small, there are many advantages as well, such as the obvious lack of space one requires, the cost in materials, and shipping to shows.

I enjoy weaving small. I love the intimacy. 

I love the portability; it’s comforting to weave with a small loom on my lap.

And I like being able to have a number of projects going at the same time to rotate between. 

But there are issues with small tapestries that continue to haunt me. Presentation being the main one. When I work on an image - small or large- I have trained myself to see the image. Not the backing. Not a color behind the image. My mind just refuses to work that way.  

So…stay tuned.

I’m thinking big again...

How about you? 

Do you have a favorite size to work in?