tapestry techniques | Mirrix Tapestry & Bead Looms

This is a guest post by Rebecca Mezoff

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that I teach a lot of things about tapestry. There are times when I want to weave something insanely complicated. If I actually let this wish get the better of me, I might end up feeling like this.

Molly McNeece, Cousin Trapped, pen and ink, watercolor

When this happens, I go back to some old tried and true tricks. My favorite is regular hatching. If you’ve had a class from me, you’ve probably tried this technique. I used it in the spirals in many of my Emergence pieces and sometimes I just weave it on a sampler to calm down a little bit, dork dedicated practitioner that I am.

Time for some weft interlock.

Using some scrap yarn, divide your warps into roughly four evenly spaced sections.

Insert your four wefts going in the same direction, from left to right. Then head back to the right starting with the weft on the right. When you weave the second weft, catch it around the first weft and weave. Do this with the following two wefts. Essentially, the wefts, where they meet, loop around one another. The line between the wefts will be in between warps making this very different from warp interlock, where you wrap your weft around the same warp. With weft interlock, which is frequently used in Navajo technique, there is less building up of higher weft areas where they interlock making it a better technique for building up straight lines. The best technique is obviously slit technique where there is no build up, but then you have those pesky slits to sew up.

Next weave back from right to left. Your wefts are already caught around one another so you are just weaving back.

The next step is to weave from left to right, catching the wefts with one another until you get to the right side of the weaving.

Continue this process with the next wefts. Weave until you’ve built up about half an inch.