The Bird Tapestry

The image on the left shows my tapestry as it progresses. The starting edge leaves a lot to be desired, see just how wavy the waste yarn edge is. As stated previously my first tapestry was very much a learning curve on technique. My warping of the loom, distribution and tension of the yarn left a lot to be desired. Hey ho, one only gets better by practice. Looks like I need to do lots of tapestry!

Here I have wrapped the fabric around the front rod as it advanced toward the heddle. You can see the start of the Wren and two of the yarn butterflies pulled out of the way. I had several colours going at any one time. Also I changed from using the plastic hair comb to a metal dining fork. I needed to push the weft down much more firmly as the weaving progressed. A dining fork worked very well for this. 

The design on the tapestry was very much "design as you go" I added different coloured yarns as alternately wove, looked and adjusted. Sometimes undoing a row or two in the design. I tried to weave along one straight row with each yarn, at other times I worked on parts of a particular shape or colour. But all the time trying to keep each row of the weft even.

Once I had woven to the point I felt the tapestry needed to finish came the point of no return. Cutting the warp was really stressful for this beginner believe me! 

I tidied off the loose strands of weft yarn, cutting them short on the back. Then I had to remove the "starter yarn" from the bottom of the tapestry. I had thought about knotting the warp at top and bottom a few strands of yarn at a time.

I thought I would wrap the top yarn around some doweling and maybe wrap the bottom warp fringe with colored yarn. You can see how I finished my tapestry in the next tapestry blog installment.
 
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