Big Loom, Little Tapestry: The making of "(s)Hell"

This little guy was made as part of the 2023 annual tapestry Postcard Exchange organized by the American Tapestry Alliance (I highly recommend participating in future years!)

I found inspiration from some graffiti I found in Augsburg, Germany this summer, on the same day as the famous Augsburg Peace Festival, on the exterior walls of the botanical garden. I loved the image of the Shell logo being distorted into a tongue-in-cheek "truth-telling" of sorts re: the bleak future fossil fuel companies are offering us. (For those of you who don't know, my day job and other passion is work adjacent to Environmental/Climate Justice organizing). I also liked the idea of weaving a skull.

I wanted to change up the colors of the graffiti based on what was available in the stash. After throwing the image into Canva to play with some of their color filters, I landed on the below as a basic concept. I didn't quite have the highlighter tones but did have a fair bit of pink and blue to work with.

Another piece of this story is that in the fall of 2022 I acquired a 60" Leclerc Tissart Tapestry loom and recently started a studio practice in a shared studio space outside my home. I wanted to challenge myself to warp and weave on the Tissart so I could start planning some bigger projects I dream for it. Comically, that meant I was going to weave this 5" x 7" piece on a giant loom.

For you tapestry nerds I was working with a 15-ply cotton seine twine (Kotimainen Liina, sold by WEBS) warp sett at 10 epi and wool weft - mostly Weaver's Bazaar Medium weight wool (9.5/2) (3 strands at a time) but also some Harrisville Shetland (3 plies or 1.5 standard strands).

I particular challenge I had in working on this piece was lettering - which is new to me. I spent a long time getting the curve right on the "e" and "h" but am really proud of the result!

The other "smart" technique I used was with the teeth of the skull. Instead of weaving each 2-warp-wide vertical on its own, I used pick-and-pick at a doubled sett. In other words, I wove pick-and-pick alternating between pink and black but instead of using the shedding mechanism on the loom, by hand I grouped warp-ends two at a time. It worked incredibly well, will definitely do that again.

As usual, I had a cartoon behind my weaving, held close to the web by sewing it to the completed work.

Finally, I tried out a braided edge - which I always thought looked spiffy. I also sewed all my vertical slits of loom (I find this easier for me), except the center line in the middle of the forehead - I like how it protruded.

I didn't take any pictures, but to the back I sewed some paperboard (I think from a seltzer box), which included a message to my postcard exchange buddy. Et voila! A tiny tapestry postcard. To be fair I didn't put it straight in the mail as is - but included it in a bubble envelope, just to be safe.