The Beginning – Pansy 01

The beginning has been a long time coming. I started working with yarn when I was quite small. My grandmother taught me to knit and I moved on to shag rug projects, yarn games, and eventually tapestries. So I’ve had a relationship with this textile most of my life and I am at a point where I am intrigued by whether I can make my own designs – for a long I’ve altered patterns to make them what I want but never actually designed something from start to finish.

So for months, I have been preparing my own designs. I began by thinking through the process. Many tapestry designs are painted or screen printed onto the canvas but I don’t paint or know how to screen print, so I needed to find another way to make my design something I could work from. I bought sketch paper, colored pencils, graph paper, software and began thinking about what my subject might be and how to set some parameters around my time and commitment to the design process. (I work full time).

I travel as much as I can, so I thought about the kinds of photos I tend to take when I travel. What catches my attention? Well, mostly flowers, colors, patterns and shapes. So, I decided my first collection would be much like a fashion collection. I would pick 12 designs and attempt to complete 12 individual tapestries by the end of next year. Yes, I did get this idea from Project Runway. Like in a runway show, I want my designs to tell a story and to have continuity, but I also want them to stand as pieces on their own.

On a recent trip to Victoria, Canada, I collected many wonderful photos of flowers: begonias, fuchsias, pansies, and many that I cannot identify…. I began with the fuchsia, and thought that I would find some kind of interesting background to set as the backdrop and so I drew a fairly good picture of the , at least in my mind and tried to use a technique that I’d seen for stained glass as the background.

The fuchsia I drew

But that didn’t really work. The fuchsia in any event, is a very complicated flower, because of the numerous petals at different angles. I worked on it a bit more, but decided that it would be a better project to work on after I’ve gained a bit more skill and confidence.

I thought a pansy might be easier. Not so much. I have been able to get the pansy to a working level.

Photo of my pansy

So I am now sewing the first of my designs. This Pansy has approximately 37 different colored yarns and the final design will measure about 8.5 x 9 inches. I chose to do a small version as a first run, just so I could get through the sewing more quickly to gauge whether I’m on to something. We’ll see how it goes. More to follow.