Tapestry Sampler: The Long and Winding Road

When I post about a project on my blog, I like to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

For the beginning, I like to write about what inspired me and what motivates me to create that project. At the end, I like to wrap-up the technical information and highlight what I liked about the project and what I learned.

That leaves the middle. Some of my projects end up with several middle posts because of technical hurdles I have to jump.


For my tapestry project, started years ago, I felt like I might not even post about the middle of the project. Technically, I just followed the sampler pictures and instructions in Kirsten Glasbrook's Tapestry Weaving and the sampler grew and grew.

But this project did have a lot of middle that wasn't technical. It stalled badly and for years, not for technical reasons, but for emotional ones.

When I started this tapestry, I was inspired by sights I'd seen on a trip to Chile, and yarn I'd purchased there. I envisioned learning to weave tapestry and then designing and weaving a tapestry of the Chilean fjords, using that Chilean yarn.

I warped my rigid heddle loom and got to work learning to weave tapestry.


Then health problems struck both me and my mother....grinding any creative progress or energy I had to nearly a complete halt for several difficult years.

During those years, I did take a drawing class - thinking that an organized class pursuing my dream of being able to draw would be a good idea. Not such a good idea for me at that time it turns out! I was fine in the class, but at home alone in my studio trying to draw was pretty much impossible for me. I didn't have the emotional wherewithal to be such a beginner in an area that I cared about. I didn't have the support or camaraderie of other artists. I didn't have the emotional energy to let myself make the many mistakes I'll need to make to be able to draw.

What does this have to do with tapestry and why this project stalled? Fast forward to August 2008 when I decided it was high time to have a more disciplined approach to making things.


I surveyed the projects I had underway, and chose those that I felt the most positive energy toward and got rolling. Then I realized that projects that I was lukewarm about - for example, projects for workshops, or projects for guild challenges - just didn't motivate me to get to my studio. I decided to move toward the projects that motivate me, and set aside the idea of doing projects that I felt like I "should" do for some external reason. Only projects that really resonated with me in some way would get time and effort.

I worked in that mode until January of 2009. In January, I added the idea of one 15-minute segment at the start of my time in the studio, when I work on the designated UFO (unfinished object). Since early February, that designated project has been this tapestry sampler.


My tapestry progress was slow but steady. The book's instructions were excellent. I had a few days when I questioned whether I should pick a different project to finish - but used my "less thinking, more doing" motto to just power through that. (How do I end up with 15 stalled projects? By thinking that I have some very good reason for moving on to some other project. So once I commit to finishing one of these projects, I want to actually finish it.)


Finally, last week, I finished!! Woot!

Related Posts:
UFO Strategy
Tapestry re-start
Milestones