That Could Have Gone Better

I have finished my landscape tapestry.  It has lots wrong with it but I decided to forge ahead and just get it done. Actually, it is not finished, it is resting on the loom, with the tension taken off.  I will cut it off tomorrow and tidy up the back and edges.

It pulls in on both sides, something I had hoped I no longer had a problem with. Not so. Both this tapestry and one I am doing as a colour sampler are pulling in. I will have to keep it a secret from the purists and steam it, hoping it will become more rectangular, rather than my usual trapezoid shape.
I thought about pulling it out but realised that I would have to go WAY BACK and didn't want to.

I also had some challenges with using the leftover wools from other tapestries (thrums).  I didn't have much blue and the sky in my original images is very blue.  But I just made it up as I went along and now have a cloudy sky. I tried to use some of the blues I had but some of them were very strong colours and just didn't look right.  So I pulled them out - after hitching off - it is very hard to pull out hitching off! Especially when you are feeling impatient.

Then I got to the end (again) and realised that I did the beginning of the tapestry wrong. I used the small tapestry technique that I learnt at RMIT but forgot exactly how to do it. I like to use this method as you don't have to have the white cotton showing.

However, when we were starting, I let the others in our group influence me with their strong conviction that you use seine twine as the double hitching rather than my tentative belief that it should be wool (or whatever you are weaving the image with). When I got to the end, I realised that I usually finish off with wool, not the cotton. This caused a dilemma as I don't usually like the cotton showing at top and bottom.
I decided to have the white showing at the top as it was at the bottom, trying to keep it symmetrical(ish). So I will just have to suck it in and put up with the white edges.

Maybe it can be one of those tapestries that you put in the compost heap and let rot, something to do with 'art'. Not sure I can bring myself to do that, even though I am not totally happy with it. Maybe it will be better after I block it - hopefully. I am still learning to do the weaving, I am not ready to start stretching myself into further areas yet.
Anyway, it has been a learning experience, mainly in terms of using my cartoons.  I have been able to use them as a basis for my work but not stick closely to them - hopefully I will be able to develop a better 'abstract' process. I am trying to develop less pictorial works and will continue to work on this idea. I think this one is relatively 'interpretative', especially compared to the original image.
The workshop was about design and I think I will have to work more on the ideas that we discussed. I need to do more designing, maybe without any actual weaving. Then I might come up with designs I like and can weave.