Unveiling the community tapestry

The community tapestry for the Dorothy Impey Aged Care Home was unveiled today.  There was a good crowd and much excitement about finally having them in place.
As I have said before, it was a great learning experience, being able to work on this tapestry.  It was woven at the RMIT Brunswick campus and was woven by tapestry students and graduates of the Studio Textiles and Design course, as well as some staff members.
There were 25 students who participated and over 1000 hours of weaving in the project.
They looked good in the site selected and the designers and weavers should be proud.

Cutting Off the Community Tapestry

The community tapestry, woven for the Dorothy Impey Aged Care Home, was officially cut off the loom today.
There was quite a crowd there, to witness the event.

Susie, Fi and Julie.

It was a sad and happy occasion.  There was sadness because of all the work that has gone into it, the feeling of community, the wonderful learning that was possible, and the ending of a long endeavour.
It was also sad as tapestry weaving is being phased out of the new textile course and it doesn't look like that similar community tapestries will be woven at RMIT in the near future.

However, it was also an exciting day, to see the culmination of all the planning and weaving.  Heather Gray, the CEO of the Dorothy Impey Aged Care Home, was very emotional.  She spoke of the memories that had been shared by the older people who had had some input with the designers of the four tapestries, of the connections between the current home and the local community and the historical connections, and of the immense value of the tapestries to the community at the home.

Heather Gray

 She mentioned one person who had arrived on the ship depicted in one of the tapestries. The site has been a migrant hostel, a munitions factory during World War 2 and a textile school.

Glennis with her design, the one with the ship that brought one of the aged persons to Australia.

It was also exciting to see the first two weavings revealed.  They had been rolled down and have not been visible for several months now.

The first two woven.

The work was beautiful.  It was interesting to see it as a floppy fabric rather than a stiff one, on the loom.  I am always surprised by the difference once it is off the loom.

Heather and Julie cutting off two of the works.

Susie and Cresside cutting off at the bottom of the top two pieces.

Susie and Joy cutting off the first two works, representing the textile school and the current aged care facility.

Congratulations to Julie Paul, Glennis Leary and Fi Brown, who designed the suite.  Extra congratulations to Julie Paul who managed the schedule of who would be there and when.  Susie Carstairs provided a lot of technical assistance with both the weaving and the loom.  Congratulations to Cresside Collette also, for her overseeing of the work.

From my own perspective, it was an invaluable experience to work on it, even though I only worked a small amount.  We had the chance to experience techniques and solve problems that we would not come across in our own, smaller, pieces.  It was also good to be able to work under instruction and not have to worry about the design or mixing the colours.  We just had to do as we were told and when we struck problems there was someone there immediately to solve them. It was also a good chance to meet other weavers in a very concentrated but relaxing experience.

Tapestry continues to grow slowly

I have been working on my historical piece, copying a mediaeval tapestry and trying to work out the techniques used.  As I said in my last post, the technique of cut-back is useful but I am having some trouble interpreting it as I must be using thicker wools than used in the original and so the height of the work is slightly different, giving me longer spaces than I had anticipated.  But I have decided to persevere with them as they do provide a texture and differentiation between areas.

I think I have done about one third of the time with unpicking as with weaving but have been told that this is usual.  Hopefully I can improve.

It is tricky working on someone else's design, it is obvious when you deviate from it.  If I were working on my own design I could just say that it was supposed to be that way.  Our next assignment will be more of my own design, so, hopefully, it will be a bit easier in terms of interpretation.

Learning about Cut-back in tapestry

As I mentioned in my previous post, I saw the technique of using slits in the weaving to enhance the design. 

I have also just learnt about a similar technique, cut-back, in my historic piece, where you pull hard on the weft where the hatching meets, causing a small hole to appear.  I have not got this technique to work all that well yet as I have only used it near an edge and I was nervous about pulling too tightly and causing the side to pull in.  But this technique also gives a design element by making a space in the weaving.

As you can see, it is a subtle technique.  I have not done much here and will try to post a clearer picture when I have tried the technique again later in the work. (This is the same piece of weaving, taken with different settings on my camera, hence the different colours.)

Working on a Community Tapestry

Today I had the privilege of working on a tapestry that is being woven for the Dorothy Impey Aged Care Home in Brunswick. (That's the founder, Dorothy Impey at the bottom right hand, woven by Joy Smith, my teacher last year.)  It has been designed by past and present students in the tapestry area of the Textiles and Design course at RMIT.  There are four separate pieces to be woven.  Each piece relates to a different historical use of the site.  It has been a munitions factory, a migrant hostel, the Melbourne College of Textiles and is now the aged care facility. The link between the Melbourne College of Textiles and the current Brunswick campus of RMIT has contributed to the development of the tapestry.

So far, the first two pieces are well on the way.  Students are encouraged to participate and can actually claim part of the work as one of their tapestry assignments.

It is a bit nerve-wracking to be working on someone else's design. Fortunately Cresside, our teacher, was present and able to give advice and some teaching of those techniques you touch on in first year but forget when you have to use them again.  It looks like being a valuable learning time for me.

It was also good to meet another student of tapestry who is in a different class and whom I would otherwise not have met.  It is often a gathering place of like-minded people putting in some extra time between classes.  A good chance to catch up.