Bent Cane Sprang-Tapestry Project

Finally warped up the bent cane sprang loom I made mumble mumble years ago.

I left it off, but I can see why it needs the bar across the bottom (separate from the working bars) to stabilize the loom.  I'm forever pushing the bar down to tighten the warp.  Stabilizing the loom might minimize that (or it might not -- I also need notches in the bars or the loom).

It's incredibly light weight.  I'm used to more heft with a stretcher bar loom, and I guess I've been using gravity to hold my shed taut.  Having to experiment some.

I twined a cord across the bottom to hold a little more tension.

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Coming along nicely.  About ready to break for the tapestry portion.

And here's the middle portion starting to be spread out.  I'm thinking the best way to work the tapestry is to take it off the sprang loom and tack it onto a foam core board.

Getting it started is going to be tricky.  It should be ok after that.

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I've moved the sprang over to a foam core board for tapestry weaving.  Have yet to tack it down with pins.

Just about ready to begin pin weaving.  Now all I need is a cartoon.  ;->

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Cartoon in place.  It's really more of a suggestion than a pattern.  I played around with pastels this afternoon, then took a pic of one I liked and printed it out.


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Learning curve.  Takes a lot of pins to stabilize the sprang so tapestry can be beaten hard enough.  Difficult getting it weft-faced.  Sprang doesn't want to spread far enough.  More bubbling.

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Ok.  I had to unweave what I'd done and start over, with only the top shed.  I've moved the cartoon to the middle.  I'm not sure what I'll do with the bottom shed yet, but I could weave something else on the other side.  Afterall, with sprang, there is no front or back.  I'll have to see.

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 Inching along.

Detail

Messy again.

Detail

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Eyeball is serendipitous, but I'll probably do something like that.

Remembered, belatedly, that it's a good idea to do some sumac stitch at the top and bottom of the tapestry (all the moreso because the sprang needs stabilizing).  So I'm adding it now.  I can scootch  the work down from the top and squeeze the sumac in.

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Sumac stitch at the bottom (and top).

Tucked some more tails.

The other day when I was showing this to Jan, I called it a chimera, meaning a cross between sprang and tapestry, but actually the beast is a bit of a chimera, or at least a generic beast.

So I think I'll call this piece Chimera.

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A bit of a hiatus, but back at it again.  Working on the grassy area.