| A high school friend just turned 50, so to commemmorate the august occasion, I decided to weave her favorite mythical beast: a unicorn. I chose for my pattern a greeting card she had sent me recently and scanned it into the computer. To my delight, it scaled up slightly and was just the size (approx. 8" X 10") I wanted to weave, so I used it as a cartoon.
But since my current obsession is tablet weaving, I had to get that into the project somehow, and inspiration struck! I took a small strip of TW in a maze pattern in blues and white and fixed it to a foam core board at the top of the cartoon. I attached waxed linen warp to the band (in the manner of attaching warp weighted warp to a tablet woven band!) and afixed it with pins to the board. Then I proceeded to needle weave the unicorn tapestry.
I might add here that I had a scant 3 weeks to finish the project (I finished with an hour to spare...!), or I might have woven the TW band specifically with this end in mind (using the waxed linen as the weft for the band, instead of weaving it in afterward). I expect the results would be similar.
I embellished the tapestry with buttons and beads, inserted onto the warp before weaving, in the manner of a needle woven necklace (another obsession, but that's a different story). I'm rather pleased with the overall effect. Because of the beads and textured yarns I use, the image is woven right side up.
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