Hallaig Page 2
Dyes Used for Hallaig
Hallaig in Progress
Hallaig continued....
I am obsessed by colour and I would not be able to weave my tapestries without doing my own dyeing. I need the colours to be exactly what I want and precise dyeing is a crucial part of the overall design process. Although at first my work looks as if it contains hundreds of colours, the reality is that there is usually a relationship between two or three colours that is the key to the whole tapestry. I call these my 'core' colours. The first samples are woven to identify the core colours and to explore how they interact with each other and with other secondary colours. You may have noticed that I still construct my wefts with a number of different coloured threads together. This is not because I am still searching for the right colour but is done to add texture, transparency or luminosity to the colours I already have.
I am just as precise about the materials I use as I am about the colour. I won't use something just because it happens to be the right colour - it will have to be the right colour on the right yarn. Up until fairly recently my tapestries were woven almost entirely in wool but over the past few years I have been experimenting with plant fibres as sometimes I want the different sort of surface they can give. This is subtle stuff but very important to the final look of the tapestry.
Once I am happy that the design and the samples are heading in broadly the right direction, I make a full sized cartoon. This has only the barest minimum of information on it but it is very useful to see the main compositional elements at full scale and I often make structural adjustments at this stage. I do not view the cartoon as a finite plan of the finished tapestry but as a work in progress. Logically enough since I am a weaver, I get my best ideas while I am weaving so it is important that my design outline is capable of encompassing changes throughout the weaving. Weaving the tapestry is the most important part of the design process for me. The preliminaries of scribbling on paper and making samples are simply a painful process necessary to get me to the point where I am ready to start the journey.