Weaving Techniques || Using Cartooning to Weave a Picture

I’ve always wanted to try weaving a picture of something, but hadn’t gotten around to it until recently. I found it to be surprisingly easier then I thought it would be. The technique that I used was cartooning, which has been used for weaving pictures since Medieval Times (possibly even before that!). How cool is that?

So to cartoon, all you need to do is have an image the size of the area you’re going to weave. You can draw that image, like I did or you can use a printed image. I drew up a flower that I wanted to weave from a 17^th century tapestry I had seen. For my cartooning, I taped the picture to a piece of cardboard and then used painter’s tape to stick the piece of cardboard to my frame loom.

I then wove my top boarder in order to give my warp threads stability, then began weaving my flower image. For my flower I picked out three yarn colors to use in the pedals and three yarn colors to use for the leaves. Since my picture is pretty simple I just remembered where I wanted which color to go, but you could color in your image or mark your color choice in another way.

I wove my colored areas using the plain weave and to avoid weaving in so many ends once I was finished, I just skipped to the next area with the yarn. So for example when I was weaving my light green and finished one leaf, I let the thread hang to the side then filled in the rest of the leaf colors. I then picked up the light green thread and ran it across the back of the warps to begin weaving the next light green area. This helped me not have as many ends to weave in.

Another way to cartoon while weaving is to draw the image directly on your warp threads, but in the past I have found this tricky as my warp threads spin around as I weave. I also found that sometimes my marks would show a little in my finished weave, which I think most people wouldn’t notice, but it bothered me. Here is a neat article on tapestry making from The Metropolitan Museum of Art that talks in a little more detail of the history of tapestry making and how they used cartooning.

Have you tried cartooning? And if not do you think you will? As always let me know if you have any questions, I wasn’t sure if there is more detail I should go into with this or if it’s pretty straightforward.

Want to learn more weaving techniques? here are my favorite for adding texture and interest:

• How to Soumak Weave (Braid Weave)
• How to Pile Weave (Loop Weave)

If you’re new to weaving, check out my posts for beginners:

• Create your own frame loom
• How to start a lap loom and begin weaving

Happy Weaving!

Kate

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