Now enrolling Summer 2024! Register here.
Summer of Tapestry is a fun hands on weaving experience to keep your creative practice flowing – even with all the interruptions of summer adventures.
I run this experience each summer, and each year has new prompts, new ideas, and new videos. Many students come back every year.
“This is so lovely! What a creative and prolific community you have gathered here, Rebecca. Brava!”
Summer of Tapestry 2024
Explore your summer through tapestry
Join us this summer for 10 weeks of weaving fun with 4 new weaving prompts plus optional live Zoom video calls!
Spark your creativity this summer.
For many years I’ve been taking a notebook and loom with me as I wander outside in the summer.
In this multi-week workshop I want to encourage you to go on your own adventures and document them through small, informal tapestries.
We’ll focus on finding inspiration in our environment, whether that is in your home, out your window, on a trip, or in your neighborhood. Then I’ll give you ideas on how to translate your experiences into small tapestries. You can weave “in the field” or you can document your adventures with a camera or pencil and do the weaving later.
You’ll receive four suggested activities over 8 weeks. These activities will…
challenge you to focus on a particular aspect of your experience
give you ideas of how and where to look
suggestions of how to "translate" color, form, feelings, events, or even data from your week or year into a tapestry design
I also encourage you to go on your own explorations of your immediate environment, wherever that is, and translate something from it into a small tapestry.
These prompts are just suggestions but they are designed to help you see what is around you as something you can express in tapestry weaving. If you joined us in a previous year for Summer of Tapestry, these prompts are completely new. I encourage you to join this year’s class for another sketch tapestry experience.
There are no lengthy assignments and you can weave as much or as little as you wish.
I’ll be sharing my own wandering and weaving with you over the course of the summer and I hope you’ll share what you’re working on also.
Our time together is bookended by two live sessions, one at the beginning and one at the end of the workshop. The live sessions will be recorded if you can’t attend in real time. The four prompts will be released every two weeks between late-May and mid-July. There will also be live typed meet-ups in the course to ask questions or just chat about what you’re working on or adventures you’ve taken.
Pricing
The price for Summer of Tapestry 2024 is $108.
Knowledge required: I won’t be teaching tapestry techniques here so if you’ve never woven any tapestry before, consider taking the Introduction to Tapestry Weaving or Weaving Tapestry on Little Looms online classes alongside this workshop. You could do the Introduction to Tapestry Weaving class and the Summer of Weaving workshop at the same time but you’ll need the technical help from the Introduction to Tapestry Weaving class to do the weaving part.
“I wanted to say how much I have enjoyed your Summer of Tapestry class. When I look at my little tapestries, they inspire me to keep going and to try new things — despite being new to the art. I plan on continuing with my own tapestry journal!”
The start of a tiny tapestry about mushrooms while backpacking the Colorado Trail in 2021
This class comes with prompts, lots of ideas, encouragement to wander and wonder, and eight weeks of support from Rebecca and your fellow explorers. There is an added benefit of two live meet-ups as well as a few real-time typed meetings right in the course platform at a time that might be more convenient for those of you around the world or for those of us who would prefer to interact without a camera! Both types of meet-up are recorded for you to return to at any time. You have access to the class for as long as you want to use it.
Join the email list here for reminders and other tapestry related emails.
This workshop is held on the same platform as all my online classes, Pathwright. The registration button takes you to Pathwright where you can sign up for the class. There is a video at the beginning of the class about how to navigate the platform if you’ve never used it before. Please consult my FAQ pages if you need help with registration: https://rebeccamezoff.com/registration
“Thank you so very much, Rebecca. Summer of Tapestry has made me want to start a new work as soon as possible. Thank you for opening to me this way of viewing the world !!!”
Rebecca’s background in sketch tapestry / tapestry journaling
I was trained as a large-format tapestry weaver and I still love weaving ambitious tapestries. But I find that in my regular life, I benefit from spending some time messing about a bit and that includes making small tapestries that are not necessarily intended to show anyone at all.
These small works help me process a place or an emotion or an event by weaving something about it.
I started this practice as an artist in residence at Petrified Forest National Park in 2016 where I wove one tiny tapestry every day I was in the park for an entire month. (More about that project HERE.)
Petrified Forest tapestry diary, day 16. From a pot sherd, pictured right.
I enjoyed that practice so much that I’ve employed it ever since and generally call the collection of tiny weavings pinned to my studio wall my tapestry diary. I enjoy revisiting each of the moments that prompted the weaving and find that the slow process of weaving about something helps me see it better, experience it more deeply, and remember it later.
Today I still try to spend a portion of each summer outside looking around me, experiencing my surroundings, and translating some small bit of that experience into small tapestry weavings.
Sometimes I weave outside and sometimes I weave at home in the studio. Sometimes I’m backpacking or on a road trip and can weave during rest periods or when someone else is driving. But in all cases, this practice helps me mark time, enjoy my surroundings, and express myself with yarn in tapestry.
“This class has really inspired me, invigorated my own weaving as a result. I too have tried some new weaving techniques, did some handspinning, & maybe most important to me, I’m just weaving every day. Sometimes a lot, sometimes just a few minutes. But it’s so great, & I know it makes a difference in my skill/comfort level.”
FAQs
What is coming in 2024?
Summer of Tapestry 2024 will kick off in May with a warm-up prompt and information about materials you might want. The first prompt will open May 28th. We’ll have two weeks for each of the four prompts. You can look forward to a new set of ideas, all new videos, and a lot of encouragement from Rebecca and the community to wander and weave. Join my newsletter for notification of this fun class.
Do I have to take earlier years of Summer of Tapestry before taking this years class?
No! You can jump into this class any time you want to. I don’t assume you’ve taken prior years though you’re certainly welcome to take all of them if you find this format useful and, like me, want to spend your summer translating your life into small tapestry diaries.
Explore Your Weaving All Year Long…
Just because summer inevitably comes to an end, doesn’t mean your weaving adventures have to. Sign up for previous iterations of Summer of Tapestry and follow the prompts at your own pace to keep exploring your weaving all year long.
Summer of Tapestry 2022 can be found HERE.
Summer of Tapestry 2023 can be found HERE.
Join the email list here for reminders and other tapestry related emails.
Pricing
The price for the 2023 class is $99.
Summer of Tapestry 2022’s trailer is below.
“Summer of Tapestry 2022. I took this course and enjoyed it so much! It was very helpful in learning how to come up with subject ideas for small, fun weavings. And it was so interesting to see what the other class members were doing.”