Maximo Laura - Tapestry Workshop

My first day in Hamilton as part of a group of 12 woman attending a 5 day tapestry workshop with Peruvian Maestro Tapestry Weaver, Maximo Laura was exciting, anxiety-inducing and overwhelming. The workshop was being held at Houchen House Retreat and Conference Centre and was organised by Creative Fibre New Zealand. 

 After a brief introduction of himself, Maximo shared some of his processes and methods for weaving his designs. He comes from several generations of weavers and very experienced in the techniques and was here in New Zealand to share some of those with us. He said by the end of the week we would have learned 12 of them.

Some of his samples showing his patterns.

 
Then he explained how he mixed coloured yarns to get a wide range of colours.

 Four blends of blues to acheive tonal graduation.
Below: his colour charts of the range of colours each group would be working with.

..and a close up of some wool blends we would be using.

It was all very exciting!!

By this time everyone had chosen a workstation area but it was later that I came to understand he had segregated each table area into one group of three, thus make 4 groups to work within and each "group" had the same pattern but different coloured yarns for each of design.

From my group of three, I was handed this colour range which kind of surprised me given that so much of his work was really bold bright colours! I also felt a bit disappointed that I didn't get to chose but had the choice made for me by others that didn't want this one. The only upside was if we did do a greyscale tapestry (I was considering this for one of the community project panels depicting the 1940's to 1970's) I would have the knowledge of how to mix the shades.

Maximo showed us the basic weaving process using the looms he provided and after weaving a row of soumak we then were required to weave a 3-4 cm hem, changing the shed for each row. Unfortunately, my loom only worked properly in the UP shed, slipping out of the DOWN shed. (I'm not even sure if I'm using the correct terminology here!)

After that, the "teaching" fully commenced..

 He would explain what to do but then do each technique too quickly for me to process or see each step "STEP by STEP" ...and dumb me didn't understand/or remember what to do after he left me to help someone else. On the left we worked three blocks joining them with a special technique to eliminate a slit that would need sewing up. On the right we wove changing tones as we went from dark to light and "wrapped" a single contrasting yarn to join the slit.

Even though it "looks" like I'm weaving all this in real fact it's mostly Maximo's work. I did some floundering in attempt to do what he had just said to do but ended up undoing it again. One of the things I've come to understand about myself is I'm not an audible learner but I don't just learn by seeing either, though watching, reading and doing is the way I learn. I think I also need visual instructions and diagrams to refer back to, to help me understand and reinforce a process  (I tried taking notes but got frustrated with myself for not knowing how to explain/write down because I didn't understand the technique)

By this point I was starting to feel a bit like a failure as everyone else in the group was surging ahead....