How To Weave Tapestry Letters (and why)

Weaving letters is a silly thing to do. It’s fiddly, painstaking, tedious—and an enthralling way to bring ideas to life. I love it madly.

So begins the introduction to this 68 page graphic guide that tells the tale of how I began this work, explores the hows, whys and wherefores of my approach, then zeros in on letter-by-letter instruction for weaving the English alphabet in tapestry. In the process you will get to know (and hopefully relish) each letter at the intimate level of serif, bowl, stroke and leg and so build those letters into sentences, paragraphs, recipes, poems or whatever your warp, weft and words have to say. For it seems to me that when words are built into the very structure of the medium that holds them (structures that exude their own stories), there is room for a multi-layered freedom of imagination that can be found nowhere else. And though a picture might be worth a thousand words, a single woven word can conjure a thousand images—slightly different for every reader, and every weaver.

So yes, weaving tapestry letters might be fiddly and painstaking; it’s also engaging, cathartic, and more than a bit mythic--and I hope you have a splendid time illuminating your ideas in a way that can only be accomplished with your lovely, oh-so human hands.

Organized by ease of weaving rather than in the order of the English alphabet, each letter gets a fully illustrated two page spread. The instructions are not geared for beginning weavers however, and include language that assumes you already know the basics of weft-faced tapestry.

Though of course you can use this PDF guide in its digital form, if you like a physical object it is extra pleasant to read and handle the pages if you print on both sides then bind them with clips, a simple sewn stab binding, or have them spiral-bound at a copy shop.

One way or another, I hope this guide will become a trusted companion as you embark on your woven-word adventure, wherever it may go.

To see more of the ways I’ve used words in my tapestries, check out my web archive: https://www.afieldguidetoneedlework.com , 2009 to the present