While large tapestries are woven on looms, cardboard tapestry is an art that uses a small square of cardboard, yarn, and a needle to create tiny tapestries. The
Sew Much More cameras visit Betsy Worden, who creates intricate tapestries from a home studio.
Creating beautiful mountain scenes on her tapestry, Worden doesn't have to look further than the windows of her Tennessee home for her inspiration. "I like to weave the things that I'm familiar with--`scenes from around the house or from the mountains," she says. "These are things that I've grown up with and that I know about, and I'm comfortable weaving these things." On the river, in a home she designed herself, Worden has surrounded herself with art. After earning an art degree from the University of Tennessee, she worked as a commercial artist in Atlanta for six years before returning to Tennessee to start a family.
Worden got her start in weaving when she convinced her husband to buy an old loom at a mountain auction. Her first project was to weave a blanket for her first child. Up until that time, Worden had focused her artistic abilities on painting. She uses that ability to aid in her tapestry work. "I see weaving as painting with yarn," she says. She often uses her paintings as ideas for her tapestries.
Worden designs her own unique cardboard looms that she can take anywhere and that are the perfect size to work with. She marks her cardboard six threads to the inch and then wraps kite string around the cardboard piece to create the loom. Using a wide variety of yarn colors, Worden says she is inspired by the colors themselves. The result is a needle woven piece of art that truly reflects the beauty of its inspiration.
)
