Jane Freear-Wyld – How many fish?

It’s the process of weaving that I absolutely love, watching a design grow as I weave the fabric of a tapestry. Before that comes the initial photograph, followed by computer manipulation. That’s always a mystery – how do those colours and shapes appear simply by the click of a button, or several? I use Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro, moving between the two programs whilst designing. If I was to describe my tapestries in a single word, it would be COLOUR although line, shape and pattern are important too. All very simple really, with no complicated theories or concepts.

I’ve had this photo for several years. On one of my birthdays my husband and I went to the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, and saw these koi carp in a pool in one of the greenhouses. I liked all the ‘layers’ of fish, with the food floating on the surface.

After a lot of manipulating, I ended up with this design. ‘Great’, I thought, ‘lots of colour, very VERVE!’. I’ve spent decades weaving flat, rectangular tapestries, so I thought I’d mix things up a bit and start introducing 3 dimensional shapes and texture. The blue fish on the surface really stands out, so he was definitely going to be 3D. ‘Easy’, I thought, ‘a second warp and I’ll weave him in a flash’. Not a hope! Apart from continually mixing so many new colours, Mr Fish had entered the dark side. He took ages to get right because, even with good lighting, I couldn’t see well enough to capture the subtlety of the dark blues and browns.

In my head I thought I’d get this tapestry woven in two months. Five and a half months later I finally finished, and his pet name had become ‘The Complete Pig’ months before. To add insult to injury, I discovered Koi carp are banned in the wild in New Zealand, so I may well have insulted the whole population – for which I apologise
How many fish? was woven on a frame, from side to side, using a cotton warp and stranded embroidery cottons for the weft.