Somewhere between macrame and traditional tapestries is a form of textural artwork that is popping up on walls in growing numbers. Even the makers creating the textile pieces have a hard time agreeing on what to call them: woven wall hangings, yarn art, weaves, tapestries. There are as many labels for the handmade pieces as there are styles.
While the techniques vary, the textile pieces share an overall look: organic design, rich texture, movement, fringe, knots and a boho-inspired aesthetic. The yarn and materials hang from everything from simple dowels to curvy natural branches.
Flat woven pieces, daring color, nubby knots, heavily tasseled pieces, dip-dyed. Simple. Complicated. Anything seems to go — and the buyers who are snatching them up through online orders, trunk shows and art sales.
From a small addition to an art wall to the focal piece of a room, fiber art has made a grand return.
Meet two North Texas makers creating the pieces:
FASCINATION WITH FRINGE
Boho By Lauren, Lauren Williams (bohobylauren.com, Instagram @bohobylauren)
With a major wall to fill and a not-so-major budget for art, Lauren Williams got creative.
“The budget I had and the taste that I had were not in alignment,” the Frisco woman says. She wanted something with texture and movement and was ready to take matters into her own hands, stringing yarn at varying lengths and later adding in color on a fiber piece that launched her business, Boho by Lauren.
“What I’m doing is just one step further in the textile craze right now,” Williams says. “It’s a textile for your wall.”
From an even producer in California to a fiber artist in Frisco, Texas, Williams says design has always played an important part of her career path.
She’s long gravitated toward an eclectic, bohemian look but has an appreciation for clean lines as well. All of that is reflected in the tapestries she creates.
She starts her pieces by hanging hundreds of strands from a straight dowel and then adds color. “It’s an abstract piece of art incorporated into the bohemian look,” Williams says, who estimates each tapestry takes about a week to complete.
Her tidy garage studio is full of pieces in a variety of stages. Although Williams has a system, she’s not afraid to deviate. “It’s a process I’m making up every day,” she says. “Sometimes it gets a little rowdy in here.”
Williams has experimented by adding skylines, landscapes and simple shapes into the tapestries and sometimes embellishes the pieces with beads.
Though her preferred color palette is shades of blues, blacks and grays, brighter colors find a way into the pieces, too. “I love it when people tell me what they want,” Williams says. “It’s gets me out of my comfort zone.”
Before she ships out the custom pieces, which are 72 inches wide and start at $250, Williams tries them out in her own home, to inspect and perfect them, as well as photograph them for her clients and her Instagram account, @bohobylauren, which is were lots of her sales have come from. “The pieces are always rotating — I have nail holes all over my walls.”
ONE OF A KIND
Knot So Cookie, Rebekah Wright (etsy.com/shop/KnotSoCookie, Instagram @knotsocookie)
Rebekah Wright had no idea what she was getting into when she decided to give fiber art a try a year ago. She had admired a few woven creations online and started searching for instructions. She found them on YouTube.
“I didn’t even know what it was called at the time,” she says.
Armed with a few knotting and weaving techniques, a small loom, yarn and a fearless attitude, Wright was soon on her way.
“You’ve got to be a creative spirit,” she says, “because there’s no pattern to follow and no wrong or right.”
When Wright, 36, would get tripped up on something, she reached out for help from other weavers she had found through Instagram.
“I tapped into this whole subculture of women empowerment,” she says. They’re sharing all kinds of tips and techniques, and because everyone creates something so unique and has their own spin, “they’re not competitive,” Wright says.
The Rockwall woman’s pieces range in size from 5-by-15 inches to up to 2 feet wide. Some are finished in an angular shape, while others have heavy fringe and knotting in a straight line across the bottom.
Wright is never sure exactly what she’ll end up with once she starts a piece. She adds color, braiding and shapes organically as the woven wall hangings develop.
“Even if I set out to make something exactly the same as another one I’ve done, there’s always going to be some slight variation, because there’s no pattern,” says Wright. “You just make it up as you go.”
Playing with color is one of her favorite parts of designing. “I like putting colors together that you wouldn’t think go together,” says Wright. “And I can’t help but add brights to my weaves.”
What started as a hobby that she worked on as her daughters played has become a business. Wright’s Knot So Cookie designs, which range from $20 to about $100, have been sold at Flea Style and through her Etsy shop.
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