To celebrate winter and offer a fun project we can all weave together on Change the Shed, I’m doing a Winter Trees weave along. If you’d like a different subject for your holiday-themed weaving, feel free to choose something else. I’ll add some photos of past winter projects I’ve done below.

I’ll be weaving a couple different tree projects on Change the Shed on November 13 and 27, 2024 and December 13 and 18, 2024. Join me for those free live broadcasts. If you have questions about the project, you can ask them in the comments for this blog post or during the live broadcast. I’ll answer them all on Change the Shed.

I have woven little trees in the past and there are photos below. I’ve also woven other winter and holiday-themed tiny tapestries and if one of those looks like fun to you, feel free to copy it! I don’t yet have a woven example of this year’s trees because I’m weaving them live, but if you watch the episode today, you’ll have a good idea of a direction to take your own weaving.

I have created a guide for this project which you can download by clicking the button below. The guide links all the resources I’ve mentioned here, gives you some design ideas for your woven trees, and answers some common tapestry weaving questions you may well have as you approach this project.

Send me the guide!

There are so many ways to weave trees. I’ve chosen a tree project again because I think it fits well with winter in the northern hemisphere, but it is also a subject you can weave anywhere any time of year. I had a student weave nine different trees all the same size one year and it was so fun to see all the variations in her pine trees. What would happen if you wove one of a wide variety of trees?

And of course if you want to weave a holiday or Christmas tree, start the decorations flowing!

The start of Rebecca’s first winter tree for the Change the Shed Winter WAL 2024

Those of you who have been following me a long time will remember that I did a weave along with a tree theme in 2017. I was playing with sock yarn back then because of the fantastic ways that it is dyed. You can find the blog post about that project on November 9, 2017 with a following post on December 18, 2017 that has images of what many of you wove! If you need some further ideas of how to make your trees, that December 18, 2017 blog post has a lot of wonderful weavings of trees made by people all over the world.

I will say that sock yarn is a pretty dicey choice for tapestry weaving. It is dyed in really fun ways and if you have some remnants around, by all means give it a try. But you’ll find that it moves around a lot on the warp and is quite difficult to work with. Perhaps try mixing it with a firm thin tapestry yarn like Gist Array, weaversbazaar, or Appleton crewel to give it some stability.

The image below is of a tapestry I did a very long time ago, but I still like it. It was woven sideways and has a variety of triangles for pine trees in a sort of winter scene. If you like this design, notice that there is perspective created in the size of the trees. Bigger trees are in front, smaller behind. A further perspective trick is to change the value of the color you’re using for the trees. Brighter more saturated colors in front, lighter and less saturated colors farther away.

Rebecca Mezoff’s winter trees tapestry from many years ago

Other holiday projects

If you don’t want to weave a tree, think about what holiday-themed project you’d like to make. I'm including a few projects I’ve done in past years below. For those of you who just finished the July Tapestry Discovery Box about curves and circles, the tree ornament project might be a great choice. In the way I wove it in the photo below, there is also pick and pick for the top of the ball (Tapestry Discovery Box from October).

Holiday ornament tapestry woven by Rebecca Mezoff

What about gnomes? These are projects I wove on Change the Shed in 2022 and 2023. If you look at the subjects of the episodes from THIS page and THIS page, you’ll find the 8 episodes in which I wove these two pieces. As I remember saying repeatedly in those episodes, this design is too complicated for the 4 inch size at 8 epi. I recommend simplifying your gnomes if your project is this small. A gnome can be a big triangle hat, a nose poking out, and a body under that with either some hair or a beard. Google “gnome images” to get some ideas for your tapestry.

Gnome tapestries woven by Rebecca Mezoff on Change the Shed

What about a snowman? The one pictured here was not woven as a holiday project since he is sad and in the desert, but you can make a happy snowman if you’d like. This is great practice with curves!

And at the same time I did the sock yarn tree, I wove this tapestry with old-school Christmas tree lights as a subject. Growing up we had those green cords with sockets you actually screwed little bulbs into and that tapestry comes from that memory. I’m pretty sure LED strings are a a better choice these days.

What should I do with my tiny tapestries?

For me it is the making that is important and what happens to the finished product is far less important. But the practical among us have a valid point when they long for a USE for their weavings. What should be done with these tiny bits of art?

I have seen many people put these small weavings in very special holiday cards. Please only send these beauties to people who will cherish them though. If you don’t know anyone who will totally freak out that you sent them a tapestry you wove for the holidays, then you need to keep that weaving yourself.

In that case, they can make lovely holiday decorations either propped on a little stand in your home, made into a hanging holiday tree ornament, or perhaps just pinned to the cork board next to your refrigerator! You could even attach a magnet on the back and put then on your frig.

A small tapestry can be backed with a piece of cardboard. You can stitch around the edge of the cardboard and leave it so it shows (maybe paint the back of it first or use something pretty) or make a fabric backing and sandwich the cardboard between the fabric and the tapestry, stitching around the edge. Then you can attach a hanger to put on your tree, your door, or in a special display somewhere in your home or office.

The schedule for the Winter Tree Weave-Along on Change the Shed

I’ll be giving weaving tips live on Change the Shed during four episodes. The first is today, November 13th. You can join the broadcast or watch the replay HERE.

The other episodes will be at 10:30am MT on
November 27
December 13th (yes, this is a Friday)
December 18th

You can find links to those on my Change the Shed playlist on YouTube or linked on the calendar on my website.

Please share your creations!

It is so much fun to see what people are weaving and YouTube doesn’t allow photos to be uploaded in comments. So if you are a social media user, here are some options:

On Instagram, use the hashtag #changetheshed.* Please ALSO tag me with @rebeccamezofftapestry. So many peopel use that hashtag now that it can be hard for me to actually find the projects happening today.

On Facebook, please tag my business page, Rebecca Mezoff’s Tapestry Studio so I get a notification.

If you don’t use social media, email me a photo by replying to my Tapestry Picks newsletter. If you’re not a subscriber, you can sign up HERE.

I will collect the images I find and put them into a blog post late this year. Thanks for weaving along with me!

Ready to join the weave-along?

Send me the weave-along instructions!

*I no longer use X (formerly Twitter), so if you post there, please feel free to use the #changetheshed hashtag, but I won’t see it.