Transparencies

Melissa shares an original Transparencie she wove.

According to Melissa "a transparency is a picture that is woven by inlay design into a fine open, plain weave ground cloth. Traditionally, the inlay is also plain weave. Any loom can be used. Linen is most often used for the ground cloth with the inlay yarn in either linen or wool." Melissa designed this cartoon with an eye on utilizing  negative and positive space. For this piece her ground cloth is linen with wool inlay.

This photo does not do justice to the airy, gossamer look and feel to this textile.

Transparent Weaving

Transparencies was the topic of Melissa's February program for the Divas. She presented several webs of multi-hued gossamer suspended in space transparencies.

The weave, characterized by an open tabby ground and colorful weaver-controlled inlay blew our socks off! Experimenting with 4/1 and 20/1 linen, she produced a great variety of exciting textiles.

Basically using this one book for reference, Melissa taught herself this technique. ("Sheer Delight" by Doramay Keasbey)  

Here is has worked on creating curves.

She worked with a cartoon to to create her transpareccies. 

This shows the gossamer effect.

She used positive and negative space and combined it creating effects to truly amaze. Just take a look at her examples.The hand on the left she used the negative space to inlay her yarn. The hand on the right she used the positive.