The first thing Margery Blackman had to do as a home science student was to sew a baby dress by hand.
People either loved it or hated it, she said, but for her it sparked a lifelong interest in textiles and a love of doing fine handwork.
After some years of embroidery, she started weaving when she and her husband, Gary, were on sabbatical in Edinburgh in the 1960s with two young children.
She bought a loom and taught herself - it was the fascination of making a fabric and its design from scratch, she said.
When the Blackmans returned to New Zealand in the 1970s, woolcraft, spinning and weaving were flourishing and she became an active member of the Spinners and Weavers Guild, exhibiting and winning awards, she said.
Tapestry is basically a simple form of weaving, where, instead of weaving across the whole width, you weave each colour in sections and build up the design as you construct the fabric.
It's how they made the great European tapestries in the 15th and 16th centuries, she said.
Tapestries were woven to a design drawn by an artist, such as the famous Raphael tapestries commissioned for the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
The cartoons were painted by Raphael and a team of weavers translated them into woven tapestries.
"The translations in skilled hands can be very impressive, but if the artist who designed it doesn't really understand that weaving is like a building, a structural process, they may be less satisfactory.
But most individuals working on a smaller scale prefer to do their own design which can be drawn out with colours filled in, but you have the ability to modify it as the weaving progresses."
With her own work she starts with an idea, works out sizes and sometimes has a sketch plan, but often modifies it as the work grows.
"My designs grow very much from the woven structure and for that reason they are geometric," she says.
"Certain motifs like diamonds, triangles, chevrons, circles and semicircles are universal and different people build them up in different ways. I guess what I have found is it has not only been challenging but wants to happen."
She has certainly not come to the end of her exploration of abstract, geometric shapes, she says.
"For me, one of the most important things is exploring and controlling shapes and colour, and that's why I do my own dyeing."
She uses high quality Swiss chemical dyes on wool, silk and mohair, and sometimes she even spins the yarns, particularly if she wants a wool and silk mixture, she says.
Two of her largest public works are the Otago banners hung at the entrance to Dunedin Hospital which were commissioned in 1986.
She knew they were going to hang in the entrance corridor, so she thought it important they be bright and cheerful and not too demanding, as people would be walking past them.
She is happy they are juxtaposed with Maori tukutuku panels opposite.
Weaving took a back seat after the hospital commission as Mrs Blackman became diverted by working with textiles in Dunedin's public collections, mastering the basics of textile conservation to display the works safely.
As an honorary curator at Otago Museum, she curated "Treasures from Maori Women" in 1988 and "Emperor's Court to Village Festival", an exhibition of Chinese textiles in 1998.
Her work with textile conservation at Olveston inspired her to write a book about Dorothy Theomin, its owner.
When she retired from the museum, she curated "Threads of Tradition", embroideries from the Dunedin Public Art Gallery's collections, in 2001 and helped with conservation of the first "Fabulous Frocks" in 2003 and other exhibitions at the Otago Settlers Museum.
Alongside her own work and research for exhibitions is her interest in ethnic textiles, her collection of textiles from the Middle East and central Asia and books about them, which has led her to research in museums around the world.
She has also explored Maori taniko weaving, a form of tapestry with twined threads, about which she has contributed a chapter for a publication on Maori cloaks for Te Papa.
For the past three years, Brett McDowell has been asking her to hold a survey exhibition at his gallery, she says, and now she has the work for Te Papa out of the way, she has been enjoying spending the past six months weaving and sorting out pieces for the exhibition, she says.
Her last exhibition was 27 years ago at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in Logan Park.
See it
"Margery Blackman: Woven Tapestries 1976-2010" is on at Brett McDowell Gallery, 5 Dowling St, from November 12 to 25.
