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PANNIQTUUQ/PANGNIRTUNG - After decades of creating tapestries, two of Pangnirtung's most seasoned weavers are finally ready to retire.

Geela Keenainak and Igah Etuangat have dedicated half their long lives to the loom and have only one final work to complete before they call it quits.

photo courtesy of Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts Igah Etuangat, left, and Geela Keenainak work on the last tapestry of their careers, "Combs of our Ancestors.” Weavers from the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts started working on it in December and expect to put the finishing touches on it in March. - photo courtesy of Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts

The new tapestry will be called "Combs of our Ancestors," based off an illustration of ancient Inuit combs recently dug out of an archaeological site. It has taken more than two months to complete on the weave on the shop's largest loom, requiring several weavers to work at once in close co-ordination.

Through an interpreter, Etuangat said even though she's been weaving for 34 years it doesn't seem like it's been that long. She is grateful to her co-workers for being nice to her and helping her out, even when days are difficult.

Etuangat stressed the challenging nature of tapestry-weaving, especially when you are new to the craft. She would encourage young people with an interest to try it out, but warned that beginning weavers would have to tough it out at first, until they are skilled enough to produce good tapestries.

Etuangat recalled the first tapestry she ever weaved, a a small tapestry of a bird with many feathers. She wasn't satisfied with the way it came out, so she had to take it apart and redo it.

Tapestry-weaving is a complex art. It begins with an artist's drawing or "cartoon," which the finished tapestry will duplicate. Weavers expand the drawing and carefully select the coloured yarns they will use for each section of the finished product. The vertical warp threads hold the tapestry together, and the horizontal, coloured weft threads give the tapestry the image of the cartoon.

Etuangat and Keenainak were both born in camps in Cumberland Sound before their families settled in the new permanent hamlet of Pangnirtung. Their families included traditional crafters such as carvers and seamstresses. Before discovering tapestry-weaving both women were skilled at traditional Inuit tailoring, sewing parkas, kamiks, blankets and amautit.

In the 1970s the federal government sent artisans and craftspeople of many disciplines to small communities and Pangnirtung was chosen to try out tapestry-weaving. Since then the program has devolved to the government of the Northwest Territories and then to Nunavut.

It was through this program, now administered through the Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts, that Keenainak and Etuangat learned their craft.