Weaving and other fiber-based fun for 45 years and counting
A friend of mine shared a clip on her blog recently, and I thought to myself, my fellow weavers would appreciate seeing this video:
She also led me to an animation that shows the spider setting up her warp.
Aren’t we glad we don’t have to produce all our own fiber from our abdomens? Although we would need much less space for stash…
The Cuyahoga Weavers Guild is delighted to bring Ruby Leslie back to Ohio again for another workshop. Ruby’s last workshop with our guild in 2010, 50 ways to weave your color, was a big hit, and we are looking forward to seeing Ruby again.
Dates: Thursday, April 19 through Saturday, April 21, 2012
Workshop title: The 3 Ds of 3-D: Deflection, Differential Shrinkage and Doubleweave
Description: Using a layman’s approach to color theory and myriad weave structures, subtle to amazing transformations can occur in woven cloth if you understand how to control the variables of fiber, yarn grist, weave structures and finishing techniques. Explore a variety of weave structures producing ruffles, ridges, waffles, crinkles, innies and outies while weaving on pre-warped looms (with custom-wound warp chains provided by Ruby).
Time: 9 am – 4 pm
Location: Orange Branch, Cuyahoga County Public Library, 31300 Chagrin Boulevard Pepper Pike, Ohio 44124.
Cost: $165 for CWG members, $170 for non-members ($85 deposit due by February 16, 2012) + materials fee of $75
Materials: Warps will be provided by the instructor prior to the workshop (by mail, shipped to your home) and participants are expected to arrive the morning of Day 1 with their looms warped and ready to weave. Weft will be provided. Workshop will be a round robin style.
Experience level: Must know how to read and follow a treadling draft, warp your own loom (with or without help) prior to class, and weave on a floor loom.
Register: Please complete the online registration form found here. Send checks made payable to Cuyahoga Weavers Guild. Mailing address for checks will be emailed to you after submission of the online registration form. 4 3 2 spots remaining.
UPDATE: This workshop is currently full. You may add your name to the waiting list in case spots open up last minute.
In February 2012, Cuyahoga Weavers Guild welcomes John Mullarkey from St. Louis, MO, for two days of instruction on tablet (card) weaving. John has been winning awards in tablet weaving since Convergence 2006, teaching nationally since 2007, and has developed tablet weaving software used by many weavers.
Thursday, February 16: Threaded-in designs
Learn the basics of tablet weaving by weaving a friendship bracelet. We will start with a discussion on how to read and design tablet weaving drafts. Then we will proceed to set up the cards, weave the band, and end with a discussion of finishing techniques.
Friday, February 17: Two-sided delights
Learn two different tablet weaving techniques that produce double-faced patterns. These patterns are used to create figures and letters on tablet woven bands. We will start by setting up using the circular warping technique. During the first half of the day, we will discuss the double faced weaving technique using two packs of cards. The second half of the day will be spent learning the 3/1 broken twill variation of double-faced weaves. Along the way, we will focus on avoiding common pitfalls and sharing tips and tricks for weaving perfect bands.
Time: 9 am -4 pm both days
Location: Church of the Savior, 2537 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights, OH
Cost: $85 CWG members/$90 non-members ($45 deposit due by December 15 19, 2011) + $15 materials fee
Materials: scissors, yarn needle, 4 balls or cones of 10/2 mercerized or unmercerized cotton or #10 crochet thread in different colors (at least 1 ounce of each), paper to take notes, graph paper, and colored pencils.
Experience level: No previous tablet weaving experience is necessary.
Register: Send checks made payable to Cuyahoga Weavers Guild. Mailing address for checks will be emailed to you after submission of the online registration form: Workshop is currently full. Completing this form will add your name to the waiting list in case any spots open up.
We’re used to things like placemats and rugs and wall hangings. Window treatments, yardage for garments, upholstery fabric– they can be incredibly unique and beautiful, but sometimes they can fade into the background of our everyday routines. We still appreciate them, especially when we’ve taken the time to weave them ourselves, but weaving is not usually a high-adrenaline activity.
To shake things up, here’s a pretty astonishing and heart-stopping use of what was once just a lot of thread. Even though I’m sure this cloth was manufactured by machine and not handwoven, I think this video is a great reminder of how amazing cloth is, and how it can be used to foster remarkable human achievements (think of all those handwoven sails that made pre-Industrial ocean travel possible), and how the mere fact that we can create fabric is a pretty remarkable achievement of its own. Enjoy!
If you’re reading via RSS or email, you might need to click through to see this video.
Concerned the summer would escape with many tomatoes eaten, many weeds pulled and lawns mowed but few inspiring new destinations experienced, we followed our passions around Lake Ontario. Frank Lloyd Wright, the Welland Canal, Thousand Islands, even Frederick Remington were on the list, but old boats and weaving were the most inspiring of all.
Clayton, New York, is not exactly on the basic road to somewhere. It is at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River at Lake Ontario and a great summer vacation area, if you want to go there. But what a special jewel Clayton holds in the Thousand Islands Arts Center, home of The Handweaving Museum.
Formerly called The American Handweaving Museum, this wonderful old house with charmingly friendly people holds an archive of American handweavings the likes of which would be challenging to match. This museum is not one where we could go to view galleries of weavings. As a matter of fact, the summer show in the galleries was wild fowl photography. But in the true meaning of a museum, it has collections of over 20,000 items with more collections waiting to be cataloged and stored.
This museum is a resource for any textile student, academic, weaver, crafter, or master. The library is organized, cataloged, and computerized. The vast collection of fiber items are stored in acid-free museum boxes with photos of every item on the outside of the box. The photographs are not only all on the computer system but available online.
The Thousand Islands Art Center has a weaving room, replete with weavers on Wednesdays willing to share their stories and projects with me. They have classes most of the year. As opposed to our active calendar from September to June, their year is from March to December. The harsh winter is weave at home time, I am told. There are some publications from the Handweaving Museum that are beautifully done and available through their web site.
This was a stop that opened my eyes to a facility of remarkable depth in Clayton, New York, of all places!
Click any of the images below to view full size.
Old boats and weaving? Indeed!
We spent a morning at the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario. It was here I was stunned by how weaving fit into the ancient history of the far northernmost parts of Canada.
The traders and voyagers who used the marvelous birch bark canoes had to have vessels to store their goods in, and what did they use? Baskets. Woven baskets made of leather or strips of reeds and wood. They also had to travel on snow, and what did they use here? Snow shoes made of woven animal sinew stretched on wood frames. And the ever-present Hudson Bay Blankets are still stunningly efficient.
But for me the most exciting was the finger weaving of sashes or ceinture fléchée. Strips of woven cloth in vivid colors and patterns attracted me to a hands-on opportunity to try it myself. And the best part? I got a book, Fingerweaving Untangled to bring home for sharing and continuing to learn about this amazing technique.
Another stop displaying wonders of hand weaving in a canoe museum of all places.
Click on any of the images below to see larger photos.
What a great time we had today at the open weaving day and the weaving exhibit at the Shaker Historical Society.
We did decide, though, that getting to the church by 9 am was a little early, so tomorrow (Friday, 10/21) we’ll be getting there at 10 am instead. We’re meeting in our usual Calvary Hall spot.
Victoria brought carpet warp donated by Rose that we can use to wind warps for doing rep weave, as well as plenty of resource books on rep weave and a design CD and laptop. She also brought a book that shows how to wind a warp using a paddle, and a couple of us are going to give that a try tomorrow.
We hope you’ll join us tomorrow for a day of weaving fun!
It pays to know people, I guess! Four of our illustrious members– Leslie Alperin, Miriam Lidsky, Elinor Polster and Rose Rubin— are having their work shown at The Shaker Historical Society through the end of the year as part of the Dream Weavers: The Art of the Loom exhibit, so our members have scored a private tour of the exhibit tomorrow before the exhibit opens for the day. See the calendar for details. And see you there!
You might have noticed on our calendar– we’ve got two nice long days of weaving in company scheduled at Church of the Savior this Thursday and Friday from 9 am to 4 pm. I know I’m looking forward to it– warping especially seems like it would be so much more fun while chatting (as long as I’m not doing anything too complicated), but I’ve never had people to hang out with while I do it. This experience will be a first for me!
What are you planning to bring? I’m sort of hoping someone might be able to show me what it looks like to wind a warp with a paddle, because this video doesn’t really show me what I need to know at all.
How about you, what have you got planned?
Eastern Great Lakes Fiber Conference met in Chautauqua, New York, for the 2011 gathering. The weather was wonderful. Clear, bright, warm, and dry enough to demand you look up and recognize the glorious autumn in the trees. Just enough brisk at the edges of the day, comfortably toasty by afternoon to open all the windows and drink in the fresh air.
Walking down to lunch from the classrooms at the midday break, we did have the option of taking a longer, safer route that followed the road, but most of us were brave enough to chance the grassy hill that tucks just behind our destination. It’s a manageable risk that shortens the time to lunch. The first half of the journey comes to and through the tennis courts. The concrete path is clear, level, well maintained, and marked at the steps with a 3-inch band of warning paint. The slope is gentle: forward a few feet then down a few inches in easy progression.
As I came out the door, I saw a younger couple playing tennis. I thought it a good day for that type of thing if that’s the type of thing you liked. I tried to keep my mind busy with the mysteries of bound weave, but she was playing so badly I couldn’t stop watching. She’d miss, then laugh, and he’d try to gently advise. She’d connect, and the ball would launch. I guessed them to be a new couple as he kept patient as she kept giggling. I thought back to my tennis days; too small for a one-handed hold, I missed almost everything presented and connected only by chance. I hated tennis. As another yellow missile cleared the fence, I heard myself mumble, “Even I could play better than that.”
At that moment the universe reminded me that my opinion is sometimes more fantasy than fact. My right foot came down too far over the well-marked edge. A quick teeter and drop, and the toe of my shoe wedged into the crack like a pole vault. I went up and over and came straight down like a timbered tree.
Luckily my stride is close enough that my left leg almost had enough time to get out there and stabilize the situation before my face hit the pavement. My poor knee took the hit, but I’m sure I got the best of possibilities. I kinda hope that lady saw it, maybe she was chasing a ball and was faced just enough in the right direction to have caught my fall out of the corner of her eye. She could have thought to herself, “Well, I can’t play tennis, but at least I can walk better than that.”
There were many hands to help me up, and the Chautauqua kitchen crew provided a gallon-sized zipper bag to fill with ice. I managed lunch and the afternoon class, but by dinner things started to purple and swell. I excused myself and went back to the room to rest. I had left everything that could distract me up in the class, so I sat. Before long, Sarah and Debbie came to check on their poor roomie, choosing to pass on the general gathering in the lounge in favor of keeping me company.
We were talking when a woman appeared in our doorway. She saw me, stopped, turned and said, “Are you all right?” Well, I generally am, but I don’t like to lie, so I said, “No, not currently.” She wailed, “What happened?” I answered with the truth. “I fell down and went boom.” I lifted the edge of my dress to reveal the thumb-sized scrape on my knee and the dime-sized one on the top of the other foot. “Oh,” she sighed. “Boom,” she agreed. She asked my diagnostic guess and chosen course of treatment and then told me I needed a compression sock to keep the swelling down on my ankle. Before I could even confess to not having one, she volunteered, “I have an extra.”
She disappeared and reappeared and put it in my hand. As she stepped back, she asked the obvious question, got the negative in reply, and proceeded to show me how and help me put on the sock. Once it was on and wrinkle free, she gathered up all our extra blankets and built a platform on which I could elevate my ankle for the duration. It throbbed, but I thanked her. She blew healing kisses, and she was gone. Maintaining such a position throughout the night provided for a light and fitful sleep. The bright side of that is that my roommates didn’t have another night of my snoring.
I woke up the next morning pain free. It was a miracle. I went to class, went to lunch, treadled more in the afternoon and took my turn on the runway at the fashion show after dinner. I met the woman who had saved my weekend and thanked her as best I could for her immeasurable assistance. I returned her sock, but I will get my own and keep it in a superstitious attempt to ward off future acts of uncoordination.
I left a little bit of myself at Chautauqua, added in to the local ecosystem. Not much really, just a few thin localized layers. It may leave a mark as well as a memory.
