Season's Greetings

Merry Christmas and Happy Weaving to all!

October Meeting: Wearing the Fashion

Wearing the Fashion

Judy wearing her subtly striped cotton scarf

Judy's double weave adapted from an overshot pattern, just off the loom

Betsy's cape, finally made up, from her first venture into felting

Rose's Hats for Hope

Knitted by Nancy - so delicate

A bonnet (or is it?) A felted work in progress from Jan

And, yes, it was a WEAVERS' meeting. Betsy's full sized Touch Yarns throw rug weighs less than 500 grams and is soft and beautiful to touch. It is modeled here by Chris

Rose

Connecting Threads - an Exhibition

A retrospective exhibition of handweaving from Peg Moorhouse and Rose Pelvin is now showing at the Gillan Art Salon, Grove Road, Blenheim [opposite the Railway Station], 10 am to 4 pm daily until 24th October.

A great opportunity to see the contrasting styles of two of our most experienced weavers: Rose's signature elegant table linens, and Peg's colourful wall hangings.  As Steve Austin [CEO of the Marlborough Museum] said "These works represent a celebration of the survival of tradition".

There are more pictures here.

Chris

Area Exhibition: "Hands on Fibre" Part 2

Peg's hangings won the Marlborough award. 

Jenny's tapestry

And of course you've already seen Win's piece. It won the Best Woven Article and Overall Best awards. 

Red is so difficult to photograph, so this is a shot using another camera, one with which I am more familiar.

Well done, everybody!!

There are a few long shots here.

Meg

Area Exhibition: "Hands on Fibre" Part 1

The Nelson Marlborough Buller Area exhibition opened on Saturday at Refinery Art Space in Nelson. THE EXHIBITION HAS NOW BEEN EXTENDED BY TWO WEEKS; IT IS NOW OPEN UNTL 21ST/22ND-ISH OF OCTOBER.

Here are some of our weavers' woven pieces.  

Chris' scarf and Sue's tunic

Chris's rug

Rose's baby blankets.  She also had a black cotton scarf, which, in spite of about a dozen tries, your truly just could not photograph well. But you see it at the back of Chris's rug above.

Joan didn't want me taking a picture of her in front of her lovely scarf. but it turned out this was a good move.  We now know that by the time this photo was taken, she had already lost her necklace! 

There are a few long shots here.

Meg

Stop Press: Nelson/Marlborough/Buller Exhibition

This year's Nelson/Marlborough/Buller Area Exhibition opened today, in the heavy rain, at Refinery Art Space in Nelson. It will be open for one week only.

While a more detailed post is forthcoming, I felt compelled to report that our own Win Currie took the top prize, Overall Best in the Exhibition.

Congratulations, Win.

Meg

September Meeting: Show and Tell

Show and tell has been a bit sparse lately. Could it be that everyone is busy working for the Festival?

Rose's Perendale, merino and mohair throw rug which should be in the Area Exhibition but she didn't look at the calendar soon enough!

This fabric is a fine boucle weft on an 8 shaft combination twill merino warp in two shades of green. If all goes well you will see Rose walking around at Festival wearing it. (What are YOU going to wear?)

Anne's gorgeous textured scarf from last month, now finished and looking great. Amazing what you can do with cocolastic.

This is what we call the 'weaver's handshake.' We think there will be a lot of it going on at Festival, and not just for weaving but knitting, felting, crochet and who knows what other techniques.

Get busy, everybody.

Rose

September Meeting: Rag Weaving, Part 2

Still on rag weaves - more that have stood the test of time.

Bag by Sue, finished with a fancy button and chain handle.

Cushion by Tricia with sample of the fabric strip attached.

A more complex cushion by June. Making the twisted cord for the outside took her the whole length of the house and them some!

Tricia contemplates the bolster-shaped cushion she made out of - guess what - cushion covers!

Chris made this 'up-to-the-minute' waistcoat for her teenagedaughter. Did she wear it? No!

A pity because it is lovely, and beautifully made.

Rose

September Meeting: Rag Weaving, Part 1

Here are some photos from the September Weavers' meeting.

The topic was rag weaving and it was amazing what appeared and how long some of it has been in fairly constant use. Most of these items were woven about 20 years ago.

Betsy's charming bath mat, woven on a point twill threading with a weft of soft fabric offcut strips sold in garden shops for tying plants.

Chris's brilliant (in all senses of the word) picnic rug, woven double width from re-purposed curtains.

The rest, to the best of my knowledge, are Sue's. They have had constant use and constant washing and are probably in better condition than the washing machine Sue used to stuff them into - some of them are quite large!

More to come.
Rose

Weavezine Project

I have a small fun project here. The instructions can be found at Weavezine.com.

The bear could be made from commercial fabric scraps, knitted or crocheted squares or whatever you have available.

I used a diagonal weaving frame 10 cm x 10 cm

This is the second one I have made and is a slight improvement on the first one, although it still doesn’t look much like a bear, which will spend its entire life masquerading as a rabbit. Unfortunately I have not yet got a photo of the first one

by Noelene Gratton

November 2010 Meeting - Part 6: Weaving Weft Ikat

This is the last of six posts from the November 2010 meeting, and the last scenes from Ikat Workshop by Julia Murbach of Richmond Weavers.

Julia had brought with her a lovely little 4 shaft floor loom, very narrow but perfect for weaving samples. She had prepared 4 different bobbins of ikat dyed weft for us to try.

Joan

Betsy weaving with Sue looking on.

by Rose Pelvin