A visit, a Book and an Exhibition

Although meetings are finished for the year some of us get to visit each other and check on latest projects, seek advice and indulge in weave-talk.  Judy and Rose visited Peg recently.

Peg and Judy scrutinise Judy's latest piece woven in mercerised cottons.  We loved the zing! of the colours. As you will see on the loom, Peg had some pretty 'zingy' colours going as well.

 You may have seen a copy of this book in the town library.  Thanks to Trade Me we now have a copy in our Guild library as well. First person to ring Rose can claim it first for the holiday period.

On the subject of books, here are a couple more hand made ones with woven fabric covers, made by Rose.

The close-up shows the two different sides of the braid used for embellishment. It is a 'walking' braid, sometimes called a slentre braid, where the fingers hold loops of yarn and draw them through each other. Note the uncut loops on one of the braids above. One side of the braid is flat and looks plaited and the other side is rounded and looks more like knitting.

An Exhibition  Anyone visiting Nelson during January may like to visit Fibre Spectrum in Trafalgar Street. The 'Top of the South' members of the Professional Weavers' Network are having a small group exhibition there. Pop in and have a look.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

These are hand-made cards which were exchanged by members at our last meeting for 2013.

Best wishes to one and all for the holiday season.

We will be back next year.

Wrapping up the November Meeting

Not everyone was caught by the camera but you can see that we were all working.  There will be one more post before Christmas and then a break till we meet again in January.

More from the November Meeting

Following the book-making Rose displayed a number of hand-made books, many of them from simple designs.  Comments ranged from 'How did you do that?' to 'Why would you do that?' 

A fabric book with a collection of mementos and an invented binding aroused a lot of interest.

Chris brought along some textile items she had brought back from a holiday in Vietman.

The packaging this silk wrap came in is just as beautiful as the fabric itself.

November Show and Tell

 Hand towels or teatowels . . . call them what you wish, they are lovely to handle 

and would be a delight to hang in anybody's home.  

These were made by Noelene - above a huck weave in cottolin, below, Bronson lace in cotton. 

Note the subtle squares surrounding the squares of lace.

This throw has been on Betsy's loom for some time and at last she has had time to finish it.  

It is very large and feels lovely although Betsy says she prefers Touch yarns.  

Note the red overshot square in the background.  This is a purpose-made stool top for Win's kitchen. 

She has had it professionally upholstered and it looks great.

Chris and Joan debate the merits of adding purple into Chris's crackle throw. 

Most people agreed 'it needs it.'

This garment marks the end of Rose's turquoise mohair stash (at last!)  

The warp is a textured light weight knot yarn and the belt was a lucky find.

 It is worn under the back panel and over the fronts.

Here are our books

Quick to make, useful to have on hand and an ideal small gift.  These little books were fun to make. Here are a few of them.

November Meeting

We began our last meeting for the year with a glass of wine or juice and Christmas cake and mince pies.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the festive table.
With recent book-making enthusiasm in mind Joan had brought along all the materials and tools required for each person to make a small handbag-friendly pad and pencil book. Members were asked to bring along scraps of fabric, handwoven or otherwise, for decoration.  Here are some general views . . . you will see the finished books in the next post.

Bookmaking

I know we've just had the Melbourne Cup but this is not about that kind of bookmaking. This is about a book-binding course held in Blenheim today.  Not strictly a Marlborough Weavers' event, but a number of our members were present and some used hand woven fabric for covers to good effect.  Felters outnumbered us though and produced some pretty amazing covers.

 Velvet on the left, handwoven on the right

 The technique we used was for exposed spines and we learned three different types of stitching.

This model has marbled endpapers . . . something else to try our hands at!

October Meeting

Our topic for the meeting was 'cushions' presented by Tricia.  She had numerous examples of cushions she had made and each one had a story.  Other people brought along their handmade cushions, ancient and modern, and we talked about them all.  I din't take photos of this part of the meeting.  I did snap the show and tell though.

These linen mats of June's are so perfectly finished they could be used on either side. The yarn is a '3 cord mercerised linen' which has been maturing in the back of June's stash for some time. The mats were displayed at the Area Exhibition in Westport and looked lovely.

Also displayed at Westport was this cylindrical tapestry of Jan's.  She had gone to a great deal of trouble to mount it in this fashion and was surprised to learn that for the exhibition it was deconstructed and displayed flat - after which it was painstakingly reassembled the way Jan had sent it!  Those who saw it displayed said it looked superb.

Our newest weaver, Jen, has taken a giant step up and threaded her widest and finest warp yet.  This is a teatowel made with 8/2 unmercerised cotton and you can see from the close-up that she has been clever with designing stripes and changing direction of the twills. We all thought the colours were lovely too.

Tricia's garment is a work in progress. The fabric is the first she wove when she came to Blenheim and each time we see it it has been enhanced in some way. Note the shaping of the shoulders. Joan, who is modelling it here, was impressed with how comfortable it is to wear.  Tricia has added the embellishments as ideas have some to hand from various sources, and says there is more beading to come.

 This wrap is made by Rose with panels of alpaca and silk in plain weave and panels of lace weave in 16/2 mercerised cotton. The weft is also the mercerised cotton.  It has been notoriously hard to photograph as it is a really dark navy.  The panels are outlined in fine silver thread, each end being finished off with a little square 'diamond' purloined from a bracelet when the right beads could not be found. These are shown in the photo below but you will have to excuse the washed out colour of the wrap.

Another piece was the large throw rug shown in the previous post.

Joan also showed us some treasures she brought back from her travels and I will post photos of them next time.