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!