Guild Day

Today was Guild Day and I thought I hadn't taken my camera so no photos!  As it happens it was in the bottom of my bag after all but as the only bit of weaving show and tell was mine it didn't really matter.  I took along a woolly throw rug I have made to make use of some stash of boucle yarn and bright turquoise mohair.  I have used the mohair in a rug before and the colour is a bit intense just used with  white.  This time the multi-coloured boucle warp has quietened it down a bit.  Here is a photo I took of it at home.

So where is all the rest of the weavers' show and tell?  Hopefully we will see more at our meeting on Monday night.

Joan had brought lots of beautiful examples of textiles from Kashmir, including a lot of tambour work.  More of that on another occasion.

Show and Tell in September

 These days much of Win's work can be identified by her signature crochet medallions.  This time the flowers are surrounding small 'windows' of unwoven warp.

Win came in for some good-natured ribbing for bringing a piece of felting to the weaving group. She had a great time learning to make it and here Chris shows it off to good effect.

Jen had been adventurous and used one of the patterns from a workshop to make a scarf in a mix of wool and cotton.  She is musing about daffodils but others were thinking sage and primroses.

Rose had fulfilled a long-held ambition to weave fabric fine enough for a handkerchief.  Here it is, surrounded by tatting, also worked in a fine cotton. Now what to do with it?  And the rest of the fabric . . . more handkerchiefs?  Why?

The red piece is woven with an even finer weft than the white. Unfortunately the reed marks have not washed out in either piece.

Sorting the colours

Not as easy as you would think, even with this vast array to choose from.

Here is how some of them worked out.

One useful tip was to usethe picture upside down so that you look at the colours without being distracted by the picture.  Another discussion was the difference when choosing a dominant colour scheme for a project where you can ignore a few colours of little significance to the whole compared with choosing colours for a tapestry representation where it is necessary to include every colour.

Next time will be show and tell.

Weavers' September Meeting

It was a small weaving family that met on 16 September, many of our members being away travelling or having other commitments.  However, Chris took charge and kept us all busy.

 Chris had raided her stash of art pictures and calendars for us and also raided all the paint shops in town by the look of the colour samples she provided for us to choose from.

 Working in pairs we first chose a picture and then analysed the colour scheme and found swatches to match.

You will see the results in the next post in a few days.

More from our August Workshop

We had a merry mixture of weaves to try.  There were eight looms and most had multiple threadings. Here are some of the results.

At the end of day two the samples were cut from the looms and each person took their own pieces home for finishing.  This is where the careful labelling paid off.

A Colourful Interlude

Interrupting the weaving theme for a splash of colour shown at the August Guild meeting.  Our felting group had been making a collective entry for a Wearable Art event with Queen Charlotte College in Picton and here Katie McDonald models the 'Artist's Palette' complete with full complement of colours and topped off with a paintbrush.  The materials are largely waste industrial felt which has been dyed along with their own felted accessories.  Well done team!

August Workshop

On 10 and 11 August the weather turned cold and miserable so it was a good weekend to be indoors at Bobbin Cottage where we could concentrate on a 'home grown' workshop which covered a variety of topics in a variety of complexity.  Setts also varied from 8 epi to an inadvertent 32 epi.  Three reeds were re-sleyed during the weekend so a bit was learned about setts as well as about twills, colour and weave and colour blending. Most looms were pre-threaded with a mini-gamp - usually just three threadings so nothing too scary.  More about the weaving later but in the meantime here are the nine participants at work on the 8 looms available.

More from July Meeting

June distributed LOTS of swatches of commercial fabric for us to dissect and try to work how how the 'designer' yarn in each was used to give a unique effect.  Then she had us asking 'what if . . . ' with lots of colourful and textured yarns to choose from to mentally embellish the fabric further.  It was a good challenge and had us thinking.

Thank you June.

Ooops, I told a fib!

The weather and the Interislander decreed that I would not travel to Wellington at the weekend so I was, after all, able to attend the Weavers' meeting on Monday and here are some photos to prove it.  First instalment covers the show and tell.

A most un-Chris colour but her trade mark crackle block weave using soft brushed wool in the weft. It would make a great sit-up-in-bed-and-find-all-the-patterns entertainment for a sick patient as well as being cheerful and warm. 

 

The pattern of Win's baby blanket looks quite different in the samples from the same warp using different wefts.

Judy has not been spinning long but this ball of Gotland wool is smooth and beautiful.  Her first spinning is woven with singles yarn in warp and weft, fulled in the washing machine and is cosy and comfortable.

Jen is now confident to weave a wool scarf in 8 shaft twill at 20 epi.  Well done Jen.

Judy brought along this sample of defelected double weave which arrived via Cross Country Weavers.  Different from other samples of this technique we have seen, it shows many possibilities.

Nancy is helping along the Creative Fibre project to knit hundreds of baby singlets in honour of The Royal Baby which, at this stage, is yet to arrive.  CF members all over NZ will be donating these singlets to local hospitals and Plunket societies.  Of course, Nancy's are knitted in alpaca yarn.

Betsy's work in progress is a pair of fingerless gloves which she is adapting from a pattern for normal gloves.  The pattern is what I suppose we now call vintage . . . the price on it is sixpence!

More soon about the fascinating things June had us delving into.