Conference Highlights…

I have returned.  Most likely I failed to mention I was going away again, but that’s my life during the summer.  Assume I am heading off for someplace soon.

I was asked to teach this year at the ANWG conference, for those who aren’t in the know, that would be Association of Northwest Weavers Guilds, or something like that, hosted by the Seattle Weavers’ Guild, one of three handweaving conferences taking place last week/weekend in the United States.  ANWG was the longest, since it included three days of pre-conference classes.  Though I don’t know the numbers for Midwest and MAFA, I think total attendance at ANWG was over five hundred and in this day and age, that’s a pretty good showing for a regional conference.

The energy, the creativity, the friendships and conversations, no where else in this world do you get to put that many people from all over the world together and have as much fun.  If you’ve never attended a weaving or fiber conference, I highly recommend you put it to the top of your bucket list.

There is the conference tote bag,  with all kinds of hand made goodies, pins, mug mats, bookmarks (though I read from a Kindle these are still desired to mark pages in my weaving books), felted pin cushions, luggage tags, tissue holders, key rings and a host of other novelties that guild members spend a year producing.

And of course there is dorm room living if the event is held on a college campus.  This particular campus, Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA had a dorm that was actually comfortable, I slept well, the shower was excellent even though it was a shared bathroom, and the food was pretty good considering it was a dining hall cafeteria.  The lines at the salad bar were of course frightening, but it shows how healthy most weavers eat, it is not unusual for a venue like this to run out of salad and coffee…  🙂  And I was thrilled to room with Bhakti Ziek, whom I’ve known  for probably 30 years, but can now call a good friend.

Yarn bombing is now a pretty common occurrence and there was a team just to make WWU colorful and welcoming.  I heard a rumor that the University asked if the yarn bombing could be left up.

I taught a pre-conference class for three days, participants brought handwoven or commercial fabric, and after fitting my jacket pattern on each participant, they all dove in, cut up their fabric and started on an intense whirlwind three days  constructing their custom fit jacket.

In this group of 16, 13 had actual handwoven fabric, and every length of cloth was competent and beautiful. One person brought fabric from Mekong River Textiles, woven by a women’s cooperative in Thailand or Laos.

Participants spread out to cut their fabric.  The tiny classroom proved to be a challenge. We had to extend out into the atrium…

Then they carefully marked all the match points with tailor’s tacks.

Then they dragged out sewing machines and equipment and started the construction process.

Handweavers have the best sewing machines.

The jackets started to take shape.

A sampling of the almost but not quite finished garments.  They still had a lot of handwork to do.

We even had a visit from a past participant of my “Daryl Jacket” class in California, show off her finished garment.  I usually don’t get to see them complete.  This is Kathleen and she dyed her fabric.

Carole didn’t have handwoven fabric, but she had a really cool selvedge on her rayon blend, so we made use of it as instant trim on the edge of her band.

And what would a “Daryl Jacket” be without the requisite Hong Kong seam finishes.

The evening events were always entertaining, just standing in line for the fashion show was a show in itself.  Spotted were numerous past Daryl Class garments, here is a jacket and pieced vest from former classes.

I spent all of Friday giving two 3 hour seminars on the fashion show, starting with the application process and selection of images.  Participants played Juror for a brief slide show of entrant’s images.  It was eye opening.  We moved over to the gallery to view the garments up close and personal and I spent time inspecting and offering my opinion on issues and problems as well as design and fabric selections.  This was a great body of work to work from, and the questions were thoughtful and interesting.

Friday night was “shop ’till you drop”, and I managed to score three purchases from the vendor hall, a gorgeous wooden button from Fibers, ETC of Tacoma, Washington,

A gorgeous low profile shuttle from Bluster Bay Woodworks, made from Amazique Wood…

And an adorable miniature Turkish Drop Spindle from Northwest Handspun Yarns in Bellingham, WA.

The exhibits were of course interesting and inspirational, here is a shot of my long coat hanging in the faculty exhibit.

And the flowers around campus were inspirational as well.

The guild displays are always fun, here are displays from Victoria Handweavers of BC, Tacoma Weavers, Whatcom Weavers, and Seattle Weavers.

Saturday I taught one of my favorite classes to teach, an all day Color and Inspiration class.  I brought bags of thrums, all wound on little drinking straws, and I had a large class of something like 28.

We studied value…

We studied complements…

And my favorite exercise is to make something really ugly.  After lunch we swapped cards and each participant had to “fix” the card they received and put their own voice into it to make it work.  Here you can see some of the before and after’s.  I’ll let you figure out which is which.  The rule was they could only change or substitute one yarn.

Next we worked with Color-Aid papers and created palettes from photos for inspiration.

The final exercise was to create a yarn wrap inspired by a photo, and the results were wonderful.

One participant Kaliope, reworked her wrap three times, exploring the relationship between the sky and the balloon.

This conference was pretty wonderful.  The organizers shed a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and it showed.  From the tango dancers and Latin jazz/french bistro musicians at the fashion show to the grand finale which was the spontaneous food yarn fight in the cafeteria banquet hall Saturday night, 500 grey haired ladies hurling yarn balls at each other, while the waitstaff held up their cell phones recording the whole thing, it just doesn’t get any better than that.

I made lots of new friends and lots of guild contacts, I’m hoping for a return trip to the Pacific Northwest in the next year, the sooner the better since the heat here is pretty oppressive.

The sun set over Bellingham Bay, and I slowly made my way down to SeaTac airport, flying out Sunday night on a red eye, arriving at 5:15 am where the temps at Newark Airport were already almost 80.  Last night I slept for 12 hours, and today I had a massage.  It was a tough week, but totally worth it and now I can settle down and look at the next venue, coming up fast. Sievers School of Fiber Arts, July 13-20  There are still a couple of spaces available!

Stay tuned…