A glorious week…

I’ve been involved with Peters Valley School of Craft for a really long time.  And in many capacities including a stint on the board of directors.  I’ve had the opportunity to teach there the last three summers, twice this summer alone.  Actually I’ve been teaching off and on there since the 1980’s, and after the huge weaving studio refurbishment in the spring of 2014, which I was heavily involved in, from a generous donation of 8 and 10 shaft Macomber looms from William Paterson University, I have to honestly say that this is the most well equipped functioning weaving facility in the region and maybe beyond.

I don’t often get to teach beginners.  And since my professional focus has been handwoven clothing, and garment construction for weavers, I almost never teach weaving especially beginning.  At least in garment construction, people who take the class generally know how to operate a sewing machine.  Looms are quite different.

I had five students in this class, turns out four of the five actually had acquired looms, but hadn’t a clue where to even begin.  (The fifth student went home with a loom, recently donated to the Valley, one we couldn’t use.)  They were amazing.  I will admit that the syllabus I developed for this class was intense, but I wanted them to leave with an understanding of how the loom works, how to set it up, how to read a draft, and how to weave good cloth.  I had a plan.  And it worked.  And it worked because I had committed students who hung in there and in spite of foggy sleep deprived minds and warm days, and traveling home at night, and no prior experience, all of them finished the assignments and went home with exactly the information I had hoped to impart, how the loom works, how to set it up, how to read a draft, and how to weave good cloth.  I did good.

And so it is photo time.  I’m so proud of all of them.  First they wound their warps, 5/2 perle cotton, two colors, which they had selected prior to the class.  We had solid and striped areas which was part of my plan.

Next came sleying the reed, we worked front to back, my preferred method.

And then onto threading the heddles.

I brought my Harrisville tensioning device and was able to use it on most of their looms since they all found themselves beaming their warps at different times.  I love the way this thing works and highly recommend it for front to back warpers.

Once the looms were beamed we tied onto the front.  They smiled at a perfectly dressed loom.  Weaving commenced.

The projects were, as I described in an earlier post, a gamp or sampler dishtowel, allowing them to learn to read a draft and explore color while exploring structure.  The threading was a combination of straight draw, straight draw with stripes and point twill.  They were squealing with delight.

Once the samplers were complete, we unrolled them and they got to pick two structures they really liked and then they just loaded the shuttles, adjusted the treadles and wove like the wind, the goal to create two dishtowels.

The towels started to take shape.

We all took a break and a field trip to Luna Parc.  Ricky Boscarino of Luna Parc was actually one of my students.  He called me professor.  I smiled every time I heard it.  A bit of a Rock Star, Ricky is a master at almost every other craft art medium, a painter and potter and woodworker and sculptor, and most importantly a fine metalsmith.  But Ricky had no experience in fiber.  We encouraged him to add fiber to the extensive museum that is Luna Parc, fiber he created himself.  So he took the class and has been a joy to work with.

And when the knots finally came round the back beams the fifth and last day of class, there were more squeals, exhausted but still very enthusiastic.

They were all a bit nervous cutting their last five days of work off the loom.

And there they are, five exquisite three yard lengths of cloth, yes there are mistakes, but they learned so much.

One of the most interesting mistake turned out to be the most inspirational.  One of the wires connecting shafts to treadles dropped out on Sue’s loom, and it was a few inches before she noticed it.  Though it was a mistake, she really loved the effect.  Suzanne picked up on it and I wrote the treadling sequence out for the other students, 4, 1+2, 2+3, 3+4.  Then I showed them how to reverse it. A standard twill treadling on a straight draw threading.  The 1 shaft dropped off the first treadle.  Suzanne wove her second towel using the sequence and Ricky experimented with it as well.  We called it Sue’s Folly.

And here they are, my very proud students, showing off their hard work.

Ricky later sent me a photo of his very long table runner in situ at Luna Parc.

A huge thank you to my wonderful assistant for the week Sasha, brought up from Penland, a graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art.  A talented weaver, she immediately threw on a warp upon arrival and experimented with an eight shaft overshot of fine tencel and silk.

And thus my week at Peters Valley has come to an end, and with it one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.  My husband joined me there, and took a low light photo class, and we dined together, and enjoyed the mountains and the trees and the coming bit of fall weather.

Stay tuned…