A Sewing Extravaganza…

I’m home.  Grab a cup of coffee, it’s going to be a long one!

I had a glorious week in Asheville, NC.  Everytime I go there, I think, this is a place where I could live, the arts community is huge, and the fiber community is even bigger.  Contemporary fiber in the United States sort of got its start in Black Mountain, after the Bauhaus dispersed and Annie Albers came here and became part of a huge weaving community.  That was a long time ago, and the mountains of Western NC are rich in fiber heritage.

I always have a great time when I stay with Barb Butler and her husband Bill.  They have a magnificent house, and they cook like there is no tomorrow.  The first night in I got to wear my new dress and we had the famous Butler pizza party, Bill cooks the individual pizzas in the Wood fired oven in the back of the house.

We ate out one night, at a lovely restaurant called Isis, in Asheville, and just reading the menu was like poetry.  I had a Watermelon, feta, and arugula salad with white balsamic vinaigrette and a chilled lavender infused duck confit over mango quinoa garnished with orange blossom honey essence.  For dessert I had the Black Bottom Butterscotch Pot de Creme with Cinnamon Sugar Churros. OMG!

And the class.  I loved this class.  I know I always say that each one is my favorite, and this one was no exception.  It was gratefully a small one, because they kept me going for seven days.  Most stayed for only the five, but one brave soul Susan stuck with me for seven straight days and Kathie, who had taken the class last year, came in for the last two.

There was my host Barb, who had a specific agenda, she needed a Gatsby style dress for a pre wedding party.  She found a pattern and some lovely silver grey linen and we worked hard to get it to fit.  This dress had NO shape.  None.  Barb has a lovely shape.  They weren’t working together.  So with a few darts and a bit of a redesign, we nailed it.  And we found her the perfect shoes at Zappos.com.  All part of the service!

There was her partner at Sutherland Weaving Studio, where the workshop was held, Karen Donde, who is quite an accomplished weaver, writer and teacher herself (she contributes regularly for Handwoven Magazine).  Karen, like some of the other students, had an agenda of fitting muslins, or test garments.  She wanted a group of interesting garments that actually fit, that she could develop into some great handwoven garments.  I can’t wait to see what she does with them. (Many of the fittings were done in my office which doubled as the restroom.  I’ve spent many classes teaching in the toilet…  This restroom actually had a chair…)

There was Walker (Terry) who has followed me all over the planet, she has taken this class with me many times, and drove down from Wisconsin, and will be continuing the adventure next month when I teach this same class at Sievers.  Walker brought all the things she hadn’t finished.  Most needed a week’s worth of handwork.  She was a trouper!  The jacket is handwoven, and needed a closure.  Everything is still pinned, but it turned out well.

Walker brought her niece Nora.  I taught Nora how to weave on the inkle loom one evening.  Nora made a new headband for her dreadlocks.

Pam is a relatively new weaver.  She brought gorgeous handwoven yardage to make a jacket.  Then she brought a pretty wild lining, and we told her to go for it!

Alice is not a weaver, but a very experienced sewer.  Alice was looking for someone to help her fit.  She came with a stack of patterns, and I mean a stack, and she blew through pattern tracings and test garments completing one every couple of hours.  The pile under her sewing machine grew pretty large by the end of the week.

At one point I tried to clone myself.  It didn’t work.

And of course there was Susan, who has taken classes with me before, and had an unfinished pieced vest from a class a couple years ago at the Fiber Forum, and Susan wanted her own “Daryl Jacket”.  She wove the yokes in a rag fashion from quilt fabric.  The jacket still needed sleeves, but she dove into her suitcase and pulled out at least 20 garments or muslins that needed restyling, resizing, or just needed to be fit.  At 5:30pm the last day of the seven day class, her machine was still humming along.  But she has lots to keep her busy in the sewing department this next year.

Kathie Roig, a very experienced handweaver from the area, took my class here last year, and was able to pop in and join us for the last two days, since she wanted to restyle a jacket she wove a number of years ago, and had paid a dressmaker to sew it, based on a pattern and style that was popular at the time.  Now it just looked oversized and dated.  She no longer wore it, so we talked about what to do, and how to preserve what was good about it, the length, the front finishing, and of course the fabric.  We restyled the sleeve and reworked the side, and added a zipper up the front for the closure.  Kathie is really happy.

I’m home, and I have a week to pull myself and my house together, and give my family some quality time before I leave again next Monday for the ANWG conference.  My doggies were very spiteful because I left them.  They managed to open the door to the guest room, and get into the closet there where I keep my spinning fleeces.  They pulled one out, tossed it all over the room, and then ceremoniously peed all over it.  They made their point.  I was missed.  Sigh.

I’m hoping to return to Asheville next year, I love having students come back and bring new challenges, and this group broke the record for the number of garments I fit in seven days.

Oh, and of course I made a trip one afternoon to Waechter’s Silk Shop, and used my very best restraint while diving into the two large remnant baskets.  I came home with only a half dozen pieces, left to right, a rayon challis batik, a silk noil, a cotton knit, an Italian cotton shirting, an Italian linen, a bamboo dobby, a rayon/Poly/Lycra Double knit, and on the right a gorgeous navy blue camel hair.  OK, it was eight…

I will be teaching this class again this summer, at Sievers in WI, Harrisville in NH, and Peters Valley in NJ.

Stay tuned…