Association of Southern California Handweavers – Fiber Conference

RIVERSIDE CONVENTION CENTER, CA March 4-8, 2009:

tn_compdaryljacketHANDWOVEN CLOTHING 101: MAKE A SIMPLE UNLINED JACKET FROM YOUR HANDWOVEN FABRIC (3 DAYS)

A terrific class for those who consider themselves “sewing challenged”.  too many scarves, throws, and placemats cluttering your house?  Weave fabric for clothing!  This simple unlined jacket is custom fit, guaranteed to look great, feel good, and teach you the basics of sewing handwoven fabric.  Materials Fee

INKLE LOOM WEAVING (1 Day)

No weaving experience necessary!  The inkle loom is portable, easy to warp, easy to weave off, and makes beautiful belts and bands.  Daryl uses it to trim her garments.  Every weaver should own one.  They are inexpensive and children as young as third grade can learn to use them. Ashford Inklette Inkle Looms are available to rent.

Starting with a PowerPoint presentation, participants will learn to make heddles for the loom, follow a draft and warp the inkle loom.  Proper techniques for weaving a tight even band with good selvedges will be explained.  A more intermediate technique of Inkle Loom Pick-up for interesting design options will also be demonstrated.  Participants will be able to finish a small project by the end of the day.  Materials Fee

PHOTOGRAPHING YOUR WORK: A CRITIQUE OF PARTICIPANT’S IMAGES (1 Day)

Often handweavers are rejected from exhibits because of the poor quality of their images.  Find out what works and what doesn’t.  Even if you use a professional photographer, knowing what jurors are looking for will help improve the quality of your final presentation.  Using Power Point, the basics of photography, both film and digital will be discussed, as well as composition and lighting, and basic digital image manipulation using Photoshop Elements 4.0®.  Lots of images illustrating what NOT to do!  In addition, participants will be asked to send examples of their images in film or digital format ahead of the workshop, for critique.

Contact: http://www.colorconnects.org/

See my complete schedule at http://www.weaversew.com/Schedule.htm.

A Snowy Monday

I’m writing this update, to check that all is working with my laptop, and provided I find an internet connection, I should be able to keep blogging while in California, assuming I eventually get there!

snowymondayBefore I went to bed last night, we got the Honeywell Alert calls that the schools would be closed, which is a good thing, otherwise, we get a call around 5:30am telling us not to get up.  So we all got to sleep in, which is a luxury, and when I did get up, this is the scene that greeted me out the sliders in our bedroom to the upper deck.  As much as a late winter snow is a pain in the butt, it really is beautiful.

It is still snowing, and suppose to continue until dinner time.  I will just go about my business, packing, and at somepoint I have to go into town for some last minute errands, but worst case is I walk.

My husband made waffles this morning, and now I’m off to do another load of laundry, and begin to pack.

A quick note, if you aren’t already a subscriber to Weavezine, Weavecast or Weavegeek, Syne Mitchell’s trio of online weaving mania, she has just launched a new site that will incorporate all of her productions, into one great format, easy to access and stay connected.  And Weavezine, the online weaving magazine will now publish a new article weekly.  Yippee! www.weavezine.com And if you didn’t catch my podcast, I am episode 26 of Weavecast!

Sunday the First

I can’t believe it is March already.  Unfortunately, it feels like January.  At least in the north east.  We have a snow storm on the way, up to 12″, depending on what forecast you listen to.  This is making me very nervous.  I know what Newark airport is like the day after a snow storm, and I am flying to California on Tuesday.  If I miss my connection in Houston, I am most likely going to miss the start of the conference and my class.  But my brain is famous for running amok with just a little bit of information.  It makes me really good at what I do, but miserable to live with…  🙂

So, I am in overtime drive here, trying to calm my frayed nerves, remembering this is all out of my control, and that what will be will be, and that it always works out.  Weavers are really flexible, and know how to get out of difficult tangled messes!

The show last night was a lot of fun.  We attended the musical Footloose at a local private school, this is the show where I altered 33 dresses for the production.  Back in early February I was asked to so some alterations and dressmaking, and I did have a lot of fun with it, but now that I’ve seen the show I have an interesting perspective here.  The dance scene is the final scene in Footloose.  Most of the dresses I altered were for that scene.  The scene was maybe two-three minutes long, tops.  The entire ensemble was on stage, so many of the dresses were in the back row, and couldn’t even be seen.  I have to wonder if all the work I did was really necessary for two minutes of time on stage.  That’s the funny thing with costuming.  Always weighing, how long will this actually be seen, versus the cost of the alteration and will it even be noticed.  I was sort of sad the cast wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to inspect all my hard work!  But of course, it wasn’t about me and the alterations.  The girls looked great, colorful, and much more current than some of the original dated dresses.  The show was fun, and I enjoyed watching the kids sing their hearts out.

Today I spent updating my laptop in preparation for the trip, that meant 13 Windows updates, and virus definitions updates, and 329 emails off the server, and moving over all the updated presentations, and realizing I didn’t have Photoshop Elements 6 in the laptop, only version 4, I had to install that as well.  I also backed up my Palm organizer, and other critical things along with the access codes to my blog.

This afternoon I had a real treat, I headed over to the local County College, the one where my son is a theatre major.  They were having a retrospective weekend of their 40 years in the arts, and Friday night we attended an overview of the entire fine and performing art department, theatre, gallery exhibits, dance, and some beautiful music.  This afternoon was a two hour Dance retrospective, some really terrific original modern dances, some award winning, and all of it current, thoughtful, colorful, and even humorous.  It was a wonderfully spent $15.   I think if I had unlimited funds and nothing else to do with my life, I’d attend the theatre daily, all sorts of things, living in the NYC area, we have access to so much it can be overwhelming.  Montclair State University has a fabulous new performing arts theatre, it is 7 miles from my house, and I could attend some event weekly and not break the bank.  And there is some fresh new original work being seen at some of these colleges and universities. So little time, so much to see…

Well, there is nothing to do now but ride out the storm, pack tomorrow, and hope I get out of Dodge on Tuesday!  My intent is to blog while I am on the road.  Since I haven’t done it before, and we are trying to locate my travel camera which mysteriously disappeared off my desk (could either of my two teenagers have anything to do with its disappearance?), I can’t guarantee there will be posts from sunny southern California, but I’m going to try.  Speaking of ‘sunny’, Continental sent me my trip notes, and it isnt’ so warm there, in the high 50’s and low 60’s.  I think I need to change what I was planning to bring for clothing…

The Workshop

What a fun day.  I loaded my four huge tote bags of stuff into the car, along with my trusty sewing machine, and off I went, tea mug in hand, to the workshop with Marie Ozmon, sponsored by the Jockey Hollow Weavers.  Marie has a very varied background, but loves to manipulate fabric into constructions and wall pieces, playing with color, crocheting fabric strips, cutting apart layers, and generally having a great time with a needle and thread.  It was so great to just sit all day with my weaving buddies, playing with our sewing machines, and diving through piles of stash.  It doesn’t get any better than that.  I had terrific fun with my machine, switching feet, playing with stitches, trying to see what it can do, and I can’t think of a more enjoyable way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

workshopsamplerWe basically started with four layers of fabric, stitching them together in a random way, and slicing through the layers to reveal the underneath, manipulating them, folding them, adding embellishments, and generally entertaining ourselves.  This gives me a terrific jumping off point for that illusive project 4 I have been mulling over in the back of my mind.  I think I posted that project back in December, but may have come up with a starting place for where to take all those leftovers and pieces of wonderful fibers.  But that will have to wait until I finish the Arctic Sky jacket, and my California conference.

My son is picking up Chinese food, and we will be leaving in about an hour for the show Footloose, that’s the production where I altered the 27 dresses which turned into 33…  You can read about that adventure in the blog Help Wanted and SuperBowl Sunday…

A winter storm is due in tonight through tomorrow.  I am so done with winter.  California, here I come…

Lions and Tigers and Bills, Oh My!

I went to log onto my computer this morning, and some very weird stuff started to happen.  The screen sort of froze up in the half booted up stage, not a good thing.  Alt + Ctrl + Delete wouldn’t work, and I will say, I had a moment of complete panic.

Sidebar: I am married to an absolutely brilliant man.  He makes computer geeks look stupid.  To watch him work, trying to debug, find the problem, and craft a solution is to watch an absolute artist in technology.  When my husband isn’t traveling the world as a systems analyst, he usually works from home.  That would be down the hall.

The computer gods live in fear of my husband.  And I say this with humor, but it is a long standing joke in our household (with a computer system in almost every room), that when something goes wrong, my husband need only come and stand in the doorway, and all will instantly correct itself.  I understand this, I have the same rapport with the sewing machine gods.  We have a mutual understanding.  In a class, a student will be struggling with a machine, and usually I’ve only to sit down and all will work properly.  But I DON’T have that rapport with the computer gods.

Fortunately my husband was working from home today, and I wandered down the hall, trying to hide the complete panic in my voice.  I had shut everything down, and when he came in to the studio, and pushed the power button to boot everything up, all worked as it should.  Go figure….   I hate when he does that, but I’d be completely lost if he couldn’t…

So, I got on with my morning, which was spent in front of the computer, paying bills, doing paperwork, balancing checkbooks, entering bookkeeping figures in Microsoft Money, and doing all those distasteful tasks that are critical to a smoothly running business and household, but I’d much rather have been weaving.

Once that task was completed, I started packing for a one day workshop I’m taking tomorrow at the Jockey Hollow Weavers Guild, with Marie Ozmon.  First I should mention that a perk of belonging to the JHW, is a winter “Freebie” program, a one day program in late winter, for free, that gives you a little creative sunlight, something to get you out of your winter doldrums.  Well this program is right up my alley.  The title is Constructing Fabric Structure, Surface, and Texture.

So I pulled out some very large tote bags, and boy do I have a collection, between my years of conference attendance, and my husband, who has been on the local school board for more than 10 years, and attends the yearly school board convention, well, you haven’t seen tote bags until you’ve been to one of these conventions…

Anyway, I packed up some fabric, ribbons, beads, sewing supplies, my iron and ironing blanket, and my trusty Janome 6600 professional machine, along with a couple bolts of fusible interfacing, and lined up all the bags in the hall, along with my camera, which is why I don’t have a picture of this escapade…

Stay tuned…