What’s Old is New Again…

Those of you who know my history know that after college/art school, I started my career working for a textile design/handweaver duo, and I got pretty efficient at weaving, I could in my prime knock out 30 yards of cloth in about 8 hours including warping.  Those years are long gone, and I never want to go back there.  But the education I got, and the ability to knock out cloth when I need to has never left me.

I started doing craft fairs in 1979.  My early craft fair entries were mostly everything I’d woven that didn’t include clothing, and as all things in my life, my sewing skills prevailed and I eventually started selling handwoven garments.  I was pretty good at it.  I had a stable of patterns I developed and used, and would change the color ways every January, and I made a decent respectable living for about 10 years when two things happened, burn out, and I got pregnant.  In my mid 30’s. The rest is history.

So the point here is that the 70’s and 80’s are back.  In fashion I mean.  I look through the latest Vogue/Burda/whomever patterns, the latest Vogue magazine, and I’d swear I made/owned/wore that garment back in the day.  These are two of my production coats from 1987.  This is basically the Daryl Jacket, I use in workshops today, tweaked a lot for my customer in size variations, but still the same jacket, with the shawl collar, and in a long version.  We called them dusters, or in this case, they were both coats, interlined for warmth, from brushed mohair.

Fast forward to today.  I still use that jacket pattern for teaching, and have added a shawl collar to the options, versions with lots of darts for a closer more tailored fit, and it occurred to me that I need to show a long duster/coat option, because well, it worked back in the 80’s and why not today?  This version has a side pocket instead of the patch pocket from my regular jacket, like the ones from 1987.  And this version, is from a draft I developed, that uses multiple hand painted warps, and supplemental warp ends, and I think I’m going to have fun wearing it at Convergence.  It is called Autumn Patchwork and the draft is available here.

While I was making it, I thought about what I was going to wear underneath.  Sidebar…  I’m really spoiled, don’t cry for me.  I’m pretty consistent in my sizing, so much so that for the most part, other than my bout with cancer, chemo drugs, and instant menopause when I was 46, and packed on 25 pounds, I’ve stayed a consistent adult weight, so I expect that what exists in my closet I might put away for awhile, but when it comes back around again in style, I’m going to still fit in it.  That 25 pounds never completely went away, but some of it did, and so I complacently thought that what was in my wardrobe would be available for me to wear as a complement to whatever I wanted to show it with.  Hahahahahah…  (You know where I’m going with this…)

I don’t know whether it is the luxurious lifestyle I lead, all the travel, the good meals, the new food box I get every week (thank you Leslie Fesperman from the Yadkin Valley Fiber Art Center in NC for turning me on to the Purple Carrot) but my weight has crept up ever so slightly and when I went to put on this lovely little paprika silk dress I made from a longer gown I wore to my 35th high school reunion, it never occurred to me it wouldn’t fit.  Ouch…

Since the dress was underlined, I was able to let out the sides just enough to get it on me, and if I don’t take the coat off during the fashion show at Convergence, it will work fine.  Only my beloved readers will know…  I don’t have time to make something else, because well I’ve been working on this dress below…

Many of you dear readers will remember this dress.  It used the Frosted Florals palette from Handwoven Magazine, January/February 2007.  The dress was completed in 2009.  It was featured in Threads Magazine in the Reader’s Closet column, it was the cover of a Fiber Focus, a Canadian publication back in 2010, and an American Sewing Guild publication in 2011, and a Threads Reader’s Closet back in 2009.  It was also the subject of an end notes column in Handwoven Magazine March/April 2011.  It has done it’s job for me and for that I will always be grateful.  (Frosted Florals draft is available here.)

I loved this dress.  But in my line of work, anything older than two years, if I can’t use it in a garment construction class as one of my current patterns, and I can’t exhibit it anymore because it is older than two years, and it has been published, it is worthless to me and just takes up space in my closet.  And gowns are a bit problematic, as they are a bit formal for my lifestyle, I mostly sit around in my pajamas all day.  When I do get dressed, it is for workshops where mostly I wear knit tops and I’m crawling around the floor with students working on layouts for their own fabric.   Can you imagine me trying to do that in this gown?

Everytime I bring up this gown in a lecture, I’ve mentioned that it will be the next thing I cut up.  Yes, that’s correct.  It is in fact just cloth.  It did it’s job as a gown, got me lots of recognition and accolades, and now it just takes up space in my closet.  The great thing about what I do is that I’m not afraid to take scissors to something, because in reality, it is just cloth.  It is in my head, back to the designation of raw material. 

I’m going to be heading to Reno shortly for Convergence.  I need some cool things to wear that I actually fit into.  There are a couple dresses, one I still love, but it is made from the leftovers from the design challenge I did for the Tampa Bay Convergence in 2008. The Splash fabric draft is available here.  The dress fits me like a glove, but I can at least get into it.  

I looked at the Frosted Florals gown, and showed it to my office assistant/friend Cynthia, and she was horrified when I said, I was going to cut it up.  I tried it on, and oops, the bottom part was just a little snug for comfort, and I said, what the heck and chopped it right off and made this absolutely adorable top, which I can wear all kinds of places, besides Convergence, dates, weddings, the theater, and I am pairing it with a wool knit skirt I bought in the $5 bin at a consignment shop I visited when I was on Whidbey Island last April.  The color is a plum brown and it works perfectly with this top.  I did have to take off the waistband of the skirt and increase the waist by about four inches… 🙂

And so that left the lower panels of the dress.  I thought a lot about what to do with them, and I wanted to play around with a bias top.  I love the way bias fits, and wanted to see if I could use one of my patterns to make this work as a top.  My collared vest pattern was perfect, just an alteration in the neckline, raising the armholes a bit, cutting the front on the fold, cutting the pattern on the bias instead of the straight of grain, and cutting one size smaller ended up being perfect.  Check this out…  (again the draft for Frosted Florals is here)

I have enough fabric I think to make a tunic out of the leftover from the Autumn Patchwork coat.  I’m thinking that it is only Tuesday night, and I have another week before I leave for Convergence…  

Stay tuned…

Naked looms, new carpet and some cool stuff in the store…

This has been one of my most favorite weeks.  The planets aligned and things worked for once, and for this week, all is right in my world, which is a little hard to accept because the rest of the world seems to be going to hell in that proverbial handbasket.  I suppose it is wrong to live in my cave, my fiber world, but they know me here, and I feel it is the one place where I can make a difference, empower people to make beautiful stuff from their hands, and I try desperately to keep a balance, otherwise, I’d go completely off my rocker with things I have no control over, except on election day… 🙂

That said, everything has been or will be shortly, shipped to Reno ahead of Convergence.  That leaves me with a little time on my hands, and I suddenly thought, silly me, wouldn’t it be great to have something new to wear to the Convergence Fashion Show.  You know, being the judge and all, and having to get up on stage to give out the awards, it would look pretty sad for me to be in something that’s 10 years old. 🙁

I looked at my one remaining loom that had a warp on it.  I looked at the calendar.  I looked at the loom, and I decided, well, no guts no glory…  The only problem would be if I finished it, I’d be in the hated position of having naked looms.  All of them.  There would not be a single loom I could sit down and weave on, they would all be clear… 🙁

I started to weave.  It was slow and cumbersome at first, this was a particularly cranky warp, from the get go, I don’t know why, and of course about two yards in, the brake failed, which seems to happen on these looms about 25 years into their lifespan.  The main spring got so loose that the brake cable no longer held.  I did emergency surgery since there was still 6 yards to go, and I can think about rebuilding the brake later.  The brake held, and I continued to weave.  🙂  Oh, and the caribiners hanging off the back of the supplemental warps help keep them tensioned evenly.

On Friday, my friend told me about a fantastic rug store in Morristown, J&S Flooring.  Been there forever.  I’ve been here forever and never heard of it.  Wow, was I missing the boat.  Her sisterhood was holding a fund raiser, pick out a 6×9, make a donation and the rug is free.  A great idea.  So down we went, they had a back room of the large retail store full of broadloom remnants and area rugs.  And they had real wool.  Real wool broadloom.  The only kind of rug I’ll ever have in my house, for many reasons.  I needed new carpet for my stairs and hallways, and the wool broadloom that was there was more than 35 years old.  Yeah.  Wool.  I found two very cool remnants I thought would work…  🙂

On Saturday, Red Stone Glen, a relatively new and highly successful fiber center, with wonderful classes, where I’d like to teach once in awhile, was having an open house.  Demo’s, tours, exhibits, sales of equipment and yarns and supplies, what’s not to love?  My friend Cynthia and I drove three hours Saturday morning to a town somewhere south of Harrisburg PA, and found this. 🙂

I was so busy networking and watching some pretty cool demos and looking at some pretty cool stuff that I didn’t take another photo.  But the roster of fiber classes is pretty fantastic, check them out.  Then we drove three hours back…  🙁

On Sunday, I planned to do nothing.  Not even weave.  It was the second anniversary of my husband’s death.  My kids came home, and we sat, in the garden, or rather in the house because it was 95 freakin’ degrees, but I put up on facebook, with rather late notice, that we would be hanging out and anyone was welcome to stop by and pay their respects to Kevin’s legacy.  I was thrilled when Kevin’s old friend Ed showed up.  He loved the gardens.  It was especially difficult because Sunday was Father’s Day.  I know it was hard on my kids.  After lunch, a series of my friends showed up, all coincidentally, and all of them are recorder players.  So we pulled out recorders, stands, music, and we played on the deck under the gazebo, six of us, for a couple of hours, Mozart, Bach, and it was just the best afternoon.  I think my husband was smiling and saying, this is your gig now.  Be happy.  🙂

Monday morning they came out and measured for the carpet.  I got a call later in the afternoon with the breakdown of costs and that they had a cancellation on Wednesday morning for the installers, was it too soon to come by?  :-0

Tuesday morning I wove like the wind.  I got into a rhythm. By lunch time the knots were appearing over the back beam.  I couldn’t believe it.  After lunch the fabric came off the loom, into the wash, and onto the line in the back. 🙂  8 yards by 36″ wide…

This morning, the rug installers came, along with my landscape crew, and my office assistant and friend Cynthia.  I had a house full of people who made my life and house a better place.  The problem was, because they were tearing up 35 year old carpeting, which had tack strips, which would have to be replaced, the dogs had to be kept out of the way, and it was 95 degrees and I couldn’t keep them outside.  So Cynthia and I and the two dogs stayed locked in my bedroom/office for 8 hours.  The dogs could go outside through the balcony, but not through the house.  Cynthia and I decided to tackle a major task in upgrades to the eStore.  🙂

Sidebar…  I posted the Autumn Patchwork fabric in progress on my facebook page.  That’s the fabric I just finished that I talked about at the top of this blog.  I had people ask if the draft was available and of course the obvious question, whose warps were they because, hand painted warps are the hot new thing and everyone has been buying them from Kathrin Weber of Blazing Shuttles.  Except these were mine.  And so was the draft.  I’ve been dyeing warps since 2005.  I was planning to just post the draft and then I said, duh, this is my livelihood.  Why am I not putting project notes and drafts up on my website store like every other designer in the world.  Duh…  :-0

So I started looking through my design journal, which is a couple hundred digital pages.  I can’t post/sell drafts for projects that aren’t my own design, obviously, but I was shocked at how many were my own design and how many of them would be spectacular in hand painted warps.  Especially since you can buy them already painted.:-)

Cynthia and I spent 8 hours, locked away in my bedroom office, with the dogs munching on bones, and added 17 downloads, most are $2.99, for fabrics/drafts and design notes of my most interesting original pieces.  I do use a lot of mill ends, and I do dye a lot of my own yarn, but wherever there is a handpainted warp, I give the dye formulas as well, along with sett, draft, and whatever information I think important.  Most of the drafts are 8 shaft, combination structures, like plain weave, twill and supplemental warps, all in the same fabric.  

So for what its worth (actually $2.99), you can purchase the design pages from my journal, with drafts and notes and some dye formulas, and have some pretty awesome fabric like the one I wove above.  Click here to get to the store… 🙂

And so, after hiding for 8 hours, I came out of my bedroom and found this… 🙂

I also had one of the remnants cut into area rugs for my bedroom hall/closet/dressing room area.  I asked the guy when he called on Monday how long it would take to get the area rugs bound.  He said they would be ready when they came to install the stairs wall to wall.  When they showed up today, I asked if they had bound the area rugs and they said, “We do it here on site”.  :-0

So here are the area rugs, and here is the carpet guy doing it “on site”.  I have never seen anything as cool as this.  A little industrial machine on wheels, that just zooms around the rug while it was laying on my front deck.  This just made my whole week, to think that such a thing as this exists.  🙂 🙂 🙂

So for today, I love my life… 🙂

Stay tuned…

‘Tis the season…

And so it begins…

Dear readers, I haven’t abandoned you, and I can’t even claim I’m so busy I just haven’t had the time to write.  Truth is, my days are busy and full, but I’m not out of my mind insane.  I have help, people for that if you will.  I am ramping up for Reno, ready to ship 160 handouts, 10 inkle looms for rentals, kits are made, and I just spent the whole day working in the yard, puttering around, weeding the vegetable garden, and hanging by the pond, or one of them, while my pond guys rebuilt the waterfall spillway, which was leaking, and restocked the fish and plants.  Everything was holding when I came in for the night, and we will see how things look in the morning.  The weather here this week has been as perfect as weather can be.  This is a hard week, this time two years ago, we brought my husband home to die.  The two year anniversary of his death falls on Father’s Day this year, my kids are both feeling the loss.  We are all just a little off our game, but I have my beautiful gardens, and people to keep them beautiful, the ponds which remind me of him every day, and I just spent the weekend teaching up at Peters Valley, which was a really important part of our lives together.  His presence was definitely felt all weekend, especially for my daughter who accompanied me there and took a five day woodworking class.

Before I show you the photos from the beginning weaving class up at the Valley, I need to go back a month and share the photos from another valley, the Yadkin Valley Fiber Center, in Elkin, NC.  I adored teaching there.  They want me back next year.  I had six lovely students, one of which I’d worked with before.  We had only three days so most chose to make the basic Daryl Jacket with band.  One brave soul, who had a very cool cotton patchwork handwoven fabric, spent a lot of time in the layout, because her goal was a cuddly cotton bathrobe.  We cut the jacket into a duster length, with side pockets, and all she needs are hems and a belt.  

Gaila brought narrow fabric from a Kathrin Weber workshop, and sewed like the wind to create this beautiful vest over the three days.  She finished up the armhole binding as we were packing up the last day.  This is my new vest pattern, great for small pieces and narrow fabrics.

And the rest made the standard jacket pattern with band, it is always remarkable to me how different they all look depending on the sizing and fabric.  I was proud of them all!

And so Friday afternoon, I headed out to Peters Valley, my favorite place in the world, for many many reasons, and I had eight wonderful eager students who wanted to learn to weave.  Peters Valley has 11 full size 8, 10, and 12 shaft looms, in pretty good shape.  I was able to really tweak and fine tune the brakes and other metal odysseys that are common to Macombers.  By the end of the two days they were all just about perfect.  

The sampler/gamp I had the students do, explored two different threadings, and many different treadlings, plain weave, twills, ribs, basket weave, color and weave, and more.  They were all really good sports about threading, patience is a virtue, and a necessary sort of skill when threading the loom for the first time.  They were tired and cross eyed, but there were very few mistakes and all easily correctable.  Here are some of the samplers.  I pre-wound the warps, so they didn’t get to pick the warp colors, but all were amazed at how the weft influenced the cloth.  There was more than one squeal of delight by Sunday afternoon.

And a shout out to Jamie, who is the summer assistant in fibers at the Valley.  She was a terrific sport, jumped in with great patience and really helped me when it seemed that everyone needed me at once.  She even got to set up one of the looms with an extra warp.

I brought examples of a lot of my work, scarves, table linens and dishtowels, and of course clothing, but I also brought one of my small Theo Moorman technique tapestries I did in the early 1980’s.  It helps give a range of what’s possible on the loom.  Jamie and the studio manager Beth quickly rigged up a way to hang the tapestry on the newly painted wall.  Everyone loved it so much I decided to leave it there for the summer.  It was sitting in the bottom of my closet and it looks so happy here.

And that’s two workshops I can cross off my list.  I’ll be teaching another beginning weaving class at Peters Valley the first part of August, though this one is five day and also sold out.  Meanwhile, Reno calls.  I am in final countdown mode, and actually looking forward to the conference, and the Tuesday when I fly home and it will be another one for the books.  

Meanwhile, I found out that my swing coat, which I had submitted to Fiber Celebration 2018 sponsored by the Northern Colorado Weavers Guild won first place in Wearables, along with a general award and the Pikes Peak Award.  I’m pretty psyched about that, and hopefully the coat will be heading back this way shortly since I need to take it to Reno.  I’m starting to think about what I’m going to wear to the fashion show in Reno, since I’m the judge and have to get on stage to present the awards.

Stay tuned…

On making lemonade…

I would wager a guess that everyone of you dear readers knows what it is like when your life is not your own.  When circumstances get in the way of plans, of what makes you happy and what does not, and what messes with the lives of those you love.

I really expected my next post to be all about my adventures at the Chilhuly museum in Seattle, after an amazing week on Whidbey Island followed by an amazing weekend in a workshop with Heather Winslow, whom I got to host and is a complete delight and then get ready to pack for my trip to Yadkin Valley Fiber Center in NC, where I was to teach a three day jacket class…  But that was so last month…

Except the storm hit.  Literally.  The northeast has had a rash of really wicked storms in the last couple of months.  I’ve gotten through them all unscathed, fortunately I had an all around handyman who cleaned up the minor debris, six loads to the dump of yard waste. I made many calls to landscape maintenance companies to find someone who could just cut my lawn and do some mulching.  Everyone would drive by my property and keep on going.  Except they couldn’t keep on going.  I live on a dead end street with no turn around like a lovely cul de sac.  Apparently this is a problem for a 41 foot landscape trailer.  Who knew…

I finally found a company who promised me they would add me to their customer base. They could park on a neighboring street and drive the equipment over.  Then it rained, and rained and rained…

 

Then the storm hit Tuesday two weeks ago.  We almost never lose power.  We live near a pretty stable grid.  Last power outage was Hurricane Sandy, and that happened because a 150 year old oak came down on Main Street and took out the main trunk line.  It took ten days to repair that.  The first gust of wind blew Tuesday two weeks ago and wham.  Power out.  I was in the middle of stitching around the swatches for the guild exchange.  I finally finished them on the loom and needed to cut and mount them for the guild meeting.  Thankfully earlier in the day I updated all the handouts I’d need for the upcoming jacket class.  What I didn’t do was print out the computer sheets for what I needed to pack, because I wasn’t planning to pack until Wednesday afternoon.  The flight to Charlotte was Thursday morning.

Yeah, so that happened.  And I knew when the first gust of wind hit and the power was out that it wasn’t going to be good.  In fact, once the storm passed I ventured out down main street and not only was there a 150 year old oak down between two of my neighbor’s houses, miraculously missing both, but further down Main Street in the same spot where the tree took out the trunk line during Hurricane Sandy, the remaining two 150 year old trees had gone down like dominoes again taking the trunk line with them.  Sigh.

So my son and I made the best of it.  We lit the oil lamps, drank, made food with what we could and not opening the refrigerator or freezer.  I have a gas stove, which I could light with a match, and I still had a Verizon signal.  Later that evening I drove around trying to charge my phone and I was shocked at how many trees had come down and blocked roads.  It was going to be a long time before we got our power back.

I took my doggies to the kennel on Wednesday and tried to pack as best I could remember, what I’d need for the class, since I had no power I had no computer. Wednesday night I realized that I would be gone when the power came back on and I couldn’t take a chance on what food would be safe to eat, so I put out a plea on facebook and a friend came and we unloaded about a hundred pounds of food from two freezers and refrigerators and she carted it all home to share with her mom, very happy to have all of it.  Thursday morning I got into the limo, with two large suitcases, my carry on bags, and no power.  I was doubly worried because my alarm system was dying, and my son, though he lives in the house, would be leaving for guard drills on Friday for the weekend.  

But there was nothing I could do but hope for the best.

Late Thursday night, while I was in NC, the power did come back on, and my son was in residence, and the alarm did go completely nuts, and I was able to get him in touch with the alarm company and they talked him through resetting everything.

The weekend was a complete success, I adored my six students, they all made beautiful jackets, and I adored staying with my host Leslie, who runs the fiber center. And though I did forget a couple of important things, I managed to do without them.  I’ll talk about all that in another post, and give it its own space, but last Monday morning, I flew home in a relatively uneventful flight, hopped in the limo, and on the way home found out that my mom had been rushed to the hospital yet again, this time with suspected blood clots in both lungs. Which turned out to be true.  My sister was beside herself, she had lost so much time from work from all the other calls to the hospital in the previous two weeks, and living closest to my mom, the ball is always in her court.

The limo arrived at my front door and to my complete surprise, the landscape company was there, with the first 10 yards of mulch and had most of the front yard underway.  It was beautiful.  There was a glimmer of light.  

 

I have never wanted to not do something the way I didn’t want to get in the car and drive to Maryland.  I was exhausted, and my house still wasn’t completely back to normal after the power outage.  I had no food in the house.  Since we had no food, my son suggested sushi for dinner.  And wine doesn’t have to be refrigerated… I went to the kennel to get the dogs Monday afternoon and looked through the mail, tried to make some sense of the couple hundred emails in my box and called my mom.  I knew what I really didn’t want to hear.  I needed to make the trip to Maryland.  I did a big sigh, went to bed, and in the morning, the morning of my birthday, I made a decision to just be.  In the moment.  Enjoy what I could out of the day, celebrate the fact that there were many rainbows in my life and that today was a storm, and that hopefully there would be a rainbow at the end.  I looked out the window and the day was clear and there, at the end of my driveway was the mulch truck, back with another 10 yards and I looked up at the sky and said thank you to my late husband for the best birthday present he could ever have given me.  My son assured me he would be around to care for the dogs, I threw a bunch of clothes back in the suitcase and left.

And you know, life is funny sometimes.  I realized on the 3 1/2 hour drive down the NJ turnpike, over the Delaware Memorial Bridge and on into Maryland that it was my birthday and I was going to be able to spend it with my sisters and my mom, no matter what the circumstances.  The three people I love most in this world, other than my children.  And it is a different kind of love.  My mom is 87.  She has had an amazing life, she remarried at 76 to a guy she dated in high school.  They are still married and he is devoted to her and hasn’t left her side.  I have two amazing sisters, we are really really close though not geographically, but we are there for each other.  And so I got to the hospital, had lunch with my youngest sister, got to my mom’s hospital room, and we all sat, and visited and laughed and the hospital cafeteria had sushi, so I picked up some, and while my mom ate her bland hospital food for dinner, I had my small box of shrimp sushi, and smiled.  It was a lovely rainbow and I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

That evening I went to my other sister’s house to spend the night, and we got a lovely visit in.  Back to the hospital Wednesday morning, again Thursday and again Friday.  My sister who was so behind in her work, she is an architect, was able to catch up and clear her schedule so she could take over for me on Saturday.  It turned out to be the most gentle special week.  I made lemonade from really sour lemons and a good shot of vodka in there was all it needed.  I sat and talked and knitted, dozed and just felt present.  It was enough.  And it turned out to be one of the best birthdays I’ve had in a long long time.

And I came home Saturday morning and this is what waited for me. 

 

I still have a pond that keeps emptying, and the water feature in the yard stopped working, but I will call pond guy Bob on Tuesday and he will eventually figure it out.  The yard is lovely.  I stopped at Trader Joe’s on the way home and refilled my freezer with all kinds of lovely things.  My daughter and I went to see Moliere’s Tartuffe at the NJ Shakespeare Theater today for a Sunday Matinee and we laughed through the whole show.  It is hard to imagine that a play written in the 1600’s could be so relevant for today.  My son made awesome burgers and had dinner waiting when we returned.  I had a cold dark beer for dinner, and celebrated that I have more than I need, and am surrounded by amazing people whom I love more than life, and that it isn’t what happens in your life that’s important, it is how you look at it.  And this week was a great reminder of what I truly value. 

Stay tuned…

Mind explosion…

What a two weeks this has been.  A roller coaster of a ride, spectacular, scary, and really really fun.  So much to tell…

I’ll start with the vacation I took with a friend and my daughter, to weaving heaven.  My former editor from when I worked for Handwoven magazine is a fantastic weaver and runs a weaving school in her home on Whidbey Island, off the coast of Washington State.  For all my readers who are weavers, and even those who aren’t, Madelyn van der Hoogt’s school is a bucket list item that should be at the top.  She teaches four times a year, two weeks at a time.  The first week is Weaving 1, where you get a solid footing on the joy of handweaving, and the second week, which is what we all took, since we are somewhat experienced weavers, called Weaving 2, is all about structure, design, blocks and profile drafts.  I visited Madelyn’s school when I was on the island teaching for the Whidbey Weaver’s Guild back in May of 2016, right before my husband died, and I vowed I’d be back.  With my daughter.

In fact, when we first went round the room to introduce ourselves, I followed my daughter, and really really tried hard not to be Daryl Lancaster but to just be Brianna’s Mom.  It is hard to be a student when you are a nationally known instructor and to gracefully side step all the questions about garment construction and what to do if…  I was there to learn, and be Brianna’s mom.  That part eventually worked out well.  There were 13 of us, and Madelyn’s assistant Suzie, who owns Eugene Textile Center, was there to help in every way, and she brought a huge selection of books and weaving equipment and well, my poor credit card was smoking…  I realize that after 40 years of weaving, there isn’t much I don’t have, but because I was Brianna’s mom, and she moaned and whined about how much she really needed an electric bobbin winder, (I did too at her age) what could I do but buy a new one, state of the art, for $380, but that one is for me, she gets my old one.  Fair is fair.  I’m not that generous of a  mom…

Brianna was of course, the star student. But I was pretty close behind.  There were 32 looms, prewarped in various 4-8 shaft plus structures, many of them double shuttle, that means a ground cloth and some decorative element floating across the surface, like overshot.  That’s my sample on the loom.

The first loom Brianna tried, of course, was the drawloom.  Madelyn had three in the studio.  This is a monster piece of equipment, the precursor to the Jacquard loom, allowing complex pictorial weaving by controlling individual threads.  Usual time on this little sample was about 6-8 hours.  Brianna of course did it in 4 1/2.  And she did it perfectly. 

 

We both hopped from loom to loom (I opted not to spend time working on the draw loom, at almost 63, I know this will never be part of my repertoire and though I understand the premise, I had no desire to even try.  There were two many other looms to tackle)

There were a couple rules, we always had to use a temple, that toothed stick across the warp that maintains width, which assured that no one would break a thread.  And we had to weave a full square sample.  The samples were generous.  Most were about 12-14 inches square.  That’s basically a pillow and I thought about looking for some plain pillows and just mounting the samples on the front for some pretty cool decorations on the couch.  Except there are the dogs…

We wove until we were punch drunk and cross eyed, and yet we kept on.  There were lectures every day, Madelyn is such a great teacher.  Though truth be told, I’m not all that interested in complex structures, they just aren’t that important in my regular body of work (I’m a color texture sort of gal) but nevertheless,  I had a blast, each new loom was like starting a new 500 piece puzzle and you know how I love those.  

Four of the looms had structures on them that all shared the same profile draft.  There was huck, double weave, turned twill and summer/winter.  And the design was the same for all.  I found that completely fascinating and that the weaving software I’ve been using for some 20 years, actually had a block substitution feature I never knew existed, where you can plug in any unit weave into a profile draft by just clicking a menu item…  That just made me smile. 

One of the looms had a Swedish Snowflake Twill from Mary Atwater’s book.  Brianna wove on that one, and the evening after the first day of class, I got an email from one of my former students Cheryl Wolf, who took a workshop with me in northern Washington State last May.  She wove the same sample in Madelyn’s class, and went on to weave yardage from it.  We worked together in the class with the Whatcom Weaver’s Guild, to carefully match the snowflake pattern in the back.  I talked about it in this blog post.  She finished the jacket (my swing coat pattern with optional shawl collar) and sent me photos and I was thrilled to pass them around the class.

And we kept weaving…  

Between the two of us, Brianna and I  covered all but one of the looms in the studio.  There were three draw looms in all, and the morning of the second day, Brianna decided to design a piece using one of the other draw looms, taking the block pattern that was already “programmed” in the loom, and modifying it for a very personal design.  That’s the loom in the back corner, I went over to take a photo of her weaving on it and she was already finished.  When I saw what she had woven once they came off the loom, I cried.  My husband was a pole climber back in the day, before I met him, and spent 47 years in the telephone industry.  She wove telephone poles and clouds in his honor.

I was the first one to weave on the newest addition to the line up, a parallel threading based on the Echo and Iris technique du jour.  

And Sally caught a great shot of me weaving on the Louet Megado digital dobby loom.  The weave structure was pretty complex, but the computer did all the work so that was really the easiest one of all the 20 samples I managed to do.  I think Brianna did 23 total, including two draw loom pieces.  I have a fabulous stack of samples. And so does she…

We traveled back to Seattle that Saturday morning, and Brianna arranged the airport hotel, and the Uber ride up to the Chilhuly museum.  Wow.  Just Wow.  I’ll talk about that in my next post…

Stay tuned…