Innholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2016 i Handwoven

My first fiber arts were knitting and embroidery, taught by my Norwegian aunt and grandmother when I was a small child. I loved sitting with them, hearing family stories while creating bright patterns with colorful threads. And, being eight years old, I never thought about the fact that we were carrying on a tradition. I grew up, studied history and anthropology in college, began my writing career, and kept crafting for fun and relaxation. And then I had an epiphany: I read Cynthia LeCount Samake’s monograph Andean Folk Knitting and Elizabeth Wayland Barber’s Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years, and I realized that crafting made me part of a story that has been going on as long as humans have been human. That realization has led me to learn spinning…

Jochen Ditterich’s path to becoming Handwoven’s 2016 Co-Weaving Teacher of the Year (sponsored by Halcyon Yarn) started in Finland when he was just twenty-one. Jochen was visiting a friend and former exchange student whose mother also happened to be the local weaver. She gave young Jochen a choice: help her weave and eat, or refrain and find his own meals. He chose the former, and during his three-month visit he not only learned to weave, but also helped her get ahead of her weaving goals for the first time. He went back home to Germany and began weaving in earnest, but at the time, he had to focus on his day job, so he learned English, was sent to London, and while managing a youth hostel there, met the American…

As a newish weaving teacher, I am constantly seeking the best way to explain concepts to students while looking for the telltale glazed eye. I see this dreaded expression most often during lessons on drafting, and I sympathize. It’s like making someone listen to a lecture on baking powder before letting them eat the luscious chocolate cake sitting in front of them. But I am here to advocate for “the draft” as a common language that can help weavers communicate across space and time. To continue the cooking metaphor, you can bake a delicious cake by following a recipe from a trusted cookbook. But if you know a little bit more about your ingredients, their properties, and the reasons that they are put together in a specific order, you will…

Shortly before I retired after a twenty year career as a judge, I learned to weave. A neighbor with a floor loom who knew of my interest encouraged me to take a class and gifted me with her Schacht shuttle when she moved away from San Antonio. It was an effective nudge. As my retirement date neared, I enrolled in a beginning weaving class in the Fiber Arts Department at Southwest School of Art. There my experience with Schacht looms was launched as new students at SSA begin their instruction on Schacht Wolf Pups, all generously donated by members of the San Antonio weaving community. Instruction from great teachers and the opportunity to work on solid equipment produced an eager learner. I was smitten. I must have shared my excitement…

Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt explores the lives and quiltmaking traditions of women from Gee’s Bend, a small, geographically isolated rural area in Alabama. Most of the approximately seven hundred residents of the community are descendants of slaves who, for generations, worked the fields once belonging to the Pettway plantation. Dating as far back as the mid-19th century, the patchwork masterpieces produced by quiltmakers from the area comprise a unique and compelling chapter of African American art history. Scholars, art historians, photographers, and other experts have described the Gee’s Bend quilts variously as stunning, highly inventive, bold, and unconventional. I’ve yet to open the book and fail to be amazed, delighted, and inspired. While my towels do not begin to suggest the Gee’s Bend quilters' highly inventive “bending…

Derived from umbra, the Latin word for shadow, ombré is a French term for a dye process that transitions colors smoothly from dark to light. In 18th-century France, ombré was popular in ribbons and dress goods shaded with different colors or various shades of the same color. Since then, it has been used to adorn pre-Civil War quilts, furniture, and textiles, and has recently become popular for everything from clothing to hair color to fingernails. I first came across ombré as a way of transitioning between weft colors in Margo Selby’s Color and Texture in Weaving. According to Selby, the ombré effect is the gradual introduction of a new color. “In each repeat of the lifting plan, the number of picks of a new color is increased until the color…

Last spring, I visited my nephew Tim in his new home. As he proudly showed me through each room, we paused in the office/music room. Tim is passionate about his music, forming a band wherever he lives, writing lyrics, and creating new songs, so I was dismayed to see that his guitar strap consisted of two shoelaces tied together! This project was created to replace those shoelaces. I researched and found out that guitar straps are usually 2 inches wide and adjustable, with leather tabs at each end to attach the strap to the guitar body. The straps need to be sturdy, and many are colorful, with intricate designs. I found that an inkle band in 3/2 pearl cotton made a nice dense strap, and a 90-thread warp wove up…

May/June 2016 Weaving Dark and Light From the stark elegance of black on white to dark indigo on unbleached threads, few things create drama and depth in weaving so easily as contrasting dark and light. This issue explores the beauty and importance of value contrasts in weaving. September/October 2016 Handwoven Celebrations! The 2016 annual reader challenge is all about creating cloth that celebrates the special events in life, from weddings to babies, holidays, and anniversaries. We’ll share ideas for gift s, home décor, and table linens, as well as specialoccasion garments. November/December 2016 Thick and Thin Opposites attract in this issue all about combining thick and thin yarns to create dramatic texture and patterns. We’ll look at classic thick and thin weaves such as rep weave, overshot, and diversified plain…

Principled, rigorous, challenging, generous, tough, intelligent, and a big old softie (a fact that was not initially obvious): the world lost one of its most valuable characters when Alden Amos left this plane of existence shortly after Thanksgiving last year. Now, as when he walked among us, he remains impossible to sum up. Blending technical analysis with imagination—reaching for the sky while keeping feet planted on the ground—he provoked and inspired and facilitated. Anyone who has perused The Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning will understand why building the tome took so long: the man was a walking encyclopedia. Its subtitle tells another story: Being a Compendium of Information, Advice, and Opinions on the Noble Art & Craft . Alden gathered information, offered advice, never shied from having an opinion,…

During the First and Second World Wars, many Canadians supported the troops by knitting massive quantities of socks, stockings, balaclavas, sweaters, and other badly needed comfort items. Now, in honor of the special exhibition World War Women, presented from October 23 to April 3 at the Canadian War Museum, in Ottawa, the museum is calling on modern-day knitters to help fill a First World War supply wagon with handmade woollies. The members of the Crocus Country Fibre Arts Guild met the challenge to knit or crochet articles to be included in this event. A spinning day was held and everyone brought their articles. They were mailed to the War Museum to be included in the supply wagon by January 31, 2016.…

NEW YORK: THAMES AND HUDSON. 2009, PAPERBACK, 240 PAGES, $29.95, 978-0-500-29221-1. Africa is a vast and varied continent that spans around five thousand miles, a variety of ecosystems from the grassy savanna to the arid desert, and a diverse population from the Berbers of Northern Africa to the Maasai of Kenya and the Zulu of South Africa. Trying to describe an “African” textile would be like trying to describe a European one: the textile traditions of Africa are so rich and diverse there is no single example that epitomizes them all. Fortunately for lovers of international textile traditions, John Gillow’s book African Textiles sets out to catalogue and showcase the textiles of Africa in all their beauty and diversity. The book is organized first by region and then into individual…

I am willing to accept change, but only in small doses and slowly, please. I am a stickler for tradition. In my world, a Christmas tree should be green and not shiny aluminum. Soup should be hot, cars don’t drive themselves, and an antique coverlet should never, ever be fuchsia! So here is where my story starts. 'Twas a dark and stormy night. The antique show was open until 9 pm, so I hightailed it after work to York, Pennsylvania, in time to enjoy the show for a few hours. I went up and down the aisles, searching in each booth for that perfect textile that would add diversity and value to my already overcrowded collection. (Don’t you pass judgement. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about because you…

In 2015, the Northwest Arkansas Handweavers Guild spent several months studying the handwoven fabrics used to piece five quilts in the collection of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History. Two of the museum’s quilts, all from the 1800s, are attributed to Emma Johnson Bolinger (1879–1856), whose husband's family settled in the Arkansas Ozarks in the 1830s and may have included the weavers who wove the fabric scraps Emma used in her quilts. Many of the handwoven scraps evidently were used for clothing in their previous lives. Like fiber time capsules, the quilts preserve the design sense, color choices, weave structures, and fibers used by those almost forgotten weavers. At the end of our study, we designed fabrics based on our favorite scraps in the quilts and wove towels to exchange.…

This belt was initially inspired by an image of an Aztec Sun Stone I saw on, of all places, eBay. Its systematic intricacy reminded me of the repetitive beauty I find in woven art. The turquoise and yellow were beautiful together, and I happened to have several yarns in my craft room that reminded me of its colors. I wanted something fun and vibrant, so I chose some more lively colors and used bright pink instead of the red that is found in the original piece. After some consideration, I decided on plain weave for the ground cloth, allowing the other colors to represent the intricacy of the relief. I applied the mirrors with hot glue and handstitched the yellow patterns, adding pink and blue beading to the bright pink…

Opinions vary regarding the origin of the cheongsam, but it is generally accepted that the dresses originated during the Qing Dynasty when the Manchu ruled 17th-century China. During that time, a Manchu chieftain established the Banner System, the military organization used by the Manchu tribes of Manchuria (now northeast China) to conquer and control China and to organize Manchu hands, and the tips of her toes. Over time, the Mandarin collar remained, but the shape became more formfitting and revealing. The modern version was developed in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s and achieved widespread popularity among a diverse population of women: highclass courtesans, teachers and students, women from prominent families, singers, film stars, Chinese opera stars, and other celebrities. With the rise of the Communist Party in the late…

LOVE FOR NOV/DEC ISSUE In the January/February 2016 issue there is a lot of talk about linen warps. During my apprenticeship, those who wove on a linen warp had to put a damp cloth over the warp before leaving it for the night. The cloth was certainly dry in the morning. A few tears of mine added to the dampness on my very first warp. I only stayed with weaving because there was absolutely no other choice. Strangely, I specialized in transparencies for twenty years and longer, where only fine linen warps work. —Ulrike Beck, via email THE CONTINUOUS THREAD I’m driving in Guatemala City traffic, having just picked up my November/December copy of Handwoven. On the radio I have James Taylor singing “In the Bleak Midwinter” from his Christmas…

My life’s work began in Colorado in my twenties, when I learned to weave. Gradually I began to teach, then write, a column for Handwoven for ten years, followed by writing Learning to Weave. That took me through my thirties. At the age of forty, I went into the Peace Corps in Honduras, where I was introduced to Central America. That decade took me to Houston and brought me into the world of fair trade. There I met other people, mostly women, who were tying together their love of textiles and a belief that it was a valuable tool for development work From that common interest emerged the organization Weave a Real Peace (WARP). At the age of fifty, I moved to Guatemala, and now at sixty-seven, here I am…

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: THAMES AND HUDSON. 2016, HARDCOVER, 191 PAGES, $50.00, 978-0-500-51837-3. The textiles of India are as intricate and diverse as its many cultures, but the textiles of the nomadic Bajara people are among the least-known and the most intriguing. Banjara nomads are mentioned in Greek accounts of Alexander the Great’s invasion of India. Banjara caravans brought goods to Indian cities in the Middle Ages and supplied the military campaigns of India’s Mughal rulers. Historical, linguistic, and genetic evidence shows that they are progenitors of the modern-day Romani. As eternal wanderers, the Banjara carry their wealth, including gorgeous, intricate textiles, on their own persons and on their precious animals. Textiles of the Banjara is a well-researched account of Banjara history, culture, and textile techniques, with more than…

ALASKA Far North Fibers Anchorage 907.279.0332 farnorthfibers.com ARKANSAS Red Scottie Fibers Eureka Springs 479.981.0832 redscottiefibers.com ARIZONA Studio Three Prescott 928.778.0307 studiothreeaz.com Fiber Creek Prescott 928.717.1774 fibercreek.com CALIFORNIA Folk Modern Craft Santa Rosa 707.546.9276 castawayandfolk.com Meridian Jacobs Vacaville 707.688.3493 meridianjacobs.com Purlescence Yarns Sunnyvale 408.735.9276 purlescenceyarns.com San Francisco Fiber Oakland 510.893.2015 sanfranciscofiber.com Village Spinning & Weaving Solvang 888.686.1192 villagespinweave.com COLORADO Double K Diamond Llamas Wellington 970.568.3747 kkdllamas.com Lambspun of Colorado Wellington 970.568.347 lambspun.com The Recycled Lamb Golden 303.234.9337 recycledlamb.com Serendipity Yarn & Gifts Buena Vista 719.395.3110 serendipityyarn.com Shuttles, Spindles & Skeins Boulder 303.494.1071 shuttlesspindlesandskeins. com CONNECTICUT Working Hands for Fiber Arts Easton 203.261.7865 FLORIDA Elza M. Studios Starke 904.964.6673 elzamstudios.com Pam Pawl - Handwoven Textiles Dunedin 215.483.7157 pampawltextiles.com Rose Line Cape Coral 239.540.5836 roselineweaving. webs.com ILLINOIS The Fold Marengo 815.568.5320 thefoldatmc.net Jill’s…

Arizona Flag Wool and Fiber Festival—Flagstaff June 3, 4, 5, 2016 Northern Arizona’s Flag Wool & Fiber Festival: exhibits, competitions, artisan vendors, workshops, demonstrations, shearing, keynote: weaver and author, Joanne Tallarovic (928) 774-6272 flagwool@yahoo.com www.flagwool.com California Natural Fiber Fair—Arcata September 10-11, 2016 At the Arcata Community Center. Vendor hall, fleece market, workshops, free demonstrations, fiber circle gathering space, food and fun! (707) 599-2729 www.naturalfiberfair.com Monterey County Fair—Monterey August 31 – September 5, 2016 Wool Fleece and Handcraft Show with Wool Auction at the Monterey County Fair. For further information please visit our website. (831) 372-5863 www.montereycountyfair.com Saori Studio Los Angeles—Sherman Oaks SAORI weaving in Los Angeles. Free yourself. Weave thyself! Walk in beauty. SAORI classes, Sales of SAORI looms and accessories, fiber, gifts. (310) 488-1425 www.saoristudioLA.com #saoristudiola Vista Fiber Arts…

Looking back on my family’s ancestry, I came to realize that my predecessors and I share a common interest: gardening! From the pictures I’ve seen, most had their own vegetable and flower gardens. Both my maternal and paternal great-grandparents emigrated from Germany, and the gardening passion was carried on through my grandparents and parents. With this project, I celebrate my heritage and my own love of playing in the soil by using a German weaving draft from 1907; its color-and-weave squares remind me of garden plots and the many hours spent by my granddad’s side in his bountiful patch. These pillows are just the right size to bolster a favorite chair or add interest to a bedding set. RESOURCES Handweaving.net, Figurierte Muster Pl. XXI Nr. 2, Die färbige Gewebemusterung, Franz…

• To begin, remove the weight from the pattern warp bout. For each sprang motif, insert the knitting needle under every other pattern float starting with the first, forming a top and a bottom layer of threads (photo 1). • Row 1: With the crochet hook, pick up the first 2 bottom threads from their underside, and lift them to the right of the first top thread, placing the crochet hook over the top thread. *Reach with the hook back down to pick up the next bottom thread and lift it to the right of the next top thread, placing the hook over this top thread. Repeat from * until there are 2 top threads and 1 bottom thread remaining. Lift the last bottom thread to the right of the…

Sample, sample, sample! This is the advice that weavers are oft en given to help them figure out if and how their ideas will work out. The intended project usually follows. With tablet weavers, it is the other way round. We love to weave sample aft er sample: short bands, long bands, pattern aft er pattern. And oft en we don’t do anything with the bands, which is fine for most of us most of the time. But sometimes we feel like making something with our bands. The tablet-weaving or card-weaving process creates warp-twined fabric with attractive patterning: as the cards are turned, bringing different colors to the surface, the warp threads are twisted around each other. The beautiful, sturdy bands are suitable for belts, guitar straps, camera straps, or…