Innholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2018 i Handwoven

I subscribe to Cooper Hewitt Museum’s Object of the Day emails. Cooper Hewitt is the New York City design wing of the Smithsonian Museum. Every day I get an email with a picture of something interesting and/or beautiful from the museum’s huge collection. Accompanying the photo is a short description of the object and what makes it important in the world of design. It’s a little burst of wonderfulness that I look forward to each day. September 2017 was textile month in New York, meaning many of the objects that month were especially interesting to me. I am happy to report a healthy number of handwoven items made the list. The object of the day on September 18 was a beautiful wall hanging designed and woven by weaver Cynthia Schira…

TEXTILES OF THE MIDDLE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA: THE FABRIC OF LIFE Fahmida Suleman In her introduction, author Fahmida Suleman begins with the short but profound statement, “Textiles convey stories.” Sometimes, as she points out, these stories are easy to “read,” as in the case of an elaborate doublewoven cloth from the sixteenth century featuring images from famous love stories and verses from romantic poetry. In other pieces of cloth, one must know the “code” of the cloth to read the colors, shapes, and various embellishments. Each of the over two hundred textiles in Textiles of the Middle East and Central Asia tells a story of the maker, the wearer, and the time and place in which the piece was created. Stories of individual pieces and various other textile traditions…

Arizona Flag Wool and Fiber Festival—Flagstaff June 2-3, 2018 All day shearing, artisan vendors, workshops, demos, competitions, lectures, food, brews, and more. On the grounds of the historic Pioneer Museum. (928) 699-2012 flagwool@yahoo.com www.flagwool.com California Natural Fiber Fair—Arcata September 8-9, 2018 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 30 – September 3, 2018 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 Vista Fiber Arts Fiesta—Vista October 6-7, 2018 A gathering of fiber artists: weavers, spinners, felters, knitters. Yarn and fiber, including raw wool, roving, exotic fibers, handspun yarn, hand dyed and hand painted yarns. Antique Gas…

One day, I was working in my studio when my husband walked in, glanced at what I had on the loom, and said, “That’s a wave pattern.” My husband is a mathematician, and years ago, he and a friend did extensive research in wavelet theory, which is why the familiar pattern immediately caught his eye. “How did you do that?” he asked. For a while now, I have been exploring nontraditional rep weave patterns, making modifications to classic rep patterns to create different effects. The “waves” in the fabric I had on the loom that day appeared because of the way I was weaving the fabric. In traditional rep weaving, the tie-down thread is a single fine weft thread, treadled on the opposite treadling from the heavy weft. In this…

I teach beginner workshops in which weavers-to-be make scarves on prewarped looms. Aft er a series of classes, I weave off the left overs. One day, as I was pondering what to do with an emerald green warp, some royal purple and bright yellow in my stash caught my eye, reminding me of the colorful beads, king cakes, and decorations of Mardi Gras celebrations when I lived in New Orleans. Perfect for a festive scarf! I had to rework the existing warp slightly to add the yellow bands but was happy with the outcome. This scarf is plain weave and can be woven on a two-shaft or rigid-heddle loom. Spaces in the warp and weft create extra interest with very little effort. The scarf is also an interesting study in…

Fiber enthusiasts are a welcoming group of people, and they are certainly a community I love to be around. I am fortunate to be able to travel around the country to teach rigid-heddle weaving and meet so many delightful people who share my interests. At knitting conferences or local yarn stores where I teach, I meet customers who are mostly knitters or crocheters. It’s so rewarding to help any kind of “yarn person” discover weaving, and the rigid-heddle loom is a wonderful gateway for nonweavers to discover the joys of weaving. Wherever I go, it is wonderful to be surrounded by the love of fiber and fabric, no matter one’s tools of choice. This poncho is a simple design in plain weave. The interest is created by combining panels diagonally…

I was born in the twentieth century and currently live in the twenty-first, but my heart lives in the nineteenth century. Don’t get me wrong; I like modern medicine and caller ID is a wonderful invention, but I have often felt that I belong in another time. Over twenty years ago, friends of my wife suggested I consider working at a local nineteenth-century living-history museum. I had visited once and had a great time. Watching the reenactors re-create life in the nineteenth century fascinated me. Their clothes, activities (really, men were weavers?), and cooking demonstrations made me want to be a part of this group of “old souls.” I got a job at the museum, started wearing nineteenthcentury clothing while working (and occasionally to the grocery store after work, much…

ELSE REGENSTEINER INSPIRES AN ENIGMA I’ve been a big fan of Else Regensteiner’s books and read with great interest the letter from Mary McVicker in the November/ December 2017 issue regarding Else and Mary’s mother-in-law, Julia McVicker. I enjoy rummaging through the pages of Else’s The Art of Weaving looking for my next inspiration for an art weave project (I keep promising my wife that someday I will weave something more practical such as kitchen towels). One day, I was going through her Weaver’s Study Course and saw a triple-weave hanging I couldn’t resist trying since I’m a big fan of doubleweave (1975 edition, page 105; 1983 edition, page 129; yes, I have more than one edition of some of her books). The piece I wove I call Enigma, and…

When I began weaving, small squares of handwoven fabric shared via a monthly newsletter were a source of constant inspiration. Recently, while reorganizing my swatch collection, the subtle contrast of textures in a sample from the Weaver’s Guild of Greater Cincinnati caught my eye. The draft ’s source was Marguerite Porter Davison’s A Handweaver's Pattern Book. Joseph France designed the draft called “Ribs Three & One,” a rib weave based on a straight draw. The guild’s draft was a modification of France’s treadling and tie-up and resulted in stripes of rib weave and plain weave across the width. Irrespective of point of origin, period in time, or mechanization, basic weave structures remain the backbone of weaving, although there is no limit to personal interpretation of those structures. For this runner,…

While swimming laps in the pool at my local recreation center, I realized that the beautiful tile floor below me would make a fun and interesting weaving project. Because I love to weave towels, I knew I had my next project—Pool-Inspired Towels. I also knew that I could look to weavers who came before me to help me design my towels. Master weavers such as Mary Black, Harriet Tidball, G. H. Oelsner, Marguerite Porter Davison, and many others did a lot of the work for us. How lucky are we! In Mary Black’s book The Key to Weaving, she writes, “Weaving techniques and pattern drafts, like cooking recipes, are passed from person to person until their origins and frequently their names are lost. As a result, it is difficult to…

From the Jewish tallit to the Muslim keffiyeh to the meditation shawls found in Hinduism and Buddhism, the tradition of prayer shawls goes back millennia and spans faiths around the world. In the Christian church, prayer shawls find their roots in the tallit (the plural is tallitot). While the maker of a Jewish tallit must follow very specific rules as to shape, fiber, and finishing, Christian prayer shawls have no hard or fast rules. Although dissimilar in their creation, these shawls are both physical reminders of love and hope—the cloth envelops a person much like a hug, providing comfort and warmth, both physical and spiritual. For my prayer shawl, I incorporated elements that I find meaningful. I chose shadow weave for the structure, as the name itself reminded me of…

Weavers have a variety of design tools available: pencils and paper (graph or otherwise) as well as specialized computer programs help make design dreams reality. Using weaving software on your computer, you can input stripes in both warp and weft to visualize a plaid design, but the process can be time consuming. Plaid and tartan generators available on the web are a quick and flexible alternative. These simple programs allow you to change elements of your design and experiment with “what-if” scenarios before turning to weaving software or graph-paper drafting to implement the weaving details. The design input methods vary from tool to tool. Some allow you to specify colors for your plaid, either by typing in the hexadecimal red-green-blue (RGB) code for the color or by clicking in a…

Scottish tartans have a long history. The earliest tartans were simply checkered cloths known as “plaids” (in Scotland, plaid is a type of garment, not a pattern) favored by the Highlanders of Scotland. Evidence of these garments can be found as far back as the sixteenth century. Unlike the tartans we know today, they were not specific to any clan or district. Clan-specific tartans began appearing in the early 1700s. Around this same time, we find Highlanders wearing military tartans, including the famous Black Watch tartan. In these later tartans, the color sett was a quick visual way for Highlanders to identify the clan or clan area of the tartan wearer. Tartans as we think of them today—standardized patterns that represent specific clans, regions, or institutions—on the whole didn’t show…

What can you get for a quarter? In 1948, you could get a 24-page pin-loom weaving booklet filled with various weaving patterns that included instructions for projects, charts, diagrams, and more. Pin-loom weaving had its heyday in the 1930s through 1960s, and a trip down memory lane would serve the modern pin-loom weaver well. New pin loomers oft en wonder, “What can I do with these delightful little squares?” A glance back will answer, “What can’t you do?” Pin-loom weaving booklets contained the traditional blankets, scarves, towels, and stuffed animals, but what stands out is the variety of techniques used. Blankets were constructed from squares with carefully planned weaving floats and patterns that made larger textured patterns across multiple squares, including crisscrosses, borders, shapes, and more. Projects combined squares and…

Each year, my family gathers to celebrate Chanuka by eating large quantities of latkes covered with either sour cream or applesauce, and the controversy over which is the better condiment continues to rage. We also exchange gifts. This year, I decided to weave towels and placemats for gifts and designed them to depict the lighting of the candles. During the eight days of Chanuka, we use a menorah, or "Chanuka lamp," that has nine candleholders, one for each night of Chanuka and one to hold the Shamash (or leader) candle. On the first night of Chanuka, the Shamash is lit and is used to light one candle. The next night the Shamash lights two candles, and on each following night a candle is added until there are eight. The inlay…

I first fell in love with West African textiles in 2010 while writing a Handwoven feature on weaving in Mali. Since then I’ve gone to some exhibits, collected a few treasured pieces of kente cloth and bogolanfini (mud cloth), and even had the fun of taking Judy Dominic’s mud cloth class at the 2016 Convergence conference. I wanted to share my excitement in this African-inspired project, but mud painting takes at least six months to properly cure and, depending on your local mud, may not be all that colorfast. To give you a taste of North and West African textiles without the wait or suspense, I designed this cotton scarf in traditional colors with twill patterns reminiscent of African kilims. In the white blocks, I used high-quality textile paint and…