Finishing Up Fall?

It seems as if Autumn has barely begun and we're already finishing up our Fall Weaving Session at the Hermitage Museum & Gardens Visual Arts Studio. Our overshot projects have created a frenzy of weaving and imagination and challenge. We're VERY proud of our students for rising to the challenge and tackling it with gusto despite vacations, family challenges, and sleying errors.

After October 28 we have a couple weeks off to catch our breath and then we begin the Holiday Session. We've split Holiday Session into two mini-sessions for beginning weavers, and the project is a warm winter scarf. Students who choose their colors via two or more skeins in wool/wool-blend yarn from the fabulous inventory at Baa Baa Sheep in Ghent receive a 5% discount. We are really excited to partner with Roz and her team at Baa Baa Sheep. To say we are thrilled to have a yarn shop in Ghent would be an understatement. I swear, if she ever goes out of business I'm going to take over!

Meanwhile...

Kerry is wildly weaving  __________s (ahem, no spoilers) and is on the last 10% and wishing someone else would take over. It's a long warp. Almost everyone in class and nearly everyone who has visited has taken a spin on Niles, who is right now living at The Herm. We've decided that we DEFINITELY like having an easy work in progress on a long warp and it's like a loom tasting. We should definitely have a Wine & Weft Tasting this winter. Something to chase away the chilly January blues.

Kerry is VERY good at winding long warps. I need to barter with her to finish winding my 12-yd warp in 20/2 bamboo.

I acquired a third loom. Because I'm a weaver and that's what insane weavers do. It's a Tools of the Trade loom (ToTT for short) whom we are calling Tutti. I'm not very good with names. Anyway, I cut this sample off Tuttie yesterday.

I love this little 4-shaft loom. Well, not little, it is a floor loom after all, and weaves at about 32" I think. I want to find another just like it so I can bolt the castles together and create an instant 8-shaft loom. The price was perfect - cheap even - so I could NOT pass this up. And my pay from the Herm basically paid for it. The only downside was transporting it 90 minutes from Richmond in the rain. With the eight miles of green tarp we have even that wasn't a problem.  

Because this is a gift I want it to be well done without any really obvious threading goofs. Except that I treadled my sample incorrectly. However, I know that the pattern weft is a good color, and i know that I missed an 8-thread repeat on the right border. So I'll remove eight from the left side to bring it symmetrical and treadle the next sample correctly. I like how it finished, too. I'll actually press the hem before I sew it next time, too. The warp is 8/2 Tencel in Mountain Stream colorway, the tabby is 14/2 unmercerized cotton in dark hunter green and the pattern weft is 8/2 Tencel in a golden peachy color (referred to as Straw) combined with some leftover .Bambu 12 in Golden Wheat. These are all colors I already had on hand, and I obtained the 14/2 from a source on eBay and I don't know where it originally came from. The pattern is based on BGH #40, Peggy's Choice, and adding 2" borders along the length, and an inch on the ends for the hem.

Share your projects with us!!

Cheers,

Erin

Getting ready for Rags, Dyes, and Overshot

A whole host of classes coming up, all of them at the wonderful Hermitage Museum & Gardens in Norfolk, VA. The Visual Arts Studio is located in the old stable and it is such a treat to use the space for reintroducing  Hampton Roads to the addictive craft of hand weaving on a traditional floor loom.

BUT: to butcher a famous Saturday Night Live line...send us your looms! Seriously, we need more looms. We have five, but we can accommodate more. Know someone with a loom that they haven't used in 20 years? Suggest they donate it to the Hermitage, a 503c designated organization - which means the a tax write-off for the giver. Got your own loom that is up in the attic/gathering dust in the little used parlor/sitting in the garage or basement and waiting for a yard sale? Do you have one too many looms? Does it need a little TLC? A lot of TLC? We'll  take looms in pretty much any condition and we have the means to pick it up (e.g., a pickup truck) and refurbish it for use. PLEASE contact Truly Matthews at the Hermitage at 757-423-2052. Kerry and I can travel up to about 300 +/- miles to pick up looms, and we have done so in the past. Or you can drop it off. Don't hesitate to call Truly, or even contact Kerry or myself, Erin, via the comments on this blog.

So enough with the begging, on with the show.

FALL OVERSHOT

This fall we will be teaching an overshot class at the Visual Arts Center in the old stables at the Hermitage Museum & Gardens. It is an open class, meaning that beginners and non-beginners can register. Experienced weavers will be able to more or less work at their own pace, while beginners will learn how to weave using the overshot technique. It could be argued that that's too complicated for a newbie. We agree that it takes some focus but we think it is achievable.

The key to success for the fall class is to be present. The class is held Monday and Saturday, and both nights are class nights. I point this out strongly because there was some confusion last session. Anyhow, Wednesday nights were Open Studio nights during the spring session.  While Open Studio was entirely optional, we found that the students needed/wanted the additional time. We will make a couple of the Open Studio nights required this fall. The overshot threading is more complex than a straight twill and we'll need the extra time to get it done.

Details: Two sessions per week with optional Open Studio. Saturdays 10:30 am to 12:30 pm and Mondays 6:00 to 8:00pm. Open Studio is Wednesdays from 6 to 9pm. The first THREE Open Studio sessions are required. There are five looms, so the class limit is 5, but if bring your own loom and we can expand the class!

SUMMER RAG RUGS

Fun rugs for new weavers! This class is a day of weaving on workshop looms that have been set up for rag rugs. All you need to do is show up, pick your colors, and we'll show you how to weave. No experience necessary!

Details: Saturday, July 13, 10:30 to 3:30 pm. Bring fabric shears!

SUMMER YARN DYE WORKSHOP

Kerry is a super awesome kettle dyer and is always coming to the party with some new never-to-be-reproduced-again yarn colorway. Hand her a set of ingredients and a skein of wool yarn and she'll come up with something wonderful, no recipe required. Erin is a more deliberate dyer and likes to paint the yarn with sponge brushes and "wrap it and zap it."  We'll both be on hand to walk you through the dye process using food-safe dyes and common kitchen equipment.

A special bonus: the yarn you dye in this class can be used for your overshot project in the fall, should you decide to register for both classes.

Details: Saturday, July 27, 1:30 to 4:30 pm

You can register for all these classes at the Hermitage Museum and Gardens Visual Arts Studio web page. The overshot class isn't listed yet but will be soon - keep watching this and their site for updates.

Happy Weaving
Erin

Adventures in Teaching

The last few weeks has been incredibly busy for Erin and I. As Erin mentioned, we've been teaching a weaving class at The Hermitage Museum in Norfolk with class meeting several throughout the week. And of course we're also trying to find times to do the silly things in life. Like work full time. And maybe spin. Or knit. Silly us! There's only 24 hours in the day!

*phew* I know that I'm on project overload - but secretly I'm loving every minute of it.

Our students have made real progress on their projects! In this course, students are weaving a tencel twill scarf; they've been able to select their own twill pattern as well as their own colors. The options were seemingly endless for how their projects could turn out.

We have 6 students in class, and experience levels from "What's a loom" to "I wove in college 20 years ago" to "I own a loom but have no idea how to use it."  Keeping everyone on the same timeline has been an interesting task! To me, somedays it feels like herding cats but most days, everything comes together and the class goes very smoothly. Its a joy to watch the students so eager about their work and to watch those weaving 'lightbulb' moments go off!

As Erin mentioned, we've geared up for continuing our weaving courses.

This summer we're very excited to offer a Weekend Rag Rug Workshop. (Say that 3 times fast! Eek!) which is really our secret plan to infect everyone with the Weaving bug.  I am hopeful that we have enough applicants that we can offer this workshop on 2 different weekends this summer.

Here's my first rag rug made from jeans and cotton rug-warp. Its lumpy bumpy and uneven. Why? Well,  because it is a design element, of course!

No?
Don't buy that?
Ok. Fine.
The reality is that its lumpy because I knotted the denim strips together instead of sewing them because I was too lazy to get the sewing machine out.
And its uneven because I just couldn't be bothered to measure out the fabric so that every strip was exactly the same width.

But, being 100% honest, I still love the darned thing. In all its lumpy uneven goodness. Its squishy beneath your feet, nice and thick from the denim, and was an incredibly quick weave. I think once I started weaving, total weave-time was less than an hour. Warping and beaming took maybe an hour in total.

We'll also have a Dye-lab this summer, where participants will be able to dye some sock yarn using food safe dyes (my personal dye-method!)  The neat part is that this custom-dyed sock yarn will be used as weft in the Fall weaving course: an Overshot project.

I've got some yarn in the dye pot now which is some of our sample yarn as we test our lesson plans for the Overshot project. (And might I say Kudos to Erin for her awesome lesson planning. She's got a knack.)

I have no pictures of current weaving for me. My loom is currently being used as a class-loom so it is warped with a student's project.  My most recent weaves are all gifts for other folks - something I love to do. :) 

And Erin's Minerva loom is currently housing some amazing towels that I will let her tell you all about in the next post. (Trust me. They're a story of her incredible passion for doing this whole fiber-addiction as a true art, not just a passing whim which is more my M.O.)

One of the things I'm enjoying most about this teaching experience is learning the different teaching styles of different people. As a riding instructor, most of my teaching work has been in a solitary environment - meaning I was the only instructor in the riding ring. I didn't have to debrief after lessons, or confer on methodology. But in our weaving studio, we are sharing students, space, looms, lesson plans, etc, and really bouncing off of each other's strengths and weaknesses. This is a new and educational experience for me.

I feel incredibly lucky to be working with someone I admire. I'm not only learning from Erin's weaving expertise and passion, I'm also learning about myself - both as an artist and as an instructor.

Its a really enlightening experience and I'm incredibly thankful for the opportunity.

Oh my!

Goodness, Kerry and I have gotten waylaid by a very exciting development. Not too long after the last post was written we submitted a proposal to teach a Weaving I (weaving for beginners) course at the Hermitage Museum & Gardens here in Norfolk. They accepted our proposal and we started working on the details of our syllabus, renovating/fixing the looms that were donated to the Hermitage, and readying the weaving room (Kerry: Weaving Lab). We were hoping for, but not really anticipating, enough sign-ups to meet the minimum# of students. In reality, the class filled up and we are into our second full week of classes. We are learning a great deal about teaching weaving to multiples and how different it is than teaching one person at a time. And the students seem motivated and satisfied.

Feedback has been that a Weaving II, something a little more advanced, would be welcomed. For this summer we have proposed a wool dying class, and a Weaving Open House, and a fall Weaving II class where any student who has dyed wool in the summer workshop can use that in exchange for the materials cost. The fall workshop will focus on overshot pillows, where cotton is the warp and tabby, and wool the pattern weft. (oops, another edit where I had to change towels to pillows...more coffee required, obviously)

I would love to do an entire series of classes based on Madelyn's Twill Thrills book when it is finally reprinted. We'll see. For advanced students we might be able to do two 4 week sessions plus open studio. I know it's helpful to have dedicated weaving time where you aren't distracted by the everyday things going on at home. I'll be thinking about that. But I'll keep my day job!

At the Hermitage, Kerry is threading a rag rug project on a donated 40" Macomber 4 shaft B5. At home, I mis-sleyed a red & white cotton towel at 30 epi instead of 20 epi (note to self: read the notes I've jotted in the margin - except I had two sets of notes and only one of them was related to the project at hand) and so I am re-sleying at 20 epi. Yes, it means some wasted warp, probably a couple hundred threads. Or maybe I'll save the remainder for a similar but narrower project.

Edited to add: one of our students came in with an adjustable shower chair to use at her loom. I love her creative solution to finding the right height chair/bench! These are so much less expensive than "loom benches" that I have one in my Amazon cart right this minute. Maybe I'll weave a very dense twill upholstery-type textile and sew a slipcover. They aren't as pretty as a custom wooden but they certainly are functional and the price is right.

In Weaving II, if Kerry let's me, I'll teach back to front warping. Time to construct some raddles!

Cheers,
Erin