Ben took me to Marlborough yesterday for the first Marlborough Weavers meeting of 2008. It was lovely to see everybody, and plan the year ahead.We have, it appears, three workshops this year; one on design, and two on weaving, possibly on woven shibori and lace weaving. I've done neither, so it would be fascinating. And I can always use a good dose of tutor Alison Francis's design wisdom.
In addition, we have these challenges; we are given project guidelines at the start of the year, and we bring our results at the last meeting in November. Marlborough Weavers' topic is postcards; we are to make postcards out of fiber, preferably out of our woven textiles, and they must be post-able. I am so excited about this one, because I've always loved postcards and cards of any kind, and we were shown quite an intricate fiber art postcard as an example by leader Rose Pelvin. I hope I can make more than a few extra, so I can actually post them to friends.
The other challenge is for the Guild (of which Marlborough Weavers is a subset) and that's... mind-boggling. We're calling it "the book", where we take an existing book, and lavish upon it textile/fiber/embellishments to create a totally different book. Whether we use the existing texts or graphics, or obliterate the original content and use the book as a physical base, is up to us. Rose, forever original, brought a fantastic book she started on, but I'm struggling with this one. I'm not original and I'm not good outside my square. I might take a different angle, and combine bookbinding, textile, and maybe even the postcard, ideas. Or... Ur...
The photo above shows a "stitched" panorama; Peg Morehouse took the original photos on film, and Ben just lined them up on the coffee table. I think the most stunning thing is this is the view from Peg's living room, (and studio, and bedroom, and kitchen if you're tall enough!)
Oh, and the post title? At the last 2007 Guild meeting, apparently a group put pansy flowers between textiles and bashed them to a pulp with hammers to see if they could dye with pansies, with live (yes, live) harp (yes, harp) playing in the background. Gosh, if I would have known the guild AGM was so much fun, I would have tried harder to get there. Oh well, this year!
PS: Almost forgot. I'm leading a monthly meeting this year; the April one. Imagine a newbie weaverette leading/convening a meeting for a group with a collective weaving experience of somewhere between 300 and 500 years!!
9 comments:
Sounds like an exciting year ahead for you.
I've spent the summer so far weaving samples to put together a workshop on woven shibori. Its so much fun.
Having dyed only a few times and experimented with woven shibori only a couple of times, I'm rather intimidated by teh dye aspect, and think I need much thinner textiles to dye. But as you can guess, anything with the Pansy Murderers is done in high spirits and with great joy, it'll be ok, I'm sure.
I've been using 110/2; do you use thicker than that? I can sample while the looms threaded up to see what happens.
I use 110/2 merino, but I didn't like the way they couldn't produce finer designs in woven shibori. But I don't know if I can find finer wool - do you know of any?
I don't really want to learn to dye cotton, in addition to wool, at this moment...
LOVE your guild! Creativity in post cards, books and murder. FABULOUS! Do you follow WeaveCast? Might I suggest that your guild and you suggest to Syne that Weavecast borrow your postcard theme to help knit us all together. Just imagine these fiber postcards circling the globe bring us all a little closer.
Your posts always spark my brain into a new project. Thanks Meg!
Not familiar with Weavecast, Lynne. But all credits to the ladies at the guild; most of them are gentle grannies who look like they wouldn't hurt a bug and bake everything from scratch, but I hear they were danced into the wee hours at Peg's 90th birthday last year. They've got far more stamina and imagination than I; I'm merely the messenger. But glad to be of assistance, as you spark my imagination, too.
Sorry, Lynne, of course I know Weavecast. I recently downloaded a couple, but haven't listened to them yet.
I'll talk to Rose next month.
Gentle grannies, my left foot! They have probably seen more, survived more and are stronger than any one knows. They are just smart enough to keep it all on the back burner till needed.
I would love to see the guild start this project and I will be the first to sign up!
btw - I too cook everything from scratch. It just means we enjoy a fine meal and a decadent dessert!
Yeah, you're right, Lynne, they probably have.
I don't make everything from scratch, I'm guilty of using mixes from time to time.And I've never been successful with pie pastry, ever. It was my goal for about 10 years but I gave up on that...
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