‘I am not interested in weaving’ so said I when I first joined the guild in 2013. I studiously avoided the weaving workshops. I like crochet and I was going to learn to spin to get the yarn I wanted to crochet with and at the same time slow myself down in the amount of crochet I did. Hah! So much for that plan. I wasn’t interested in weaving as it looked tedious and fiddly. It had lots of jargon that meant nothing. The only weaving workshop that I joined in was a tapestry weaving one with Paula Armstrong. I quite like the designs and it appealed to the arty side of me. That said, it was still fiddly. After a while, I realised that I had yarn that wasn’t really suitable for crochet and my spinning had improved to a reasonable consistency, and thought maybe I should try weaving. I ended up with one of the guild rigid heddle looms and produced my first piece of woven material. Nothing to write home about, but I had woven something. ...and a belated ‘thank you’ When I stood down as Secretary at the 2018 AGM, the Guild gave me an extremely generous cash gift. I really didn’t know what to say, I was so shocked. I didn’t spend the money for ages as I wanted to use it for something worthwhile. Towards the end of 2019 I spotted a request for crowdfunding to revive the weaving industry on Orkney. I pledged nearly the whole amount towards the project, the reward for which would, eventually, be a hand-woven scarf. By 9 January 2020 they had successfully raised £13,085 with 141 supporters in 37 days. The Orkney Cloth Company is a start-up weaving business, founded by India Johnson. After completing a degree in Fine Art from Newcastle University in 2018, and a graduate weaving placement in Orkney, she decided to set up her own cloth weaving business to revive the weaving industry in Orkney. Their aim is to create sustainable hand-woven products which support traditional craftsmanship and the local community. They hope to revive the traditional weaving industry in Orkney, through training and weaving workshops and by creating small collections of blankets and scarves on a double width loom, eventually weaving lengths of cloth to sell by the metre. The Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey is a familiar haunt of mine. Set up by Zandra Rhodes, its displays cover a broad range of textile related subjects from designer to manufacturer and from techniques to style. So it was with great enthusiasm that I ventured out from London Bridge to see the exhibition on the weaving traditions of Peru. I have seldom met any weaver or spinner who does not find the traditional clothes of Peru appealing. Billy & I have been wanting to divide our garden to allow our chickens to roam in safety - away from potentially marauding Jack Russells/feline articles, and I'd seen lovely pictures on Pinterest of artfully created willow fences. I enquired around and found Wasseldine Willows who were prepared to come to us with the materials, and to teach us on site how to make our fence. So finally last month Guy from Wasseldine turned up one sunny morning with a trailer full of willow and hazel stakes, and we got stuck in. I took part in the tea towel weaving workshop in February.
I had a fabulous day, everyone was sooo patient and helpful with a newbie. With the aid of my partner I was able to warp up my loom ready to start weaving at home. A quick look and some useful iPad piccies of Carol at work with the pick up sticks and I was off home to start before I could forget what I had learnt. My first effort was far from perfect, but they are definitely teatowels, and they dry dishes! For the weaving enthusiasts among us, there are some fascinating videos on Vimeo by Allan Brown showing how to extract fibres from nettles and then the results of weaving with them.
Thanks to Audrey for finding these. Patchwork weaving is a term used by the team at WeaveKnitIt.co.uk to describe their use of fabric made on pin looms: combining the units into larger pieces in a similar way to piecing together fabric in traditional patchwork. The results are stunning, often reminiscent of tweeds. We met the Weaveknitit team at the Waltham Abbey Wool Fair in January this year and I was so inspired by their results that I took the opportunity of a trip to Derbyshire to take a workshop with them in their lovely studio in Ambergate. Here I learned to use square and triangle looms and had a chance to see more of their work.
The Association’s 2018 Conference, organised by the Guilds in Region G (London and Northern Home Counties), was on the theme of “Then and Now”. Its aim was to look at the origins of craft and artisan production in Britain, tracing forwards through revivals to the latest resurgence of interest, and how past practice affects the present. This was the 14th Biennial Conference organised by the National Association. On alternate years the AGM is held in London. I have enjoyed all the Conferences I have attended and, also, the AGMs (although I have not always gone to the actual AGM). This year I undertook to be our Guild’s official delegate so did, indeed, attend the Meeting. Kents Hill is a cut above some of the other venues I have visited, most of which have been at colleges with the usual student accommodation. This year the rooms had complimentary toiletries, tea/coffee making facilities and TV: such luxury. The food was also excellent and the whole complex linked by covered walkways. The first of the five lectures on the Friday evening was given by Dr Susanna Harris, Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow and Dr Mark Knight, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge on The Bronze Age Fabrics of Must Farm. The settlement of Must Farm provides a remarkable window into the fabrics people made in Bronze Age Britain, around 900 BC. The two speakers presented the site and ongoing research into the rich evidence for plant fibre fabrics made by weaving and twining. The talk was just fascinating! http://www.mustfarm.com/progress/site-diary-6-textiles/ I nearly missed this Exhibition. It was only when trawling through Mary’s messages before the last meeting that I spotted the invitation to the preview evening and here I was on the last day. I had no idea even of Parndon Mill itself so it was a double pleasure to visit such a lovely spot as well as see the exhibition. Ebb and Flow is a lovely theme to work on. It lends itself to so different interpretations and is a natural for textile artists. It was also very appropriate because of its location on the banks of the River Stort. The exhibition contained thirty-two pieces, which were well laid out. The mill owner felt there could have been many more on the grounds that visitors looked round very quickly. I think that while that was true, I John introduced himself as the chairman of the Halstead Historical Society and a man with a long-term connection to Courtauld’s. As a child he moved out of London, when his father took a job at Courtauld’s. The family lived in one of the company’s houses opposite the factory and it was this proximity to work, which persuaded John to find work there rather than leave home and find employment further afield. As an apprentice, John worked in almost every section of the factory, which gave him a first hand understanding of the whole process of silk weaving. When the factory closed, he used that knowledge to set up his own business, which was to commission exclusive fabrics for organisations such as the Royal Palaces and the National Trust. These were such commissions as those with Richard Humphries at Braintree, where he was responsible for organisation the replacement of the textiles lost in the fires at Windsor and Hampton Court. John began his talk with the medieval wool trade, which was well established in East Anglia with strong links to the Low Countries. This accounts for an influx of Dutch weavers settling in the county in 1500. Chelmsford was the hub for London with many of the spinners working in the surrounding villages. Many family names in the region, such as Draper, Fuller, Burrell and Dyer, have their origin in the woollen trade. Woollens were produced in South Suffolk and Essex, and worsteds came from Norfolk and North Suffolk. In the Book of Trades of 1568, it mentions two different weaves, known as Bays (plain weave) and Says (twill weave), which were the speciality of the region. |
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