Discover the wonder of woolen spinning. Most spinners start out learning to make smooth, compact worsted yarns. Take your spinning to the other extreme with woolen long draw from hand-carded rolags. This method maximizes loft, elasticity and warmth in your yarn, and it feels like magic! We’ll cover fiber preparation and two long-draw spinning techniques, and discuss fiber selection.
Create a unique novelty yarn by recycling yarn scraps into flecks of color and texture. Garnetted yarns are a creative use for leftover yarns, weaving thrums, and jewel-toned sari silk scraps. We will prepare the add-ins, blend them with fresh wool, and spin new yarns. Once we’ve got the basic technique, we’ll explore designing garnetted yarns for color and contrast.
Expand your rigid-heddle weaving with a collection of techniques that add great texture to plain weave. Angela will introduce you to patterns that can be created with one and two pick-up sticks, as well as how to work with multiple shuttles. Honeycomb, simple twills, and textured weaves await! Pair this session with Beyond Plain Weave: Hand-Manipulated Lace for two classes on the same warp.
Have you ever thought about combining your weaving with another craft medium? Or stretching your creative boundaries by working with another artist? In this presentation, Angela will share a collection of her own multimedia works and collaborations with fellow fine craft artists, and discuss the creative and cooperative process behind them. Pieces combine fiber arts with other media including clay, glass, wood, metal, beads, paper, and painting.
Starting with a simple threading, create complex-looking inkle bands with Baltic pick-up. This straightforward technique produces bold, elegant floral designs—florals, geometric patterns, and hearts—that are often just as lovely on the reverse side.
Learn to read pick-up charts to follow charted designs, then discover how to make weaving pick-up more efficient by anticipating the next row. In the afternoon, we’ll move on to lettering and designing your own motifs for truly custom bands. Angela will also share additional tips for easy starts and endings, weaving good selvedges, unweaving mistakes, and using color in the warp to further enhance your beautiful multiply your design possibilities.
An alternating-color warp—which naturally weaves weftwise stripes—is the perfect foundation for bold pick-up designs with crisp color contrast in either color—or both at once.
Learn to set up your loom for this technique, then weave one- and two-color geometric designs from charted patterns before moving on to weaving words.We’ll explore both the possibilities and limitations of this technique to weave structurally sound bands and combine bold pickup motifs with plain weave patterning for even more design possibilities.
Branch out into a new direction in inkle weaving with techniques adapted from… lace? Yes! Inkle bands are dense, warp-faced, and distinctly not lacy. Apply methods of hand-manipulated lace to this unexpected medium and you’ll open a whole new world of fantastic textures. Weave lattices, bricks, little stars, and meandering trails. You’ll learn how each technique works in a warp-faced context and weave multiple variations on your own loom. Break away from straight lines with wandering warp and weft!