February Guild Meeting             

      What: Byways in Handweaving  with guild members

      When:  Thursday, February 11, 6:30 p.m.

      Where: South Valley Unitarian Church, 6876 South Highland Drive*

    What: Show and Tell at 6:30, Meeting at 7 pm

      Byways in Handweaving. Mary Atwater wrote a book about many small weaving techniques that do not use a floor loom.

We want to have a “hands on” evening of exploring many of these techniques. I would like to invite all of you  to bring something to share and demonstrate to Guild members. Bring finished items for show and tell. Thread your inkle looms and/or card weaving looms for the hands-on part of the evening. I would like to see several techniques available to explore—inkle weaving: plain weaving on a color warp; add pickup designs on striped warps or on basketweave backgrounds. Then you could play with beads on the selvedge edges. What else do you want to try? For card weaving, we could have some cute designs that are threaded and turned four turns forward, four turns backwards. Then there are the diagonal designs, where the cards are threaded with two light ends and two dark ends. I will bring the video showing how to do a 10-minute warp for this technique. It would be fun to have someone bring a double faced warp also.

Another idea is kumihimo. If you are doing some kumihimo, bring your stand or your foam disk and show off your current braid. I will bring a takidai so you can try out that technique. Who is doing ply-split braiding, this is one you can do in your lap. There are also beading techniques, finger weaving, loop braiding, and other ideas that would be fun to see. So plan to bring something and we will take turns being teacher and students. Please plan to share one of your explorations. We will have a sign-up sheet at this Guild meeting so we can plan enough tables for everyone. You can email Judie Eatough: judie@eatough.net or Ann Edington Adams: weaverstudent@hotmail.com with questions and ideas. We hope you will all participate and make this a great evening of learning and fun.
 

* The church now has a working elevator. 

April Meeting: Tamari Balls Lori Webb will teach us how to make Temari balls. Those who saw her lovely gift at the Guild party were excited to learn to do this. You will bring a Styrofoam ball that has been wrapped in thread and is ready for the design work. Watch the newsletter for instructions on how to prepare your ball. ❖

President’s Message 

This Guild meeting we are going to celebrate Chinese New Year. Actually it is a month early. That is my error. I am not sure if the first time I looked it up, I saw January 14th as the date—or if I did it wrong all along. I tend to think the latter. But current research shows February 14th is really Chinese New Year. 2010 is Year 4707 in the Chinese calendar and is the Year of the Tiger.

We shall have a great time looking at Chinese textiles. Many of the textiles will be minority textiles featuring traditional techniques such as indigo dyeing and embroi-dery in addition to weaving. Make sure you bring your glasses and perhaps even a pick glass. That is a small magnifying glass—traditionally used to pick out the weaving pattern. Fabric analysis is one of the great “how”done its—although we seldom know “who” done it. If you want to read more about Chinese textiles and their structure, John Becker's book Pattern and Loom is now available as a download at http://www.staff.hum.ku.dk/dbwagner/Pattern-and-Loom.html . This was a $60 book when it was first published in 1986. Many of the designs are suitable for pickup weaving. And it is a great book for inspiration. I would have to say it is not easy reading. The PDF file is from text and so is searchable. And unlike my printed copy, I can magnify a photo or diagram. This starts with textiles from the Han dynasty in 200 BC.

Bring items for show and tell—you can include those special gifts that came your way. Did you get a new book or some tools or notions—or perhaps some lovely yarn or fabric. Also bring Asian inspired textiles. Please read about next month's meeting and send me an email about what you can bring to the meeting.

  Judie