Beweave It : Weaving Supplies

Weaver Rose and Elsie

Christina Garton — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Thank you to the Rogue Valley Handweavers Guild whose newsletter pointed us to this week’s BeWeave It topic.

The industrial revolution put many handweavers out of business, but some hardy souls refused to give up. Siblings William and Elsie Rose helped keep handweaving alive through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. William— known as Weaver Rose—and Elsie's family had been handweavers for generations. The Roses collected over 245 drafts going back to the 1700s, some created by their own family and some by other weavers. The drafts were written haphazardly on anything from bits of cardboard and newspapers to old advertisements, but they survived. Some of their drafts can be found in Marguerite Davison’s A Handweaver’s Pattern Book.

While the Roses' collection of antique looms and weaving tools would make many antiquarians drool, it is their drafts, saved from oblivion in the industrial age, that have been vitally important to modern handweavers. If you want to know more about the Rose family, you'll find that Isadora M. Safner’s out-of-print book The Weaving Roses of Rhode Island (Interweave 1985) is worth the search.

Exploring Fiber Horizons

Christina Garton — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT

Recently, Kathy O’Hern sent us some information about the wonderful display her guild, the Helena Weavers and Spinners Guild, created for theAssociation of Northwest Weavers’ Guilds Conference. The conference theme was “Exploring Fiber Horizons” so the guild chose to portray the explorations of Lewis and Clark using nothing but wool and other weaving materials.

The display, part of which can be seen above, covered two tables and featured wool batts for the base and background, needle felted people, animals, teepees, a fort, trees, and more. Members worked together to create the display and member Laurel Orthmeyer, an accomplished needle felter, made large versions of the Lewis and Clark characters (shown below) to hold the display's banner.

All the guild’s hard work paid off when they were awarded the People’s Choice award for this delightful display. To see more photos of this woolen wonder, check out our Roving Reporter gallery on Weaving Today.

A Weaving Wonder of the World

Christina Garton — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:00:00 GMT

Anyone’s who’s ever taken a road trip across the U.S. is probably familiar with signs advertising exciting roadside attractions such as the world’s biggest thermometer or the world’s largest spoon (with cherry). Well, now weavers have a “world’s largest” to call their very own.

The Lancashire, UK, town of Nelson recently built what is almost certainly the world’s largest weaving shuttle. Simply entitled “The Shuttle,” the sculpture was constructed as part of the downtown revitalization of the former mill town. Designed by David Palmer, the shuttle was meant to honor the town’s historic textile industry.

As can be imagined, building "The Shuttle" was no small task. After the design was finalized, it took a local steel design and fabrication firm three months to complete the structure. The sculpture is 12 meters high (that’s nearly 40 feet) and weighs as much as three large elephants. It’s made of a special steel designed to build up an orange-brown patina, which gives "The Shuttle" its woodlike color. The sculpture also features an illuminated glass centerpiece meant to represent threads.

While the sculpture has caused some debate and controversy amongst townsfolk, there's little doubt that fiber fanatics from around the world will delight in visiting this new weaving wonder of the world.

Weaving as Performance Art, Revisited

Anita Osterhaug — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:50:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago, spurred on by stories of "yarn bombers," I asked you all for examples of handweaving as a performance art. Several of you commented on Weaving Today, and I was pleased to be reminded that weavers were pioneers in performance art. Since the 18th century, maypole dancers have performed public acts of interlacement to the approval of springtime celebrants. Several of you responded with your own public weaving performances. Judi shared a picture of herself weaving a giant American flag, and Saoriweaver shared a public project to weave a "blossom banner" sent to comfort the people of Sendai, Japan. Another reader builds community with a group exercise called "the human loom."

ZannCarter commended the work of artist Anne Wilson, who actively incorporates weaving with collaborative performance. My favorite of her pieces is Local Industry, a project intended to investigate the global crisis of production and skill-based textile labor. Over three months, 2,100 volunteers and seventy-nine experienced weavers produced over seventy-five feet of cloth formed entirely from donated fibers, often from mills facing closure throughout the southeastern United States. The thread was prepared on hand-crank bobbin winders by museum visitors, and then used by the weavers to compose a single bolt of striped cloth. The final cloth was donated to the Knoxville Museum of Art.

Maryanne Ladensack's Definitions

Anita Osterhaug — Wed, 04 May 2011 14:50:00 GMT

In the new Interweave Knit&Spin bookazine, Maryanne Ladensack gives some useful and often entertaining definitions of spinning terms. Here's a fun one: "Batt: A) A flying creature? B) A wooden stick used to hit baseballs? or C) A rectangular volume of carded fiber? Of course, “C” is correct. While the origin of this word is unknown, the dictionary defines it as layers or sheets of raw cotton or wool for lining quilts or stuffing or packaging." And did you know that "distaff" derives from the Anglo-Saxon words dis for “flax” and staef for “stick,” or that wool "cards" come from the Latin carduus, meaning "thistle"? Or that "hank" of yarn or fiber comes from the Old Norse word honk, meaning a coil or loop?

Here's one that gave me a V-8 moment: The word for taking a batt of fiber off a drumcard or handcards, "doff," comes for a combination of the words "do" and "off." As Homer Simpson would say "D-oh!" And does history reveal the true identity of "lazy Kate," who lives in infamy as a passive holder of spinning wheel bobbins? I'll leave you with that burning question and recommend Knit&Spin for a whole treasure trove of fascinating fiber facts.