May buellwood meeting Fiber Identification Day

Our May meeting topic was fiber identification which really turned out quite interesting. Everyone brought in interesting samples of wool and other fibers to identify. 

Jeanne's wool hand spun yarn

We had our show and tell first:
Jeanne has been spinning and she brought in a large soft Skein of a wool mixture. Along with her spinning record sheets, that she meticulously keeps.

Susan is packing and preparing to move to Missouri - she has a farm for sale on the Houghton Canal.
Susan has been a member for about 3 years, we will miss her participation in our guild.

Melissa has returned for the summer from CA and she has been busy weaving over the winter.
she wove a cotton color 10/2 gamp that she may be  turning some of it into towels. Melissa also wove two lovely scarves with a crackle pattern on her 8-shaft loom this winter.

Melissa's cotton color gamp

Susan showing us Melissa Crackle scarf

a close up of the left over yarn scarf

Melissa's cotton towels.

 Susan is inspecting Melissa first scarf and Melissa is wearing the one she created with her left over yarn which also turned out beautiful.



Melissa wove these towels with a thicker cotton than was recommended. These are lovely and thick enough to soak up the water.

John continues to bring in items from the guild library to share with us... Many are old copies of weaving periodicals. Which are very interesting.

Dawn brought in many samples of fibers she uses to dye her wool with. She also gave us some information about mortanting and dying yarn to keep it healthy.
She brought samples of Bast fibers, milkweed, flax, silk worms cocoons that she nurtured and grew. She had a jar with cherry bark and buckhourn in it to show us how the red color comes out when soaked. I hope I got the correct names of the fibers Dawn brought in to show us. If you want more fiber fun with Dawn, check out the Calumet Art Center's class schedule as she will be doing a dye day at the center on August 6th.

Dawn showing the fibers from plants.

Flax

cherry bark soaking

Dawn's silk cocoons

Carol tested us on our fiber knowledge, she brought in 12 bags each containing a different fiber. She asked us to feel, smell and identify each bags contents. It was more difficult than we thought to pick out the correct fiber. Carol then did a burn test on these fibers to show us how to identify each fiber in the bags. It was a fun activity for our guild. We also handed out a burn test sheet and a wool felting sheet for our referencing.

Fiber test

10 ft AVL loom for rug weaving

May 24th a few of us drove over to visit Mary Burn's studio in Manitowish, WI 
we made a day trip over to her studio stopping along the way to visit Artistree a gallery in Land of Lakes, WI.

Mary Burns has two large Rug looms a Cranbrook 8 foot loom with shaft switching capabilities. She also has a 10 foot dobby AVL loom with power assisted shaft lifting pedals (shown here above).

Mary is also doing a series of Ancestral Women portraits on her Jacquard loom. She will be presenting a lecture on Saturday at Convergence 2016 in Milwaukee
S-SA099 Woven Portraits: Weaving Wisconsin’s Ancestral Women
Mary shared her designing process with us for all the looms. Showing us the process to reduce the number of shades of black and white on her Mac computer before she loads the design into the Jacquard software.
She is selling a couple of these looms as she just received shipment of her TC-2 loom from Norway while we were visiting her.   http://www.manitowish.com/MRS/index.html

Jacquard loom designing

her TC 1 Jacquard loom which is for sale

some of the Portraits Mary has finished

Finnish American Heritage Center has a beautiful hand woven exhibit. It is in the theater of the Heritage Center in Hancock, MI. It is a collection from a lady from Marquette, who traveled and purchased these weaving's from many different weavers. Some are Rya and other Finn weaves. I thought the double weave wall hangings were great. Phyllis told me the weave is called Finn Pick or Takana. They are made with two warps and two shuttles. Lovely, if you have a few minutes check out the woven pieces, before they are removed. Also the Finlandia Art and Design class has their projects on display in the gallery, including Taylor Pomroy who attended our March meeting and showed her weaving's.

We are looking for ideas for our September 17, 18 th retreat and fall guild meetings, please bring any ideas to the June meeting or email me at mdbweave@aol.com. We meet at noon on June 20 at Gloria Dei church in Hancock, MI New members welcome.