November Buellwood meeting warping the Inkle loom

Inkle loom weaving

Our November meeting was a week early to avoid the Thanksgiving travel week.
We all agreed the retreat in October was a great success. Thank you to all who participated and our guild members who planned the schedule and prepared the many workshops we were able to experience.
Also a thank you to Eve for her donation of weaving magazines and books for our guild library. We sold a few of the duplicates to add to our guild funds.

Our Guild  also participated in the 'Art Affair' sale in Houghton in November. We did a booth with a demo of weaving on a table loom and an Mini wave loom. We also featured the inkle loom.  Karen arrived with her birch bark stars and baskets and was very popular with her demo. She sold some as fast as she made them.

Kathie and John demonstrated the  4 shaft table loom and Mary demonstrated the Mini Wave loom. We were allowed to sell some of our woven items and we donated 10% to our guild funds with the proceeds.







Clare had her own booth at the 'Art Affair'. She did a lovely job of presenting her woven knitting bags and her wool woven cuffs.  She will be at the 'Poor Artist sale' this weekend at the Calumet High School if you missed her in Houghton.

 Show and Tell is always a treat at these meetings. 

We have so many members who are busy with their fibers and love to share what they have been doing.

Dawn has been busy dying yarn, and knitting. She has added dying cloth to her many talents. She had some spectacular results with the dye matter she had left from our retreat. See the Purple corn stalks dyed yarn, variations were created by the order of dying the yarn.
Rhubarb leaves gave this yellow and orange color to the yarn. She mordants with Alum and used a washing soda after bath to get the orange color.

Purple corn stocks

Dawn with natural dyed yarns

I believe the tan and rose was produced by dying with buck horn . The tan with just Alum and the rose after the dye was diluted.

Buck horn dye matter

Rhubarb and Alum mordant

Dawn with dyed cloth samples using walnut hulls crushed and added to cloth before steaming. Last but not least this lovely hat knit with dawns natural woad and dyers root weed. Using Elizabeth Zimmerman's Beret pattern.

broken walnut hulls on cloth

Dawn's lovely knit hat with natural dyed yarns

Mary shared some crazy quilt squares she found at a fiber retreat and a sweater she knit for her grand daughter.

Boo sweater for Evie

Clare brought in a sample of her top down knitting in the round sweater pattern. She is wearing the vest knit in the round with a beautiful pattern on the yoke. the advantage of this top down pattern is you do not have to sew the side seams together when finished with the knitting.

Clare showed us her original design for a booth table cloth using many scraps of inkle loom woven bands to create the word Handwoven. Such a clever idea !

Close up of Clare's vest.

Clare with her booth cover art.

Phyllis brought in samples from her weaving class at Finlandia. This first one is a Horns-tooth pattern. The second is a pattern gamp from the stickler 8 shaft weaving book. A tapestry sample and the painted warps from her class. Looks like each student got a couple of feet of white warp to paint then it was put on the loom and woven.

horns tooth sampler

tapestry sample

8 shaft pattern gamp

painted warps

John brought in his woven Painted warp sampler. John is taking a second weaving class from Phyllis this semester.

painted warp woven by John

 Our presentation today was how to warp an Inkle loom. Clare brought in the guild floor inkle loom and showed us how to make heddles and put the warp on the loom.

 Our guild meeting included discussion of the MLH samples we will be weaving this year. As it is our Guilds turn to prepare woven samples for MLH to send out to all its many members.

A few good ideas were discussed and Clare is in charge of arranging for the warp and the weaving location.
We hope to see all of our members come and weave a few inches to a couple of feet of this woven cloth.

Our next meeting will be our Christmas Party TBA and we are planning a Naughty Santa gift exchange of a handmade fiber gift which is only for those who wish to participate. So please plan on coming to visit and enjoy a BYO lunch we are looking forward to a great turn out.  If anyone has an idea for a party game, fiber related, of course. Please contact John or Kathie with your plans.

Check out our website for updated meeting topics later this month.