Buellwood Best -- May 2018

Buellwood Best Projects 

May is our annual 'Buellwood Best Share'. We had a good turn out this year, the challenge was to use the natural dyed wool form our 2017 fall retreat workshop given by Dawn. If you did not take the workshop then we asked you bring your best project for the 2017-2018 year. 

most of our members used our dyed yarn to create an item for the B Best Share. Our future hopes are to display these works in a local public building. 

Dawn is wearing her hand knit shawl, check with her on the exact pattern but it looks like the wingspan pattern or one of Steven West's https://www.ravelry.com/designers/stephen-west. 

She used yarn dyed with Buck horn and Lichens.

close up of shawl

Dawn decked in her shawl

Anita did not take the dye workshop but took a 'Sweet Water Grass Basket' class with the Calumet Art Center and made this lovely basket.

Anita and Karen

Sweet water grass basket by Anita

Laura used wool she dyed at the natural dye workshop to create these lovely Wool Appliqued pieces with stitching and embellishment. She used un ply-ed silk thread to sew the Applique onto recycled wool from her stash.

Laura's stitched pillow

Laura's stitched picture

Clare did a weaving with open spaces on a rug warp which she found gave her better tension for weaving this open design. Which she called 'Early Spring- Colors have Arrived'.

Clare's wall hanging

Clare's"Early Spring"

John continued with exploration of Transparent weave and created this window piece of whales. Using the dyed yarn for the weft pictures.

John with his transparent woven piece

Mary created a tunic using 46 balls of 20 yards of natural dyed yarn from two workshops she attended in 2017. The woven pattern was a Triple Draught Birds Eye which was my inspiration from a MLH swatch. The left side of the garment was a simpler birds eye pattern. For the weft she used a black Alpaca wool. The pattern was from the book 'Weave Knit and Wear' by Judith Shangold. Thank you to Melissa for modeling the tunic on a very hot day in May. Not that we have many hot days.

wool tunic

close up of tunic

 Melissa wove a number of runners with her dyed wool. In I believe a Summer and Winter pattern. if this is not correct it is because I was taking pictures and trying to listen and take notes at the same time. A lovely combination of all these colors we got from the natural dye workshop.

summer and winter close up.

wool woven runners in the lovely dyed colors

our guild admiring Melissa's woven runners

Karen is new to knitting but look at these mittens she has made from her 20 yarn balls. Karen said she is really enjoying knitting and is letting the colors flow as she knits. She has advanced to adding cables and patterns to her knitting. She has enough yarn to make a 5th pair of mittens.

4 pair of mittens in beautiful color

 Show and Tell 

If this above was not enough we also had some show and tell from our guild members.

Karen found these lovely Bow woven bracelets when she was out east and she promises to look into how these are woven for a future meeting.

knit mitttens

 Mary knit these cozy mittens using wool roving for the inside and used handspun alpaca wool mix for the body of the mittens.

woven piece from workshop warp

Melissa took an 8 shaft 'Weaving in a Parallel Universe'  workshop from Linda Harshorn  this winter in California. She brought in her amazing samples from this workshop. Many patterns to weave with parallel threading to create a variety of structures including shadow weave, four color doubleweave, echo weave twills, and turned taquete. She also shared a sampling loom from Purl and Loop. She claims she will try to sample in the future....

Echo weave sample

Phyllis brought in some items she gave away to family and they have been returned to her. lovely to remember the joy they gave her parents. A runner made from Seersucker P.J.'s in which she twisted 2 colors of weft to create the design. Place mats that were rag woven for her mother many years ago.

rag woven placemats

felted pill box for her dad

runner woven with Seersucker weft from P.J.s

Sarah had a bead woven piece which was very well executed and interesting.

Laura told us about a new rug hooking book she heard about in 

a class this winter.' Fancy Fibers' it is a beauty! and very 3 dimensional rug hooking.

Maddie finished her first scarf from the rigid heddle loom that her mom Lorraine Marley helped her warp. It is wool with the Scottish green color. Thank you Maddie and everyone for bringing in your lovely fiber pieces.

Scottish green

Maddie with her scarves.

We want to thank Clare for all the cutting and sewing on our MLH swatches due this month. Thank you to all who wove on this beautiful warp with the natural dyed yarn from Dawn. We will miss Clare, as she is spending next year out East closer to family who she will need around when they have their first baby in September. She is glowing! please keep us up to date when you can Clare.

Our next meeting will be June 18th  we will be showing how plan and wind a warp for towels. In July or September we will warp a 4 shaft loom with this warp. Now is the time to be there to see how many different methods of warping we use to do this. Bring questions and methods to share.