Design and wind a warp - Buellwood Guild July 2018 Meeting

Marilyn's Overshot Runner

The Buellwood Weavers and Fiber Artist Guild met at Gloria Dei Church in Hancock Michigan on Monday July 16th.  We did not meet in June as our meeting was the day following the Father's Day Flood that destroyed many roads in Houghton and the nearby area. 

In July we gathered to learn how to design and make a warp for a floor loom. Dawn bought a small floor loom this summer and she hopes to learn how to weave with a simple tabby towel project. During our demo we started a warp with the cottolin Dawn ordered and followed her design for a simple natural colored towel with three stripes on each salvage. This will be her first weaving project. 

At our September guild meeting we will demo warping a floor loom using Dawn's towel warp. If you want to learn one technique for warping a loom, please try to make this meeting. We encourage participation as there are many methods of warping and we can learn new tricks from our experienced weavers. This demo will be on Monday September 17th at Gloria Dei Church in Hancock at about 12:00 noon. Bring a lunch and your show and tell items and join us for more information on our Fall Retreat. Which is scheduled for October 13 and 14 at the Marsin Retreat Center off of Canal Road in Houghton.

Show and Tell

 Marilyn brought her woven Overshot runner to share as well as a friend Lori from Raleigh North Carolina. She is also a weaver but with Industry size equipment. Marilyn's Runner is at the top of this page. It is woven with wool, cotton and viscose. The pattern is the Maltese cross.

workshop sample

 Karen T brought in a couple of woven pieces she made at a workshop in Decorah IA.

 A Willow purse taught by Cattalin a basket weaver from Spain. A tray woven with some copper wire and a small basket that she would like to use for local workshops.

Karen's woven purse

Karen's woven tray.

Karen has many talents and she showed us a Bow loom woven bracelet that she will demo for us at our Fall Retreat.

Bow loom Bracelets

and her jewelry samples that she is experimenting with!

Karen T jewelry

 Kathie spent a couple of weeks in Normandy France with her family this summer. She was impressed by the Bayeux Tapestries she saw and brought home a tote bag with the Tapestry images printed on it. These tapestries are not very large but run a great length. It is actually embroidery of wool yarn on woven linen, made in the 11th Century. It is 70 meters long and 50 centimeters tall.

Bayeux Tapestry tote

Karen L log cabin scarf

Dawn is dyeing with coreopsis

Karen L brought in a woven scarf with pink and white yarn it is a log cabin pattern and she is working on the fringe finishing. 

Dawn brought in samples of Coreopses are native American prairie and woodland plants

she had two samples one was an annual and the other perennial.  She used Alum as the mordant and got two very different results. I am not going to pretend I know the difference but I did buy the Tickseed variety and I am going to add them to my prairie garden. 

Anita found another treasure at the resale shop! this is a Rug hooking devise from many years ago. It was in the original box. This is an Automatic Hook Rug needle.

Mary was in Scotland and came home with some North Ronaldsay Sheep's wool

a favorite soft wool to weave with. She also knit another Dead Fish Hat that John was nice enough to model for us. She also took a Indigo dye class from Debby Jirik at LOLA in Land of Lakes. She now has a Indigo plant growing on her deck for a dye bath or Eco dyed scarf latter this fall.

My Japanese Indigo plant is doing well this summer with the heat and rain.

North Ronaldsay yarn

Dead fish hat on John.

Indigo dyed cotton and silk.

Japanese Indigo

Our next meeting will be at Dawn's house in Calumet. A blue dye day on August 20 th from 1:00 to 4:00 $10 fee for materials
26191 Church street, Calumet Rockland and Caladonia
Park by tower please.
Let John know if you are interested. space is limited.

Breeds of Sheep Guild meeting January 2018

Our January topic was Breeds of Sheep, presented by Dawn. In her Sheepish report Dawn mentioned there are 200 Breeds of sheep worldwide. In the USA there were 56 million sheep in 1945 and in 2003 we only had approximately 7 million sheep in the USA. She talked about the fiber diameter and softness. The wool characteristics to be aware of and she had some lovely wool fleece samples from each major group of sheep, which we examined and compared.
If you want to know more about Sheep Breeds Dawn recommended the book 'Fleece and Fiber Scorcebook' by Robson and Ekarius.

Dawn's blue woad dyed and felted hat

Dawn had a number of knit and felted hats to share today. I was only able to get pictures of the blue one that Hanna is holding and the red one Dawn modeled for us. Although she was quick taking it off, this one was called the multi fisherman and is a Zimmerman pattern. The yarn was dyed with Madder root.

Rust hat

She also brought two visitors who came to Calumet to spend some time felting with her. They also did a little skiing. Jenna showed us her felted horse blanket made with churro wool.

Hanna's Churro horse blanket

While Sam came with a pair of boots she wanted to make liners for and

a lovely pair of liners she made to fit inside her beautiful leather boots. A ball of wool dyed with walnut hulls and a head band knit and felted.

Sam with liners for her boots

 

Hanna's walnut wool, felted boot liners and headband

 Phyllis brought in a weaving she called 'Looking out the Sauna Window'

it was woven on painted warp with various color wefts to reflect the view from the sauna.

 Mary had a sample of a weaving on a Yak warp that was dyed with indigo and woven with various wefts of Habu paper yarn, Silk ribbon and other yarns. Unfortunately the warp was too weak to hold up for the weaving, so after many broken warp threads she removed it from the loom and kept the sample as a record of what not to do. The yak was just not strong enough for this weaving.

indigo Yak war

scarf with North Ronaldsay wool

This scarf was knit from a web site that gave video instructions for the knitting patterns. Knit Purl Hunter was the website and the pattern was 'Behind the Scenes' The yarn was from North Ronaldsay Island in Scotland and the sheep on the island roam near the Sea and eat Seaweed from the shores.  The wool is unbelievably soft. 

She also has been spinning some Shetland wool that was dyed by a friend from Kewaunee, WI.
 

Shetland wool hand spun

Kathie wove a beautiful piece of fabric for Prosphora bread bags for her son's church. It is unleavened bread used for communion for the Eastern Orthodox Church. The pattern is From the Davidson 4 shaft book. the pattern is by Oelsner.

Kathie's fabric

Kathie's close up

John found a couple of knit lace doilies from 1940 that

were made by his Great Grandmother. We all enjoyed seeing these finely knit Doilies..

 Clare is planning our MLH sample and she did not have show and tell but she is very happy with her Mason Bag she found at Harbour Freight. It is Plenty big enough for her knitting projects.

Our next meeting will be February 19th and Anita has offered to do some drop spindle spinning and will bring more wool samples for us to explore.
For our March meeting Phyllis is going to surprise us with a presentation.

Time to start working on your Buellwood Best project for the May meeting.