Weekend at Arrowmont

I spent the weekend at Arrowmont attending the Southeastern Fiber Forum Conference. What a blast!! 2 and a half days of a workshop on something new to me. The class I took was from Kay Faulkner on East meets West. Kay is from Australia and has done a lot of traveling, especially north of where she lives. What a wealth of information! 

We were to wind a warp that was warp faced. Right. Wrap around the ruler and see what you got. I did. I even added some to be sure it would be warp faced. However, I don't think any of us had it. You have to wrap, push the threads, keep wrapping and then add some to get the warp faced fabric we needed! People using back strap looms don't use reeds, they just push the yarns together as the weave. Interesting!

So I wove, learning the right way to wrap around the warp threads to add an accent and even wove some interesting patterns on the middle section. I'd put on a 2 1/2 yard warp and I did weave it all. It takes forever when you're in a class and figuring out stuff, especially when your handout, how to information, is on one sheet of paper! But it stretches your mind, makes you think and is inspiring.

We were to practice making columns and wrap horizontally so I made a critter. Some people thought it was an alien and I guess it is, but it didn't start out that way. I should have graphed it out but in class you can just do things on the fly! After all, it just goes in my notebook.

There's always someone in class who thinks beyond our practice pieces (and had an 8shaft baby wolf) as opposed to my table loom. She wove an incredible piece on the left using the techniques that we learnt! Something to aspire to!

So that's it for the next 2 years. We'll do it again April 23 - 25, 2017! Seeing what the others were doing in their classes was also inspiring. Christy and Molly took John Mullarkey's class in tablet weaving and learnt a lot! Conferences like this give us inspiration for weaving new and different things plus we meet the most interesting people, some of whom are also conference junkies!! Good thing, too! I guess I'm one but I have to try to stay ahead of the game!!

Until next week, keep weaving!

Carol