Learning to make bowls with Meg Taylor
was great fun and easier than expected.
We are sad to announce that our talented Ms. Taylor will be moving away.
We wish her the best!
Category: Fiber arts
The craft is called Handknotted Oriental Rug Work.
The knot is called the double tie Ghiordes knot.
Dorna Stone, October program presenter, is originally from Maine where she learned this craft from her Mother who had a needlework school in their farm house called Gentian Meadows School of Needlework and Rug Making. She has been making hand knotted rugs for forty years. When she moved here to Seattle in the 70′s she started teaching through the Experimental College at the University of WA as a way to meet folks and “spread the word”. Dorna says, “I have entered my rugs into the WA State Fair and won many blue ribbons as well as ‘best of show’, and also into the Evergreen State Fair. I also received awards from the PNNAG annual Fiber Show in 2009. After my Mother passed away I transported the rug business to my home in Seattle and managed the supplies and teaching from there. “Have Needle Will Travel” was my motto and I have taught where ever a group would organize a class and invite me to do so. I also taught through community centers, needle arts groups like PNNAG, private organizations and folks. The most recent being in Bellingham where I currently live. I have demonstrated at nearly every fair and festival in and around Seattle.”
She wrote an article about her Mother and the rug work which was published in Fiber One magazine in 1997.
As far as materials are concerned I still have a fair supply of the duraback cotton, but you could contact folks who sell hooking supplies such as Rug Art Supplies in Oregon. Hookers should be able to tell you where they get there stuff. They do use it, but not as much as monks cloth. The needle # is 18. JCA is a whole saler. If you type in Paternayan Persian Wool you should come up with many options to buy. Lots of the shops are on the east coast. Acorn Street Yarns in Seattle sells it by strand and hanks. They are quite expensive. I sell it by the 4 oz and 2 oz hanks. Brown Sheep is a yarn supplier that sells persian wool. I don’t like the twists per inch they use. It makes the yarn thicker, but it can be used and the 3 ply split to 2 ply. I think Northwest Yarns here in B-ham might sell it. Also the Fiber Gallery in Seattle was selling it.
At our May meeting we rounded up all the charming muse dolls and photographed them, purged our fiber goods through the Plaid Llama sale and enjoyed a lovely luncheon thanks to all the devilishly delightful dishes brought by members and to a retro presentation by our hostesses, Karla and Sally.
This site will inform you of events and offer inspiring “Fiber Shots” throughout the Summer as well as sneak previews of next year’s program projects. So Grab the RSS feed and stay tuned in.
Oh, and don’t forget to face the Summer challenge of choosing a color you DO NOT LIKE and create an artful object to share in the Fall.
Mary Hovde led the March program on weaving with her skills and showed an inspiring array of her work.
Graham shows how to warp up many colors at once with his card trick.
Fiber Hearts from Fiber Arts
The members of our guild created valentines for Gen Care and Fircrest.
We knitted, felted, embroidered, quilted, beaded, sewed and wove over 100 hearts to brighten the day for the folks in these care facilities. Lots of fun and much appreciated!
We had an active year! One highlight was making a panel for the Dream Project — we took the theme “Dreams of Women”, and seven of us made small fiber art pieces that were then assembled into a finished panel by Patty L.
This link will take you to the Flickr page that gives all the details of our pieces.
Rae Deane taught us the basics of knitted lace — but as her samples show, she’s is quite an expert!
- Knitted Lace
Then on to milliner, Carol Campbell’s “Fascinator” program… one of the most seriously FUN workshops ever!
We ended the year with a hands-on weaving day
and our usual bountiful potluck lunch, which was made complete by Elsa’s Cherpumple — hers was relatively modest, an apple pie backed into a spice cake, if I recall correctly.
Cherpumple
Meredith Arnold showed us how to make fabulous silk beads! We had a blast playing with stamping, glueing, tying, and beading to create unique soft beads. Here she’s demonstrating sewing on sequins.
Here we are, hard at work play.
For Show and Tell, Valerie brought her completed mini-quilt from last month’s Melissa Williams workshop
and so did Astrid.
Glenda showed us two of her hooked and beaded pieces that will be on display at the Mill Creek location of Laughing Ladies Cafe.
Glenda and Mona challenged each other to intepret the word “North” — Glenda did hooked fiber and beads, and Mona did painting and collage.
Mary Black brought samples of the kumihimo balls she will teach us to make in November.
Clearly, I haven’t been doing such a good job updating the Seaview Weavers Guild blog! Because I’m all about the moving forward, let’s just agree that yes, we’ve had many fun, productive, inspiring, and educational meetings for the past year and a half . . . and just leave it at that. I’ll do my best to keep this more current this meeting year, September 2009 through May 2010.
Robyn Spady gave a wonderful talk titled “Less is More”, about how to weave fancy trims, called galloons and gimps. These are the sort of trims you pay enormous amounts of money for at the fabric and upholstery stores, yet are surprisingly easy to weave, and utilize very few ends of warp. As Robyn asked, “Can you manage to warp five ends?” You bet, Robyn!
My apologies to Robyn! This is best of the pictures I got — the auto focus wasn’t doing very good job that day. She is holding a fringed trim that has three warp sections, one in the center and one on each side. The weaving is done with a thick bundle of assorted yarns, is this case red and black. The weft is mostly floating free, and when the weaving is done, you cut up the center to make two strips of lovely, fluffy fringe. She also showed us how to to make a variety of other trims, similar to those shown here.
We got so inspired by this that we are bringing warped up looms to the February meeting to let everyone have a try.
Valerie lead us in a damp but fun workshop onmaking felted flowers. First a base shape is felted, and cut to the size and shape wanted.
Then, some additional fiber can be felted on to add detail
resulting in a lovely flower!
Beads and a pinback need to be added.
And they can be any color that amuses.
The best thing at Show and Tell was Heather’s amazing wall hanging. This is a hand painted silk warp, woven with a silk weft, that will be installed in the dining room of her client. The framework will support it vertically and will give the effect of a cascading waterfall. Sure hope we get to see some pictures of it in place!
Heather is on the right, above.
All we can say is, “Wow!”
