Ellie's Back!

Many of you will remember my upholstery colleague, Ellie Blachly, with whom I shared a studio in Marshfield village before I moved back to the weaving school.  When we left that studio, Ellie moved to England with her husband, Bruce, to begin a master's program at Buck's New University in furniture conservation.  They ended up loving life in England so much that they stayed for three years!  Now they are back home in Vermont and Ellie has moved into the old dye shed at the weaving school to resume her upholstery business and her other side line...costume making.  Her father owns the famous Unadilla Theatre in East Calais and she was persuaded to make the costumes for the production of "Henry IV" that will be opening this July 19th.  It has been fascinating to watch the process of costume creation and we have also been able to help with the dyeing of some of the fabrics.

The old dye shed transformed into costume/upholstery studio...with Norman supervising!

Some of the costumes in process...and herself.

Ellie's able assistant, Elsa Engstrom, working on the doublet for "Young Hal."

The drawings of the proposed attire for all the major characters.

Lady Mortimer's ensemble.

A prototype of the footwear....using scraps of our handwoven worsted camlet.

Elsa dyeing some of the fabric for the peasants costumes.

Some of the dyed silk for the sleeve linings and underskirts.

We'll have more photos of the finished costumes in the next week or so as opening night is fast approaching!
For those of you in the neighborhood....go to www.unadilla.org for more info about the performance schedule.  Alot of our friends and neighbors are in the cast so it should be a fabulous show!

Carpets, Napkins, a Throw and Dishtowels.....

The last two weeks of June have been a bit quiet but we are all relishing the extra time to get out in the gardens and attend to other spring chores. We did still see some projects come off the looms and here they are.....

Susan Witham worked hard this winter on mastering both linen and satin weaves. Here she is with her 7 yards of linen napkins in an assymetric coral stripe.

Joann Darling was another new student this spring and her first project was to weave rag rugs with a linen warp. In her other life, she sells her handmade soap at local shops and the farmer's market and is intent on growing her own flax this year to process into linen.

The finished rag rug.

Stevie's next project is to reproduce a bed blanket from a fragment of an old three color bird's eye. She hand dyed the yarn to match and we look forward to see the beginning of her weaving.

Taylore has been busy at home weaving this late winter and she brought her dishtowels to lunch one day as show and tell. They are all woven with different weft color combinations in her usual choice of bright colors.

Here is Amy Danielson, daughter of Karin Danielson - one of our former students from long ago, with her
finished warp faced carpet in a Silas Burton design.
                                              

Mother, Karin, threading up a stair carpet to match a piece that she had woven 15 years ago. Amazingly enough we were still able to find the same yarn in the same colors.
 Here is Barb Morse, from southern NH, who heard me speak at the NH Weavers Guild in March and was inspired to come up and try weaving a wide width on a barn loom.

She choose a four harness huck lace pattern which she wove in two shades of cottolin. The finished piece will be a lightweight throw for the summer. It was beautiful!

Late Spring in Vermont

warm enough to keep the outer door open most days...

Susan Osterman's baby blanket

Sandra's linen scarves

some fabric for David Mamet's tailor in California

Joann working on her first project...rag rugs

Sylvia and her cotton summer blanket

Sylvia weaving

Somehow it has already become the beginning of June here in Vermont. The trees are all leafed out, hay growing vigorously in the fields around the school, and we are eating lunches outdoors under the shade of a tree more often than not. It's such a perfect time of year here...everything still fresh and new...warm days interspersed with some cool rainy ones, and all of us busily working in our gardens every chance we get. There have been some nice things on the looms lately. Susan Osterman is weaving a cotton baby blanket in huck...it's lavender, it's soft, it's thick and cuddly. Meanwhile she is making plans for her next project, another summer blanket in wool and cotton. Sandra wove several herringbone twill linen scarves in neutral tones of linen. She was cursing her persnicketty warp, as thread after thread pinged into oblivion, but such are the trials of fine linen weaving! Her scarves are pretty darn lovely in my opinion. We made some fabric for David Mamet's tailor in California to construct a hunting jacket with...fine worsted wool in a houndstooth check, and a lot of fun to weave! Joann Darling is a new local student here. She's an herbalist and an amazing gardener who has been doing wonderful experiments with natural dyes from tree barks and common plants...she's been working to tend the dye gardens here, and learning to weave as well. Her first project was a run of rag rugs for her house, and she had a great time working on them. Here are also a few other photos of Sylvia working on her summer blanket too... ...and on we go into summer. This week Kate and I are traveling to Cooperstown, NY to present a talk and slideshow on the work Kate's been doing with the calender press. We are refining our glazing experiments, and soon we'll be getting our indigo vats fired up for the warm season. Things have been busy here and I've had a hard time keeping up with this blog, but I'll try to keep you all informed about things here at the school. Until the next time, enjoy June's beautiful soft weather.

Sally and Sylvia Return!

Two of our favorite students came back this May....Sally to weave a 6 H singles linen for curtain panels and Sylvia to weave a full sized summer blanket out of hand-dyed cotton/bamboo. Alison had dyed the yarn for Sylvia ahead of time in the most delicious colors of mango, peach and straw and Sally had sized her singles yarn at home using our wheat flour receipt. So they were all set to get their warps made first thing Monday morning.

Here is Sally...her warp on the loom ...making good headway so far.

Sylvia winding bobbins...her colorful warp in the background.

A close-up of Sally's curtains.

Sylvia at the loom...she was weaving three 100" panels to sew up for her blanket so she had many hours of weaving still to go.

No week at the school is complete without some hardships...though these hardships are always good learning experiences...(we hope!) Sylvia's challenge this week was on the physical level with bruised ankles from the treadles....

While Sally's challenge was with loose threads...due to the crankiness of the wiry, sized singles. By the end of her warp she had a regular wind chime effect from all the clanging metal hooks. But this was a learning experience too and all in all both Sally and Sylvia went away happy!

Rose and the Vermont Folklife Grant

As many of you know from our past blogs, Rose Diamond has been studying with us for the past six months under the sponsorship of the Vermont Folklife Center. She recently finished up her course of study and Greg Sharrow, the Director of the Grant programs at VFC, came to the school to do a site visit and to see what Rose has been up to all this time.  Part of the criteria for a Folklife grant is that there be a passing on of skills through the tradition of a master and apprenticeship situation.  In our case, I was passing on my knowlege to Rose and she in turn was passing on what she learned to a young girl named Alya.  Rose has been working with Alya for a number of years not only in teaching her how to weave but to also sing traditional Gaelic work songs.

We started off with a show and tell of Rose's weavings....here is a beautiful throw woven out of Rose's handspun, hand-dyed yarn.

An overshot runner with the aptly named pattern of "Roses and Diamonds" also in handspun, hand-dyed yarn.

A rayon/silk shawl

Norman admiring Rose's 10 yards of linen M's & O's for a table cloth and napkins.

Greg also admiring the M's & O's linen.

More of the overshot...

Rose showing Kate the notebook of her projects with all the details of warping and threading.

Rose helping her protege, Alya, finish a warp for scarves.

Alya modeling the warp!

Rose and Greg discussing the merits of the Folklife grant and how important it is to encourage the continuation of the passing on of traditional knowledge to the next generation.

Kate and Rose....here's to a job very well done!

NoBo comes North...as in the North of Boston Weavers Guild!

This past week we had four weavers come up from the North of Boston Weavers Guild thanks to our returning student, Gail Gentile. Gail came last October to weave overshot and she had such a great time that she brought three of her other guild members along this time. They were Mary Shattuck, Margaret Russell and Besty Martin. They all decided on different projects and Lynnette and I had our hands full with getting everyone started but it all worked out in the end.

           Here is Mary weaving an alpaca throw in a reverse twill block.

                                                     Closeup of Mary's throw.

Gail choose to weave a throw as well but this one with organic cotton in indigo blue and white...also in the reverse twill block.

                                                             Gail's finished throw.



Margaret decided to weave a piece of Scottish tweed using our Brora tweed yarn in two lovely colors of rust and blue green.  She put on enough to make a tailored jacket.

                                Margaret taking the finished cloth off the loom.

Betsy....alias Becky....opted for a four block rep rug and of the three projects this one was the most hair raising!  Partly because of a bad choice...on our end ....of a carpet yarn that was too fuzzy.  The original color scheme had a sage green yarn as the background color (every other thread) and when we tried to open the shed for the first throw of the shuttle nothing happened!  Not to be daunted we took out all the green....made a new background warp with a blue yarn and re-beamed and re-threaded the new color.
Needless to say we all had headaches by the end of that day but the new color was a success and she was
able to complete a beautiful rug.

Gail left early on Friday so she missed out on the group shot but here are the other three happy weavers with their finished projects. We are looking forward to all of them returning again sometime in the future!

ps.....Gail posted on her blog .....www.nobogoesnorth.blogpost.com  ....every day so check that out for more details!