The Journal for Weavers, Spinners & Dyers

My copy of The Journal arrived just before I went off the Flitwick on Friday, so didn't have time to look through it even though I'd taken it with me to peruse.   Tuesday morning while sitting in the garden having my breakfast I decided to have a quick look and to my surprise there was an article in "Guild Highlights" section about the workshop I tutored last year at the Mid-Essex Guild.

The Journal for Weavers, Spinners and Dyers

Guild Highlights with my course review

The workshop was on Art Yarn and was obviously very well received, so I am thrilled!  The Mid-Essex Guild was very welcoming and I really enjoyed tutoring it, so thank you to them for ending such a lovely review to The Journal.

Fibre East Block Weave Workshop Week-End

Last week-end I tutored a successful workshop in Flitwick.  Fibre East organised a two day workshop studying Block Weaves and 10 weavers shared their looms and warps so that they could experience Monks Belt, Honeycomb, Overshot, Crackle and Summer and Winter.  Here are a selection of images of all the swatches they produced over the two days.
I am extremely proud of how the tackled the course, some new to weaving, and some with only two years experience.  Well done everyone!

Derby University Textile Design - The Big Show

I spent a lovely morning at Derby University today taking a look at the current batch of 2016 graduates of the BA (Hons) Textile Design.  I've not had any work placement students over the last three years so I've got a little out of touch with what's going on in the University world and I was pleasantly surprised!

The woven and knitted textiles were superb, although I was a little disappointed in the print.  My most favourite work was from Sophia Reed, who'd interpreted Polish folk art into the most beautiful knitted textiles.

Sophia's coat was so beautiful, with the motifs graduating to nothing from the bottom to the top.  I can see her charming little scarves sold in Liberty's, too!

Katie Mills' knitted scarves, inspired by mushrooms, were very interesting, using different weights of yarn to create areas of texture.

Other designers I liked were Jan Bell's 'Morocco' inspired woven textiles, Sammy Bertrams' 'Night Night Sleep Tight' childrens fabrics, Miriam Murgatroyd's 'Under the Microscope' knitted textiles and Florence Carr's brightly coloured knits, 'Coastal Roaming'.

Eglise du Château

The church that the Michel Degand tapestries were exhibited in was as inspiring as the tapestries themselves, the windows were stunning as was the roof and the carvings.  It was a stunning, light church and a perfect place to exhibit the tapestries.

Aubusson and Felliton

After the Echo and Iris workshop Jane and I went to Aubusson and Felletin to see the tapestry weavers.    Aubusson is famous for it's low warp tapestries or use of horizontal looms.

It was rather late in the day when we arrived so we couldn't go to see Manufacturer St Jean and sadly the Museum was closed for the change over from the old museum to the brand new Museum to celebrate the status of International city of Tapestry.   So we went to see the weavers at Studio A2 where we purchased a beautiful little tapestry beater.

We had been recommended by the Tourist Information Office to go to Felletin to see the exhibition in the Church of the Chateau and we weren't disappointed.  The tapestries designed by Michel Degard were on display with a few others by Sonia Delauney, Henri Guérin, Le Corbusier and Alexander Calder.  All were woven by the Pinton Studio situated in Felletin.

Below are just a sample of the amazing selection of tapestries we saw with details of some of them.  What I particularly liked were the different setts that were used in the same tapestries.